Episode 16: Recovery (Bentley)

Bentley wiped the sweat away from his eyes with the back of his hand before he gripped the crossbeam. A bearded man he’d known all his life, Concobhar MacLean, knelt at the other end of the beam.

“Ready?” the man bellowed.

“Ready!” Bentley ground his teeth, ready to lift, when his stomach twisted into a knot. “Wait!” he called.

He looked around the destroyed upper neck of Gean Hwels village. Something wrong, something bad…

The wind tickled his neck.

There, the roof. Not fifty feet away, a group of men worked to clear goods from a partially-collapsed home.

He stood and yelled, “Be careful! I think that roof’s going to slide in a minute!”

They knew his voice and his talent. Not one of them hesitated to move away.

Silence, except for the wind-whipped grass.

The groan of nails pulling against the wood they bound.

The roof slid in one piece, crushing the space below it, where the men had been not a minute before.

Bentley focused back on the beam.

He might have saved those men, but he’d failed where it mattered most. He squatted again, his grip tight on the beam. “Ready?” he asked Concobhar.

The man gripped his end. Together, they lifted the massive weight off the debris below and walked over the uneven, cluttered ground toward a clear spot. If cared for, the beam could be reused in the rebuilt grange.

Someone beside him spoke his name, with a voice like a cat’s tongue on his skin. “Bentley.”

Shea. His wife, his queen, the most important person in his universe. Skin the color of a cacao bean and soft as the butter within, eyes the color of the sea sky before a summer storm.

He looked at her, sure his feet would find purchase with each step.

“You need to take a minute,” she urged. “The mess is staying right here.”

He and Concobhar set the beam down in an open patch of grass. He thanked the man before he turned his attention to Shea. He ran his hand over her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” she assured him. “Are you?” She ran her hand down the side of his face and kissed him.

“No.” He surveyed the destruction again.

His mother would have known the tornado approached. She would have known which building was most dangerous.

He ran his hand through his hair. “It’s a mess,” he told her.

“And?” she wrapped her arms around him and pulled their bodies snug together. She was his home. “Take a break,” she urged again.

“But they need to see we can do this,” he protested, voice soft.

“They have. They know you can. If you want to work, we can have a meeting with Jiacomo or Maeve or Antaine.”

So much else to do, besides restoring this village.

It was summer, a summer of storms and ugly weather.

“You think we should go home?” he asked. He didn’t want to go. The stop here had half been an excuse to stay away as long as possible.

The idea of walking into the palace as king, knowing his mother’s heels would never click across the tile entry again, stilled his enthusiasm for the job ahead of him. Here in the field it was easy to think she was just back at the palace. He could imagine her, a mug of tea in one hand and a stack of financial papers in the other, while the sun cast a yellowed light through her sitting room window.

“I think we need to go take care of some things. Bragi’s here. We’re not neglecting anything by going.”

Bragi, her half-brother, enjoyed restoration projects so much that he’d moved to Nivern full-time to help with the work. They had a royal representative in the field, with or without them there.

He wiped his forehead with the back of his left hand. With his right hand, he held hers. “Okay,” he agreed.

She kissed him and in the moment of the kiss transported them to his bedroom at the palace.

He loved this room. Dark paneled wood, small enough to be almost a closet. A narrow bed, built into a wall. Long ago, during his first childhood, he’d asked his mother to make him a bedroom that felt like it was on a ship, and this was what she’d made for him.

He wouldn’t be able to sleep here anymore, married. They’d need to choose one of the other rooms, a big one with enough furniture to make it their personal escape from the call of the palace.

“Do you want to take some time, or do you want to have the meetings now?”

She ran her hand over the brown wool blanket that covered his bed.

He watched her fingertips trail over the surface and studied her eyes, her intent.

They’d been married three days, a rushed thing so Shea could take the ascension trial with him. Nothing public or formal, no time off between then and now to celebrate the event.

A thrill galloped down his spine.

“We should take some time. They’re around all day and we need to eat. Or we could meet with one of them and eat,” he realized he rambled from nerves. Married was different from dating. “Or just meet with one of them. I’m not that hungry.”

She smiled so big it crinkled her eyes. “Let’s stare at food in our room.”

They left his room, into the red-carpeted hallway. Everything felt new, knowing his mom wasn’t here. The walls and halls she’d decorated were an impermanent legacy.

He was completely alone, except for Shea. The last of his line. If anything happened to him…there wasn’t even a provision for how to select a new king or queen. He had no idea what would happen to Nivern.

They needed heirs. He glanced at Shea and wondered when she would want kids. He didn’t want to push it, but he knew the kingdom desperately needed an heir.

In the family kitchen, which held snacks and simple foods that even Bentley could cook well, they selected a few snacks and drinks.

So far, no one had seen them. He wondered how long they had.

Back up the stairs. They passed his room this time and went to the yellow flowered one Shea and his mom had decorated together. Since Shea’s sixteenth birthday, they’d slept here whenever she was in Nivern.

He watched her set the food on the low table in front of her settee, confident and graceful.

He loved her mind. She’d redesigned a dozen villages in the time he’d known her. Each one made better use of space and resources than the last.

He couldn’t begin to wonder what she would accomplish as a queen, as a mother…

She had organized the food containers by size, probably without even realizing.

A week ago, he would have walked up behind her, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her neck.

Now he stood and tried to remember how to be Bentley. Bentley the prince didn’t know how to be Bentley the king, the orphan, the husband.

“How are you doing this?” he asked her.

“When I’m sad, you’re strong for me.” She walked around behind him and massaged the knots in his shoulders. “Just relax.”

If he were relaxed, he would be kissing her by now.

He turned around and did so, relishing her little gasp as he caught her by surprise. She returned the kiss with one of her own, and her enthusiasm met his, kiss for kiss and touch-for-touch, as they moved to the bed. He let himself fall into the space that only Shea occupied in his mind.

When he resurfaced, he lay beside her and reclaimed his breaths one at a time. He looked into her eyes. “You are…” his mind couldn’t find a word that encompassed her.

“Always here for you,” she promised. She pressed herself into the nest of his arms.

Comfort was a funny thing, the way just a touch could pass such strength.

He laughed, because it was his job to protect her. He might have been prince of this kingdom, but… “You’re the queen,” he reminded her.

At their wedding, according to a religion Bentley half-believed at best, Bentley had married Shea and Shea had married the god Maelchor, keeper of the realm, the long-dead king who had once defied death. She said the vows to Bentley, but religion stated that Bentley was only a stand-in for Maelchor.

By definition, in that moment she had become a ruler and he had become her servant.

“Outside that door,” he mused, “the world wants an explosion of things from us. What’s our to-do list for ourselves?” He thought that was important, that they establish their own priorities before their lives were consumed by the needs of the kingdom.

She cupped his shoulder in her hand. “Make sure we take time to heal and adjust. Eat. Sleep. What’s on your list?”

Of course her priorities were all about him. If it was her kingdom, her parents she’d lost, he knew he’d do the same for her.

“A real wedding,” he began. Her family would expect it, the kingdom needed it, he wanted it. To see her in a beautiful dress, radiant and surrounded by the people who loved her most…

Yes, they needed that.

“To ride every day,” he continued. “Time for each other every day.”

“The kingdom needs a wedding too,” she agreed. She kissed him. “We’re going to do this and be fine. In a thousand years, they’ll remember you took care of them and yourself.”

“In a thousand years,” he teased back, his thumb on her chin, “they’ll remember that you held me up.” He ran his fingertips down the side of her face, mirroring the movement she’d done in the village. He met her eyes. “Heirs,” he began. “If anything happens to us, we’re the last.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Oh…kay. We should have heirs. A few.”

“Not like your mom,” he joked. He tried to identify the wariness that had crept up on him, because if he could name it he could address it and either heed the warning or dismiss it.

It wasn’t his magic.

“I said a few, not a herd,” she teased him back.

“Entire country,” he corrected. He decided to change the subject to see if the feeling went away. If it did, he’d know it was about heirs. “I also have a really important thing I need to work on,” he told her.

“Taking days off?”

He changed his voice to sound like a Babylonian surfer in sunglasses and sandals. He flipped his bangs off his face. “Prince Hair doesn’t need days off, baby.”

She burst into a happy laughter that spread joy into every part of him.

Their ascension trial was between them; no one knew what had gone on besides them and the selkies who ran the trial. Some trials were physical and real, but theirs had been a joint hallucination.

In it, Shea had played a version of herself who didn’t want to marry a prince, but her dad expected her to. Bentley had been himself, except instead of meeting Shea when she was three and knowing she was the right one, he didn’t have his luck magic and his mom wanted to arrange a marriage to Shea.

He’d been so against marrying her in his trial that he’d made up a fake persona, Prince Hair, who was all Babylonian surfer and who had no brain matter whatsoever.

In the hallucination, the trial had lasted a week. In reality, they had hallucinated for just under two days. In that time, as complete strangers, they’d learned to love each other and work together all over again.

But Prince Hair was too perfect a joke to ever let go of. He wanted to be Prince Hair whenever he could, for the rest of his life. Just when they were alone.

“Improving on Prince Hair. We can’t let him be forgotten,” he said.

He felt the heat of her fire magic flush her body. “I love Prince Hair,” she agreed.

“I bet we had the most amusing trial in selkie history.” He meant it, too. He’d heard her mom and stepdad’s trial had been entertaining in its own way but he suspected that Prince Hair would go down in selkie history as the most pathetic attempt at failing a trial ever.

“I hope we did.” Her lips thinned a little. “So you want heirs. Now.”

Just like that, the wariness returned. It was about heirs.

He tried to isolate it. Having an heir wasn’t bad, even now. That much was clear.

Maybe something was going to happen to the heir. No, that wasn’t it.

Maybe they wouldn’t be able to have a ton of kids. No. He cycled through numbers until he reached the one that felt right. Early on, within the first few decades of their reign, they would have fourteen kids.

So what was it?

He tried to imagine deciding now, to have an heir.

Ahhh. That was the place that felt so wrong.

Either they couldn’t now, or…

“I might have already messed that up,” he confessed. “It’s been on my mind.”

He shouldn’t have worried about her reaction. Her eyes widened and then she rested her hand on his and laughed. “We could always make sure you messed it up.”

He kissed her neck and collarbone, light kisses in a trail over the crest of her bone. “What did you have in mind?”

“Avoiding life for a few more minutes,” she teased. She mirrored his kisses with kisses of her own. Each little imprint on his skin left him wanting more.

He focused, streaming kisses down her abdomen. “Good luck,” he teased.

“You too,” she teased back.

He couldn’t think of a personality trait he didn’t love about her, from the shy way she peeked through her hair at her parents when she thought she was in trouble, to the determined look she got when a villager was trapped under a pile of rubble. From her sense of humor to her flirts to her creativity…everything.

He lay back on the bed. “We should make a schedule so we don’t over-work,” he suggested. He meant it more for himself, because Shea’s parents had taught her better time-management skills than Bentley had developed over the centuries.

She seemed to know that he meant he needed help with that. “I think you’re lucky enough to have a wife that knows when you’ve overworked.”

“Don’t you overwork either,” he worried. He knew how the decades could stack up. “Your parents keep things simple and I think we should too.”

He couldn’t let himself think yet about his mom’s schedule or the way she paced things.

Someone knocked on the door before Shea could respond. Bentley met her eyes. This was it. Whoever was there likely knew his mom was dead, knew they were home from their trial.

The ruling started now.

“Just a minute!” Bentley called. He handed Shea her shirt. “Good thing that didn’t happen five minutes ago.”

“Will you ever tire of luck jokes?” Shea asked.

He waggled his eyebrows at her, Prince Hair-style. “Will you?” He stood and knotted the drawstring on his pants.

Shea slid her shirt over her head. “So do you think it worked?” she asked. “Or will?”

He kissed her. “It should.” It had. “With any luck, you’ll have easy pregnancies.”

She shook her head. “That’s a lot of luck.” She pulled the door open and they peered into the hallway beyond. It was Jiacomo, the stable master and head of horse breeding. He and Bentley’s mom had been in a relationship prior to her death.

“Shea,” he said as greeting. He stepped into the room just enough to hug Shea and then pull Bentley into the hug with them. His beard scratched Bentley’s neck, and he smelled of stable and horses and home.

He stepped back into the hall, all business. “I couldn’t help but notice you were back. I have a proposed racing schedule for the next three months.” He passed Shea a piece of paper with a list of locations and dates. “Also, Gemstone Dreams fell and had to be retired. And Maeve wanted to meet with you about your arrangements and schedule.”

Bentley knew that if Jiacomo had needed to kill Gemstone Dreams, he would have said so. He must intend to breed him.

Maeve, the head of housekeeping, had managed his mother’s schedule. She’d want to know all of Bentley’s and Shea’s plans. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, or if Shea would want to be tied to a written routine either.

He grinned at Jiacomo. “You assume we passed?” he teased.

“It seemed probable.” Jiacomo had an overgrown mouth that stretched across most of his lower face, and when he smiled it consumed his appearance.

“I also need to discuss Whisper,” Shea told him. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and passed the timetable of races to Bentley to read through.

Jiacomo’s smile turned serious. “How is she?”

“Good,” Shea said. Bentley realized she was mimicking her mom’s warm let-me-help-you voice. He resisted the urge to tease her about it; if it worked for Aadya, it would probably work for Shea too. “I think we should breed her this summer or fall. Gala’s not ready.”

Jiacomo pulled a small notebook out of his back pocket and wrote something down. He returned it to his pocket. “We can do that.”

“Thank you, Jiacomo.” Shea reached out and hugged him again. “I’m sorry.”

Most of the kingdom didn’t know about Queen Cheyenna’s relationship with Jiacomo, but here in the palace it was well-known.

Jiacomo’s voice softened and he leaned against the door frame. He looked at Bentley. “We all are.”

Bentley gave him a slight nod. He wasn’t there yet with his grief. Talking to Jiacomo wouldn’t be like talking to Shea, and he’d barely managed that yet.

He focused on the list, ticking them off in his head. He held it toward Jiacomo. “Not the two in Alder,” he instructed. “They don’t feel right.”

Shea reached for the list. Her arm rested against Bentley’s. His wife, his queen, his most precious Shea. She pointed to the list. “Or this one,” she said. “We can attend, but we shouldn’t try to win.”

She’d missed two of them, but he knew she’d get better. He’d had hundreds of years doing this. He knew the subtle changes in luck that told him how to handle each race, how much to bet, who to race, who to jockey, whether to win or lose…

He pointed to two others – one in Ispitar and one in Babylon – “These three, we should lose. We’ll bet high on this one though,” he pointed to the race she’d noticed that they should lose. She would learn the delicate ebb and flow of the luck magic soon, and then she’d probably be more skilled than he was. She was more perceptive about people and patterns already.

Shea rested her hand on the small of Bentley’s back. “Anything else?” she asked Jiacomo.

“Will you be keeping the same staff?” he asked. He ran his hand over his beard. Bentley suspected he asked that question as a representative of all the staff. There must have been some speculation while he and Shea were at their trial.

“Yes,” he assured Jiacomo. “We may make some changes, but not you or Maeve or Antaine.”

“I love the staff,” Shea added. “We’ll be sad to see anyone go, even if it’s the right choice.”

Jiacomo stepped through the doorway again and hugged them both. “Congratulations,” he said, like an afterthought. He turned and walked down the hall, then doubled back toward them. “Most of the kingdom doesn’t know yet.”

“We’ll make a public announcement tomorrow and hold the funeral on Maelvish of next week.” The announcements would exhaust them both. They’d need to speak to the staff of the palace and the downs, and then travel to each of the nineteen towns in Nivern, even Allt Beag up in the wildlands. After making the announcement twenty times, the funeral next Maelvish would probably be anticlimactic.

Jiacomo slapped his hat back on his head. “I’ll be at the downs,” he told them.

Bentley probably told him to have a nice day, but he wasn’t sure if he had or not. His ears rang. He’d just announced his own mother’s funeral date.

At some point, he was going to have to face this grief.

Shea kissed him. “More meetings?” she asked.

Bentley felt his eyes follow Jiacomo as he made his way down the hall.

“What do you think went wrong?” he asked Shea.

Something big had happened, something that had made his mom certain that death was the only option for herself, preferable to anything Bentley or Shea or Jiacomo could offer her.

Shea exhaled and squeezed Bentley against her into a side hug. “I don’t know. But it must have felt final to her.”

It would be nice if Jiacomo knew what had gone wrong, but Bentley knew how the luck worked. His mom might have just gotten a feeling about something and decided to act on it. “He might not even know,” he mused. He turned to face Shea. “Who do you want to tackle first? Antaine or Maeve?”

“Maeve,” she said. “Antaine may take two minutes, so we should get the short meeting over with first.”

Bentley laughed. He hoped Maeve would be as short as Shea estimated. He had no interest in housekeeping unless cockroaches threatened to eat him in his sleep. And security…aside from helping allies in times of war, Nivern barely had a use for an army. They had Lagmaan to the east of them, so maintaining the army was valuable in keeping long-term sovereignty but useless besides. There was no immediate threat to the kingdom, luckily. No one wanted earthquakes and bad weather and sheep.

The trifecta.

Thinking of things that came in threes, Bentley recalled the crown he’d carved for Shea. It appeared to be three woven boards, but really it was carved from one bowed board which he’d whittled in a pattern that made it appear braided, and then stained three different colors.

He reached for her hand and led her to his bedroom. He opened the top drawer of his dresser and withdrew the crown. “I made you this, for someday…” he held it out for her to see.

“I love it.” She ran one finger over the palest strand of wood.

Bentley moved it away from her fingertip and set it on her head. As he’d hoped, the stained wood offset her hair and made it seem to shine more than it already did.

“You’ll be a magnificent queen,” he told her, with a kiss.

He took her hand, soft and small inside his, and together they descended the stairs into the public part of the palace.

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