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The Cintran banquet hall was as loud with song and laughter as it ever was for royal visits. Though perhaps there were some monarchs who earned a more lavish welcome. Meve had some suspicions that the kings of the North would have not been welcomed with such excess and excitement.
The Queen of Rivia and Lyria visited Cintra once per year at Calanthe’s invitation, just as she had visited as a girl.
Much had changed since the first time young Meve had arrived by humble carriage accompanied only by her elderly handmaiden. Her figure had still been boyish and her hair a tousled mess, endlessly paining her poor handmaiden by tugging her neat plaits free the moment she was out of sight.
These days, she refused to travel meekly in carriages but rode at the front of her retinue on her favourite grey stallion, wearing ceremonial armour in brilliant gold and waving to huddles of peasants stopped to watch the procession, occasionally breaking ranks to leave the march and kiss the crowns of offered babes.
She and Calanthe had changed a great deal since their girlhood days running through the castle’s hallways hand in hand and up to trouble, but that spark of mischief still gleamed in Cali’s eyes.
“Do you remember the time we stole those cavalry horses?” asked Calanthe beside her at the head table, nudging their shoulders together.
“How could I forget? My handmaiden threatened to paddle me raw,” said Meve into her goblet of wine, mindful of being overheard.
“Not even for the theft!” Calanthe laughed, far less mindful. “But for–”
“Riding astride,” Meve finished.
She remembered the day fondly despite its end. She and Calanthe had dressed as stableboys to tack their horses, wearing caps over their hair and almost giving themselves away with their breathless giggling. They had ridden from the stables without being caught, their mounts frothing at the bit for a gallop.
In late summer fields sweet with the scent of fresh-cut hay, the girls had leaned over the sweating necks of the horses to race headlong beside one another, their caps blown off by the brilliant speed, laughing.
The girls would have been in far more trouble than they were when they returned by evening, had anyone known what they got up to together when dismounting to bathe in a sunlit pool.
Though crow’s feet now wrinkled at the corners of her eyes, Cali’s smile was the same as it had been then, a secret thing for Meve alone. It seemed far too bold to look at her in ways that warmed through Meve’s body in full view of the entire banquet hall.
Not a soul seemed to notice or care.
No one had noticed back then either, or if they had, their girlhood dalliances had been dismissed as nothing but a trifling distraction, unimportant as long as they respected their betrothals to their kings.
There had certainly been moments of private disrespect leading up to their wedding days. Cali amused herself greatly with a recurring jest where she mixed up which of their future husbands was king of where and who was marrying who.
There had been frequent disrespect after their marriages as well. Her tumbles with her oldest friend continued as they always had, Reginald and Roegner none the wiser.
“I would have married you instead,” Cali had said once, her lips moving against the skin of Meve’s belly. “If I had a cock, we’d sire an heir ourselves.”
Meve had burnt pink and said, “if you had a cock, you’d have too many bastards to determine the line of succession.”
Meve shifted in her seat, wishing she had waited to recall that memory when there weren’t still hours left of feasting before she and Calanthe would be alone together.
A commotion in the crowd of revellers below served as a suitable distraction.
“Young Cirilla’s spent some time of late on Skellige I see,” said Meve.
The young princess, ten summers and every inch the duplicate of Calanthe, had seemingly been involved in a conflict with several boys twice her size. Though her guard had stopped the girl from clambering over the top of the table to scrap with them, she still brandished a fork in a raised arm like a Skelligen raider would have a spear.
Calanthe snorted in amusement.
“Poor lads. I dread the terror she’ll be to manage once she’s of age and discovers how much every young boy fawns over her,” said Calanthe. “She detests them now but…”
“Simple retribution for the stress you caused your late mother,” Meve said. Together, they watched the protesting princess escorted from the hall for bed.
“Pity she wasn’t a son,” Calanthe sighed.
“Would be no guarantee to solve your troubles. I fear my own sons won’t be fit for the crown.”
Villem had just aged thirteen but was as soft and meek as a maiden, and Anseis had inherited his father’s dull mind along with her temper.
“At least you’re free to rule as you please in their stead,” grumbled Calanthe, followed by a few choice vulgar words under her breath about Cintran lawmakers and where they could shove their decrees.
“I always wanted a daughter,” Meve confessed. During her first pregnancy, she had been convinced by every old wive’s tale she knew that the babe she carried was a girl. Perhaps that had been some premonition of Villem’s nature.
“There’s still time, isn’t there? Remarry.”
Meve laughed. “No man would agree to a marriage unless I conceded the throne.”
“Then don’t remarry. Every northern king’s sired a dozen bastards apiece. Why should a queen be any different?”
“I fear I have few prospects for such a venture,” Meve said with a sigh. As if she would ever consider planning something so improper. Though she could not deny the appeal of finding a man to bed. There were some days and especially some nights when she found herself recalling even the uninspired sameness of Reginald’s dull love-making with nostalgic yearning. “There are few men these days who I would trust to bare my ankle before, let alone to…”
Meve set down her goblet. It was becoming apparent that she’d imbibed too much already.
“Hmmmm I can think of one suitable prospect,” said Calanthe, leering. “If you don’t, I will.”
Meve followed Calanthe’s eyes to where General Odo stood at stiff attention at the end of the table, arms clasped behind his back.
Trustworthy described Reynard well. Reginald’s former adviser took very seriously his late king’s deathbed request to extend his devotion to Meve.
And Meve could not deny that he was handsome. Would be more handsome still if he were not perpetually frowning.
But no, the general’s interactions with her had only ever been courteous and withdrawn. Given Meve had never heard a single bit of gossip in regards to Reynard and courtship, she was beginning to wonder if he did not prefer the company of women at all.
“He’s been looking your way all evening,” Calanthe murmured suggestively.
“Hush,” said Meve.
General Odo did not look her way and largely looked like he’d rather be in bed than amongst the drunken crowd. She knew he would not retire until she did, distrustful of the sobriety of Calanthe’s guards.
The hour was late. Soon, the minstrels would pluck their last notes and the masses would begin to stumble off.
Though ordinarily Calanthe prided herself in outlasting most of her cavorting subjects and remaining in the hall well into the night, that evening, she leaned close to Meve and whispered in her ear.
“You have no need of a man tonight,” she said, her voice barely a breath.
Meve and Calanthe retired together arm in arm, giggling like girls once they’d reached the secluded passageway that led to the royal chambers.
The mattress was as soft as air, and Calanthe’s touch was firm and focused.
In another life, perhaps the marriage bed she had shared with her late husband would have been happier, had Meve never known from Cali the heights of pleasure a woman could reach.
Bare and sated, they caught their breath against sweat-warm skin and kissed long and sweet.
“Come with me to the islands this summer,” Calanthe said against her lips. “Eist and I have an arrangement, you know. We may share him, if you’d like.”
Meve went pink at the thought. It would be nice to allow herself a moment of rest. Perhaps Cirilla and her sons would get along.
“Summer,” she agreed.
“We’ll be horse thieves for old time’s sake. Gallop across the sand,” said Calanthe. Her eyes closed as she spoke, trailing fingers along Meve’s flank. “We’ll strip down and leap into the water. Like we did then. I’ll kiss you like the first time.”
Calanthe kissed her in a swell of breath, as though to demonstrate.
Before the summer, Cintra burned.