The revelry stretched on past midnight, and as usual the later the hour the more alive Lyara felt. She didn’t partake of the beer—what fun was there in dulling your senses?—but Hilderic rarely opened his halls to the public, so this was an occasion ripe with excuses for overindulgence.
Most of the guests were Dradge’s fellow soldiers and their families, so Hilderic himself had graced them with his presence for all of two minutes before the main course. Although, with how the conversation turned after dessert, that might have been for the best.
“And he would’ve had me abandon those villages.” Dradge scowled as he fixed his gaze on the empty corner of the room, far over the rows of tables and benches filled with drunken soldiers. “Too far away he said, when I reached them in a quarter dayride’s march. And since I come back alive he’s forced to promote me, pretending it was his idea all along.”
He’d kept the proper smile plastered on his face for most of the night, but he was five beers into the evening and that finally loosened his tongue. Lyara doubted anyone else would be so cross on the night they’d made general, but his earnest passion was too real to hide for long, even if that were prudent.
She grasped her mug and nudged it closer to his—close enough that their hands almost touched, which was more than proper society would tolerate from the unwed. “You know, that kind of talk is exactly what’s driven all your friends away.”
Dradge glanced up, as though just noticing this end of the table was empty except for the two of them. He sighed, then offered her a smile. “Didn’t chase you off yet, though.”
“No, I’m quite used to reflections on the macabre. Stuffy folk prefer it, if a conversation inflicts theoretical pain it makes us feel as though we’ve done something more than sit around sipping wine.”
His smile widened, but slowly faded again as he stared off towards the closed doors through which Hilderic had long ago departed. “What’s the point of making general if I still have to answer to that man? You watch, he’ll figure a way to station me in Edras. Permanently. He’ll pretend like it’s to keep folks here under the protection of the ‘army’s best’, but really it’ll be to keep an eye on me.”
She tried to grin at him. “Would that really be so bad? Staying here, I mean?”
Dradge held her gaze for a long moment. She could see it on his face, the honest answer was a quick yes—that spark in his eyes was the fear of a wolf about to be caged—but he knew how that would hurt her. “What’s the farthest you’ve been from the city?”
She glanced down, running her thumb along the texture of her mug. “Three steps beyond the outer gates. I was thirteen and set on reaching the river, but my father caught me and dragged me back.”
“Do you still wish you’d made it farther?”
Lyara drew in a deep breath. “Yes,” she said quietly.
“So what keeps you here, then?”
She hesitated. What was keeping her here? She poked fun at a system she didn’t respect, and yet she willingly stayed and lived in it. Her father wouldn’t stop her any longer—he’d advise caution as always, but she kept herself locked behind the gates now.
There was a special shame in that. She painted herself as a rebel, but in true Edras style, she talked about doing something far more than she really did it.
“Take me with you,” she asked finally.
He looked at her in surprise.
“Wherever you go next, I want to come. I’ll sign up as a cartographer if that’s what it takes.”
Dradge studied her, thoughtful mostly, then glanced away. He shifted almost uncomfortably in his seat to dig a crumpled parchment out of his pocket. He held it in his hands, still folded. It was a page torn from a strategist’s ledger, but was now worn at the edges and stained in places with dirty fingerprints and spots of dried blood.
“I…” He swallowed, and didn’t meet her gaze as he unfolded the paper—holding it close so only he could read it. “I’ve been working on this since…” He growled under his breath and closed his fist around the parchment. “Gods, I should have at least copied it onto something nice. Forget I said anything—”
“No,” Lyara placed her hand on his, to keep him from shoving the note back in his pocket. “Let me see it.”
He breathed a sigh, then slowly opened his hand so she could pick up the paper and smooth it out on the table. It’d certainly lived in his pocket for months, parts were scribbled out to make space for new lines, and half the text was so shaky she had to guess he’d written it while riding horseback. But she could read it.
It was a poem. An original piece, styled after Budding Daisy, the most renowned work from Ivard of Gebrama’s Summerwind. The rhyming scheme was a bit juvenile, the similes cliché, and it spoke of a woman whose beauty exceeded that of every gorgeous thing in nature—Gods, this was about her.
Lyara put her hand to her mouth and read the poem again. This time the technical mistakes didn’t stand out. What were such rules, anyway, except another way for the educated to lord their tutoring over others? This was, without question, the most genuine, most beautiful expression of love she’d ever read, and she couldn’t keep the tears from welling up in her eyes.
Dradge chuckled, brows creased in concern. “That bad, is it?”
She pressed the worn paper to her chest. He could have at least given this to her in private, or on the walk home, where she could’ve had the decency to kiss him. “No, I love it. Thank you.”
He watched her, as though to be certain she wasn’t placating him, then a smile crept across his face as red flushed all the way to the tips of his ears. “I meant to give it to you when, well…”
“When what?”
“When I asked you to marry me.”
She smirked. “So, are you asking?”
Dradge held her gaze, then rose to his feet. He snapped his heels together as though to stand at attention, but instead took her right hand in his. “Lyara, daughter of Orvist, I stand ready to devote my heart to yours. Will you grant me your hand?”
She grinned, still clutching that poem to her chest. “I will.”
The nearby table cheered. Lyara flinched in surprise—she’d forgotten they weren’t the only two here—but the news spread quickly and Dradge’s fellow soldiers crowded around, offering congratulations and fresh mugs of beer for both of them. She laughed, cheeks burning, but somehow their drunken excitement couldn’t match what she felt.
Dradge nodded to his friends, but kept his smile fixed on hers, lifting her hand to press his lips against the back of her glove. Although, after a moment, guilt tinged his excitement. “How quickly do you think we can put together the ceremony? We’re supposed to head out in a week.”