Paper Rings Part XIII
September 2995
Nobody dared to continue what Olenna had started. Ariana’s glare alone—running up and down the table, lingering on the courtiers whose voices had been the loudest—was enough to zip their lips shut. They were followers. When Olenna was there to guide them, they joined the old woman in her protests and insults, but the moment she was gone, they tucked their tails between their legs and slunk back.
The Queen’s gaze commanded respect. With her husband and eldest son gone, the court had thought they could test her, but they had been wrong. It was true that the presence of the men was a shield, but it wasn’t the only protection they had. It couldn’t be.
Marie could only hope that she would one day be able to hold herself as Ariana did. Watching her didn’t feel like looking through a window into her future. It felt like she was staring at a painting which encapsulated a beauty that could never be adequately described. She would never live up to it.
The quiet common girl would never be the Queen of Magicis.
She was Caleb in the Hall of Kings, staring up at the pictures of his predecessors, horrified that he would never be one of them. Or worse, that he would.
When Ariana had grabbed her by the shoulders earlier that day and compared her to a slab of meat and the court to a pack of wolves, Marie had wondered whether or not the Queen was truly trying to help her. Her words might have been meant to prepare her or to break her. There was no way to know whether she was being set up to fail or succeed.
She couldn’t have said with even an ounce of confidence that she thought the Queen genuinely liked her, but she knew now that she wasn’t trying to bring her down. This engagement was a headache for her, but even if neither she nor her husband was pleased about it, Ariana loved her son. If Marie was Caleb’s choice, she would do what she could to make sure she survived in his world because she knew that if she fell apart, so would he.
And so would the Martinez Dynasty. Caleb was its future. They were too far in now. To undermine Marie was to undermine everything that the Martinez family had.
Luckily, they were not without allies. Olenna’s voice was loud, but that didn’t mean others didn’t exist.
The woman who Marie had decided must have been Vance’s wife was the first to straighten in her chair and clear her throat, shattering the sheet of suspense Olenna had left in her wake. When she looked at Marie, she smiled. Her cheeks, pink with blush, were smooth and kind.
“I think a different perspective will be good for us,” she said. Her eyes flitted to the rest of the table, something in them mirroring the disdain on the Queen’s face. “That is, if we give it a chance.”
It was a challenge—quiet and framed as a sweet comment of appreciation for Marie’s disparate background, but a challenge all the same. More still, they were the first words to come from anyone’s mouth that day to suggest that Marie might actually have a chance at earning anyone’s respect.
Several other courtiers nodded along and echoed her, almost all of them on the younger side, likely not more than ten or fifteen years older than Marie. None of them had dared to speak while Olenna was dominating the conversation, but with her gone, they had relaxed.
The woman who had said she knew Marie’s parents nodded in agreement. “If you’re anywhere close to as lovely as your parents are,” she told Marie, “you should be a very welcome presence at court.”
Beside her, a man, presumably her husband, scoffed, and she swatted him. When he started to say something in protest, she only swatted him again.
Leaning into Marie’s ear, Ana gestured toward Vance’s wife, who was now already engaged in a hushed conversation with several of the younger courtiers who had agreed with her. “That lady down there is Ambrosia Fango. Most people call her Amy, but I think I’ve heard Vance call her Rosie too.”
Then, she pointed at the woman who had just spoken. “And that’s Evelyn Thatcher and her husband, Mateo Callaghan. And then the girl next to her is their daughter, Celia.”
In all the chaos, Marie had hardly noticed the girl. She looked to be around James’s age, fifteen or sixteen years old, and she resembled her mother quite a bit, with black hair and striking eyes somewhere between brown and gold.
She was the kind of girl that it was difficult not to stare at, but she didn’t seem to be used to it. When she noticed them looking, she offered them a sheepish smile and a slight wave, her cheeks pink.
Marie returned her smile but was quick to avert her gaze, turning her attention back to Ana. Ana, however, didn’t move. There was a sparkle in her eyes as they remained on Celia just a little too long.
Marie almost had to smirk. “Ana?”
“Sorry.” As if coming out of a trance, Ana shook her head. “She’s the best. Her and her mom are the nicest people at court. At least I think so.”
“I’d believe it,” Marie said. “You like Celia?”
“In what way?” Ana asked, though she laughed nervously. “Of course I like her. Like I said, she’s really nice.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Marie wanted to press, to get Ana to tell her more, but her non-answer was answer enough for the question at hand. She couldn’t say she blamed her. Anyone would have to admit that Celia Callaghan was a very beautiful girl—just like so many of the other girls Marie had seen at court, like Amy or Olenna’s granddaughter Camilla—and if she had a good heart too, she was a whole package.
But she knew that, while many of them had all the money they could ever want, the girls of the court families did not have the same luxuries as the girls and boys in the village. Even if, as they got older, feelings were reciprocated, Ana and Celia could never happen. There was nothing politically or dynastically advantageous about a princess marrying another lady.
“I heard my dad talking to Mateo a while ago anyway,” Ana said. Her voice had dropped to a whisper, though her cheeks were still pink. “They discussed marrying her to James. The Callaghans have a lot of farmland near the border with the Southern Lands. I know Dad wants to expand it to help supply the capital. But that was before you and Caleb got engaged.”
Marie stared for a moment. She hadn’t missed the hint of resentment in Ana’s voice at the mention of James’s potential engagement, and she didn’t understand what her own had to do with it.
She tried to leave it alone, but she couldn’t say nothing. “Does Caleb and I being together affect James getting married?”
As she said the words, a shiver slithered down her spine. If she were Ana, she would have contempt for her position, a position in which marriage prospects for a boy hardly halfway to twenty were the subject of a serious conversation.
Even she and Caleb were very young by every standard she’d ever known—the date for their wedding had been set for March, at which point she and Caleb would only be eighteen and nineteen respectively—but she was beginning to realize just how fortunate they really were. They were marrying for love. It was something she had always thought she would do, but she wondered if it had ever occurred to Caleb, before he had met her, that it was even a possibility. Her stomach trembled at the thought.
It wasn’t just the pomp and circumstance that made the court so incredibly foreign to her. It was everything about their way of life, all the way down to the way they loved—or didn’t.
Ana shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t hear the whole conversation.”
Absentmindedly, Marie picked up one of her forks and started to push it around over her empty plate. She was trying to look like she was doing something, trying to occupy herself so that she could overcome the urge to push Ana for more.
But she wasn’t strong enough, not for that level of self-control, not yet.
“What conversation?”
Ana bit her lip but didn’t hold back. Something told Marie that she had been looking for an excuse to talk about this. Whatever it was.
“The night after you and Caleb told Mom and Dad you were getting married,” she said. “They went into his room, which they never do, so I tried to listen but the door is thick so it was hard to hear exactly what they said.”
Noticing her mother’s eyes on them, she lowered her voice and leaned closer, until her lips nearly brushed Marie’s ear. “They tried to get him to change his mind. They told him that they would have to change agreements that had been made with people we needed as allies. Basically, they—mostly Dad—told him that he had made a mess and it was his fault if everything fell apart.”
That was harsh even for Leo, Marie thought, but she knew she didn’t really know everything about how he spoke to his children, especially his heir. Caleb was always vague. Maybe this was normal. By the matter-of-factness of Ana’s voice, she suspected it was.
“I could hear them more clearly once they started yelling at each other. They do that a lot.” Ana paused, contemplating. “Dad accused Caleb of not putting our family’s interests first. And then he told him… Well, he told Caleb that you weren’t important.”
Marie swallowed. She didn’t know when the knot had formed in her throat, but it was there now, pressing against her windpipe. “Did Caleb say anything?”
“‘She is to me.’” Ana smiled. “That’s what he said. It was actually the clearest thing I heard the whole time. Like I said, they yell all the time, but I’ve never heard Caleb challenge Dad like this. He really, really loves you.”
Marie’s heart fluttered alongside her stomach, every inch of her body warm. For a moment, it was as if none of the events of the luncheon had ever happened. Nobody had attacked her, and Leo had never given his wild-eyed speech.
When she got home, her mother would ask her how everything had gone, and she was almost certain that the only thing she would remember to tell her about was her conversation with Caleb’s little sister.
“I didn’t hear much of the rest,” Ana admitted, “but when I asked Caleb about it later—once he’d gotten over being mad at me for eavesdropping—he told me he’d rather run off to another country with you than become king and have to marry someone else.”
Across the table, somebody laughed, the sound piercing and abrupt. Marie flinched. She had nearly forgotten they were in public, and she knew her face was betraying every thought that raced through her head.
Still, she could hardly find it in herself to straighten in her chair or to blink past the tears in her eyes. She didn’t even know what they were for. Was it the joy or the love she felt hearing Caleb’s words? The sadness she felt for him, constantly at war with his own father, never good enough regardless of what he did? The fear she felt as she was reminded once again of the things that her future may hold?
She cleared her throat. “He seriously said that?”
Ana nodded.
Caleb didn’t always make sense to her. One second, he was telling her that she should leave him while she could so that she wouldn’t have to be a queen and so that her children wouldn’t have to be like him. He made it all sound inevitable; he had a duty to the crown that he couldn’t abandon. But the next second, he was telling his parents that he would give up everything for her, including the crown.
She didn’t think he knew what he really wanted any more than she did. What happened when a boy who had been told his entire life who he was and what he would be decided to start thinking for himself?
“I think he’s brave,” Ana whispered, watching as her mother pushed out her chair and got to her feet. “I’m glad that he’s the heir and not me. He thinks Jem and I don’t see it, but we do. We know the sacrifices he has to make… Maybe, just this once, he won’t have to. He deserves to have you.”
All Marie wanted was to ask Ana to tell her more, more about Caleb and more about what she had spoken to him about, but simply by rising from her seat, Ariana had already brought all the conversations around the table to a standstill.
She would not get to know more today. Maybe she wouldn’t get to know more at all. Like a punch in the gut, an open door was slammed in her face once again.
“Thank you all for coming,” Ariana said. Her voice carried just as her husband’s did, but it wasn’t nearly as inconsistent, ranging from jolly to harsh depending on what he was saying. Instead, she sounded entirely steady and untroubled. “I welcome you all to socialize in the gardens for as long as you’d like, but I have business to attend to, as do my children.”
Beside her, James shook his head, mouthing to Ana and Marie, No we don’t. Ana snickered but hid her smile under her mother’s glare.
Ariana gestured for the three of them to get up and follow her inside, and they did so without question. The courtiers nodded to them as they left, some out of respect and others very clearly out of obligation. Marie fought the urge to look back at them, even the ones who had shown her support. She had to keep her head high, just as Caleb’s mother did, focused on the road ahead of her rather than the path left behind.
Turning her back on them was almost like being cut free of chains holding her to the ground. A weight she hadn’t realized existed lifted from her shoulders.
Her first meeting with the court had not gone well, but it was over now, and she was grateful for it. What she needed now was to find Caleb. Only he could remind her why she had agreed to spend the rest of her life dealing with people like this.
TO BE CONTINUED
