Finding Her Magical King novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Back Step

On the motel's back step the king shows her the matching mark and asks her to ride to Highcastle with him; she says yes to finish her plan there, and Maeve gives her a sealed letter from her mother.

Lord Thrale did not say anything for what felt like a long time.

Then he smiled, and it was the same kind smile he had given me at the desk.

"Your Majesty," he said, "I'll see that nobody disturbs you tonight."

He closed the door softly, and I heard his shoes go away down the hall.

Anselm Beauclerk was still holding my sleeve.

He let go of it, and the silver on both our wrists dimmed to a faint glow.

"Sorry," he said. "I don't usually grab the staff."

"I don't usually get grabbed by kings," I said.

"Fair."

He looked at the frost covering his window, then at the towels still shaking in my arms.

"Do you want to sit down? I think I need to."

There was no chair in Room 12 that was fit to sit on, so we went out the back door and sat on the step by the ice machine.

The step was cold concrete, and the motel sign buzzed over our heads.

Ivor saw us go.

He stood in the lot with his bag of fries and carefully looked at the sky.

"I've never seen it do that," Anselm said, turning his wrist in the light. "Mine's been there since I was born. It never did anything."

"Mine too," I said.

"What did they tell you it was?"

"A birthmark." That much was true. "My mother said it was an old story."

"My father said it was a story to scare heirs into marrying well."

He said the word father flatly.

My own hands had gone tight in my lap.

I made them open.

"So what is it?" I said. "In the old story."

"The mate-mark. The crown law says a king's mate has to be named at his coronation." He gave me a sideways look. "It's a very old law. Nobody has used it in two hundred years."

"And you believe it?"

"I believe my wrist is glowing."

I laughed before I could stop myself.

It was a small, rusty sound, and he turned his head to look at me properly.

"You don't like me," he said.

"I don't know you."

"That isn't the same answer."

"It's the one you're getting, Your Majesty."

"Anselm," he said. "On a step by an ice machine, I think it's allowed."

Every muscle in my back went tight, because of what the name belonged to.

I said it anyway.

"Anselm."

The silver flared once under my sleeve and settled.

He felt it too, I could tell, because he looked at my wrist and then politely at the ice machine.

"I have to go to Highcastle in the morning," he said. "I'd like you to come."

"I have a shift."

"I'll speak to your employer," he said.

"She'll want to speak to you first."

"I'm sure she will." His mouth moved, nearly a smile. "I'm not asking you to marry me. I'm asking you to ride in a car for thirty miles and tell me what this is, because nobody else in my life can."

He was telling me the truth.

I knew it, because he said it plainly, with nobody else to hear it but me.

I thought of the knot in my apron pocket, and of Wednesday noon, and the crown.

I thought of a palace full of Beauclerks, all within reach of one girl who could knot thread.

Here was the way in, and it had been handed to me by the one man I meant to ruin.

"One condition," I said. "My cat comes."

"You have a cat?"

"Soot. He bites."

"I'll tell Ivor to bring a first-aid kit."

"He's a very large man," I said. "He'll need two."

Anselm laughed out loud, a real laugh that took him by surprise, and the sign above us buzzed.

I stood up before I liked him any more.

"Goodnight," I said.

"Goodnight, Sorrel Briggs."

I did not look back, because I could feel him watching me go.

Maeve was waiting in my room with her arms crossed and my cat on her lap.

Her eyes were red.

"I stood at that door for ten minutes," she said. "I heard every word."

"Then you know I'm going."

"I know you're going to walk back into the house they hanged your mother in."

"That's the point."

"No." She stood up and put Soot down on the bed, very gently. "It's the opposite of the point. I carried you out of that yard in a linen van so you'd never go back."

"Eight years, Maeve. I'm not twelve."

"You're eighteen. That's why I'm giving you this."

She took an envelope out of her cardigan.

It was thick and old, and the paper had gone soft at the corners from being carried.

"Your mother gave it to me the night before they hanged her," she said. "She told me to hand it over the day you were grown, if you were still set on the Beauclerks. You turned eighteen six weeks ago, and I haven't had the nerve."

"Six weeks," I said. "You've sat on it since my birthday."

"I know what day it was."

I took it from her.

On the front, in my mother's long slanting writing, was written: For my Sorrel, later.

On the back, pressed into dark red wax, was a ring of tiny thorns.

It was the same mark that was burning on my wrist.

Behind Maeve, the window had frozen over from corner to corner again.

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