The Knight's Deception

Chapter 33

"Sire, I don’t think you should go through with this.” Xan said, his fingers moving deftly over buttons and laces as he helped Liam dress. He tried not to tangle the gray tunic’s many laces as he had once before though he found he couldn’t quite concentrate on the task.

"And why not?” Liam asked in exasperation.

"You don’t love this woman.”

Liam tensed under Xan’s fingers and turned away, jerking the laces from his grasp. “Of course I do.”

"No, you don’t.” Xan stepped around Liam to look the prince in the eye, an action that would have had him flogged had Liam been anyone else. “You love--”

"Don’t you dare say her name!” Liam barked, his eyes turning into steel daggers.

Once Xan would have recoiled at such a look, but now he met it with his own angry eyes. A warm breeze blew in through the open window, but it could not ease the sudden tension that now permeated the chambers. “I’m sorry, Sire, but I cannot just forget she was ever here.”

"Why? It’s what she wanted.”

"I doubt that. Lily loved you.”

Liam flinched at the name. He had never spoken of Lily’s departure, never told Xan the final words she had left behind, but the servant knew Liam’s feelings for her had never changed. Xan tugged on the tunic’s laces again, his finger brushing Liam’s neck.

"How do you know?”

Xan glanced at the prince before turning away to retrieve the belt from the table. “It was the way she looked at you.”

"What do you mean?”

Xan kneeled before the prince to buckle the belt around Liam’s waist. When he stood again, he turned his eyes towards the ceiling. “She’d get this faraway look in her eyes sometimes like you were all she could see.” He smiled. “That night you sent me to talk to her, she told me how afraid she was of loving you. She believed she’d only get you killed.” He caught Liam’s wince from the corner of his eye.

"You think Li--you think she’s still waiting for me? After all I put her through?”

Xan looked back at Liam. “I couldn’t say, Sire.”

Liam stayed silent a moment, his eyes darkening with his thoughts. “It makes no difference.” He turned on his heel to leave his chambers. “One good thing comes from this, Xan. Lady Eliana is not some filthy sorceress. She will never betray me.”

"She will never love you either.” Xan didn’t follow his prince, flinching at the slamming of the chamber door. He ran his hands through his hair, the light from the window catching on the red and white burns covering his left arm. “Lily, you should not have left us.”

***

Lily blocked the young knight’s next attack, her feet sliding back. She spun on the ball of her foot, jerking her sword away. The knight lost his balance, and she hit the flat end of her sword across his shoulders, knocking him to his knees. “Strength is not the only thing useful in a battle.” She said. "Sometimes it is wit and speed that wins.”

The knight regained his feet, giving her a baleful glare. Despite reigning over the knights for nearly five years, there were still some, mostly the younger ones, who did not approve of a woman being a knight let alone having the power to order them about. It would have bothered Lily had she not already known she was the best knight in the kingdom.

She pointed her sword at him, gesturing for him to get back in line. “Glaring doesn’t win battles either.”

"Milady!”