The Merchant's Daughter (The Queen's Chair Book 8) by Chloe Garner

Author:Chloe Garner [Garner, Chloe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A Horse Called Alpha
Published: 2024-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

She got up with Babe and ate breakfast with him.

She finished her letter to Mitty and put it out for a courier, and she sent a message to Mealy to ask for help qualifying the magic ingredients. She checked with Teddy as she took out Schotzli, and she was most of the way down the drive when she found Stephanie on her way up, clearly in a great emotional distress.

“What’s happened?” Stasia asked, dismounting quickly as Stephanie dissolved in to tears, putting her face down into her hands.

“I saw Matthias,” she said. “And he… released me. What am I going to do? What’s going to happen to him?”

“Are you okay?” Stasia asked, dropping Schotzli’s reins on the ground and going over to hug Stephanie. “What happened? Tell me.”

Stephanie nodded, looking around and then motioning to a stone bench some distance from the drive.

“May we sit?” she asked.

“Of course,” Stasia said, pulling Schotzli off the drive and onto the lawn, then walking over with a sniffing Stephanie to sit on the bench.

“My father,” Stephanie said finally as they’d sat for a moment. She sobbed once, then tried again. “My father said that I would be Kingswife, that Matthias couldn’t possibly choose someone else, after this, because everyone else would be…” She looked at Stasia with red eyes. “They’re going to betray him, he said. They would lie to become his wife because of the power it would gain their families and…” She sobbed. “And that power would come to our family, instead.”

“Is that what you wanted?” Stasia asked, and Stephanie put her face down into her hands, weeping.

“No,” she said through her palms. “No, I just want things to be as they were. He was… perfect. Well-employed and kind and… without expectations. It was to be perfect.”

Stasia sighed and nodded.

“Unfortunately, he is not going to renounce the crown. He feels… this is a duty that I cannot imagine him turning away from,” she said, and Stephanie nodded, lifting her face.

“And he ought to,” she said earnestly. “It is right that he should be King. But I do not want to be Kingswife. I do not. And I was so afraid, going to see him that…”

Her throat closed, and Stasia nodded.

“That he would propose,” she said, and Stephanie nodded quickly.

“My father was certain of it,” she said, her voice unnaturally high for a moment and then coming back down again. “They’re waiting for me at home, now.”

“And you came here, instead,” Stasia said. Stephanie nodded.

“I was… quite upset, when I spoke with him, and… He suggested that this would be a safe place to come to compose myself before I went home.”

“Of course,” Stasia said. “Completely right. I’m glad that you caught me before I went out.” She rubbed Stephanie’s back. “Which piece is it that’s upsetting you?”

“The loss of that which might have been,” Stephanie said, sitting back against the bench and looking up at the trees. “It’s quite pretty, here. Beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Stasia said. “Then you aren’t angry or upset

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