Chapter 47. Frost and Blue - Part 1
Somewhere in the royal palace, an open plan room, had been reconfigured for something smaller, more intimate. A low table of lacquered blackwood stood between two chairs angled just enough to suggest conversation without forcing it. Queen Charula sat apart, not at the table but on a high-backed chair along the wall — an observer, not a participant. Solomn was stationed with quiet stillness in the far corner, his amber eyes half-lidded but missing nothing.
A Peacock harpy servant, a soft-spoken woman named Anesh, lingered by the door. She had been instructed to keep her gaze politely lowered, but to miss nothing either.
Chaitav arrived as if summoned to a trial rather than an introduction. His step was slow, deliberate, and his eyes — cold and sharp as cut glass — swept the room, then fixed on his mother. He inclined his head, the motion stiff. "You called for me."
Charula's smile was faint. "I arranged for you to meet someone. Sit."
It was then that Clarisse stepped through the side arch.
Gone was the cream gown of her arrival. She wore a deep rose-red silk threaded with subtle gold embroidery, the neckline modest but the cut shaping her figure with quiet elegance. Her pale hair had been woven with gold thread into a soft braid over one shoulder, her skin touched with the ruddy warmth of court cosmetics. The frost-pale wings were half-furled — not hidden, but not flared either — and their edges caught the light, faintly tinged in blush.
Chaitav's eyes narrowed. His first instinct was suspicion. This was the cheese, he thought grimly. And he was the mouse.
Clarisse dipped into a graceful bow. "Your Highness."
He answered with the smallest tilt of his head. "Clarisse… of the Peacock Court?"
"Of no court, really," she replied, voice soft but carrying. "Until now."
Her eyes — that uncanny pink, like diluted wine — lingered on him just a fraction longer than politeness required. Coy, but not careless. Chaitav felt the baiting from both sides now: his mother's orchestration, and the girl's own subtle testing.
"You have been in my mother's court for…" he glanced to Charula, "…two days?"
"Two and a half...weeks," Clarisse said. "Her Majesty has been… very generous with her time."
That drew the Queen's faintest smile. "And very curious," she added. "You see why I thought you should meet."
Primnce Chaitav sat, one leg crossed over the other, posture languid in the way of predators who want to look bored. "...and why is that, Mother?" He didn't hide his exasperation in his tone or expression.
At that, Queen Charula's eyes glinted. "Because you are a problem to be solved, and she may be part of the solution that we can find."
Once again, as studied, Clarisse's brow lifted just enough to suggest she'd caught the challenge in those words. "A problem?" she commented politely, turning to Prince Chaitav with a tilt of her head. "I'd have thought a prince has fewer of those than most."
"Not if the prince has a mother who enjoys… puzzles," Chaitav grumbled but remained most of his composure, his azure gaze briefly shifting to Charula and then back to the newcomer amongst them. He was certain his mother was training this girl... if one could call it that.
There was a quiet pause — the space where courtiers might expect an awkward silence to grow — but Clarisse filled it with the softest laugh, the tinkle of a charmingly small bell, one that didn't quite give away whether she found it amusing or ridiculous. "Then perhaps you're lucky," she giggled before countering with a sharp whit that the Prince had never expected of her, "that I've always been good at solving them."
At this, Solomn's head tilted, his unreadable eyes taking in every flicker of expression between them. The servant at the door, Anesh, by the door, glanced once — quick as a blink — toward the Queen, as though to check if the exchange was going as expected.
The prince studied Clarisse openly now, not with the instant hunger he had turned on other women, but with a wary kind of intrigue. The white hair, the pink eyes, the paleness warmed by gold and red… she did not look like the curse he had heard whispered. She looked like something rare, yes, but also deliberate — the work of a hand arranging pieces on a board.
And he was very aware of who that hand belonged to.
Queen Charula leaned back in her chair, concealing her satisfaction. In the span of a few breaths, she had measured both of them — his guarded suspicion, her restrained poise — and found that the chemistry was not cold. Not warm either. But something that might, if stoked correctly, smolder.
"That is enough for me today," she almost sounded board, but the Prince was glad at last that she was finally taking her leave to do....whatever else it was that she did was. "Clarisse, you will dine with the court this evening. Chaitav, you will escort her."
His eyes flicked to hers, sharp with unspoken protest, but he inclined his head instead. The trap was set. And he knew it.
Honored and humbled by all of this, Clarisse simply bowed again. "As you wish, your Majesty."
As they left the chamber — the servant Anesh trailing them, Solomn following like a shadow — Chaitav could still feel his mother's eyes on his back.
If she thought she could use this girl to corner him, she might be right. But if she thought he'd be an easy catch… she had forgotten that a mouse, cornered, still has teeth.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The dining hall had been set for two — an unusual arrangement in a palace where even private suppers usually had a dozen attendants. The long table was reduced to a shorter spread draped in black silk, the candlelight spilling gold along polished silverware.
Clarisse arrived first, her dusty rose gown hugging her form in a way that was both elegant and deliberately provocative. The Queen's choice, of course. She had even insisted on a string of pale pink pearls at her throat, the lower cut of the bodice drawing the eye without vulgarity. The muted warmth of the fabric made her skin seem softer, her hair whiter, and her strange pink eyes almost luminous in the low light.
She was still smoothing her skirts when the doors opened.
Chaitav entered in gold and turquoise, the colors brilliant against the deep blue of his feathers. For a moment, his usual guarded look faltered. His eyes swept over her, and though he schooled his face quickly, the glint that remained there was unguarded admiration.
"You look…" he paused, lips quirking in something almost like a smile, "…expensive."
Clarisse's own smile was measured. "Then I'm dressed as my Queen wished me to be."
They sat across from one another, though close enough that the flicker of the candles between them caught in their eyes. Without the watchful presence of his mother or Solomn, the air was looser. The servant who had poured the first wine left at a nod from Chaitav, leaving them alone.
"You know," he began, swirling the deep red raven bloodwine in his glass, these days it was rather difficult to get a hold of since the Raven's doubled the price of a barrel. he accepted that it was partially his fault that he could not get much of a drink he enjoyed, "I've always thought my kind too… flamboyant. The colours, the patterns — it's all a little...too loud."
Studied masterfully from the Queen over the last few days, Clarisse new favourite arched eyebrow. "And you think I'm quiet?"
"I think," he said, leaning in slightly, "that you are… rare. Frost on warm glass. A monochrome note in a song of excess."
For the first time since she had come to the palace, she truly began to understand why she was here. Why of all people, that the queen had chosen her for her son, when there were many more stunning and better looking harpy by conventional peacock standers, in this Clan. Her lips with a rosey gloss curved slightly. "You speak as though you've spent years searching for such a thing."
He didn't deny it. "Perhaps I have. Perhaps I have been looking in the wrong places all this time."
For a moment, silence stretched between them, but it wasn't the brittle kind. It hummed, soft and unspoken. He let his gaze rest openly on her now — not the sizing look of a man weighing a bargain, but the appreciative study of someone who could already imagine more.
The meal unfolded slowly, each course giving them reason to linger. Neither of the pair wanted to rush to get away from the other's company. His conversation drifted from the superficial — courtly events, mutual acquaintances — to sharper glints of interest. "You must know by now," he lounged over his seat, eating the main course casually, "that my mother is… meddlesome."
"Queens rarely have the luxury of idleness," Clarisse answered. Not wanting to demean the patronage that had got her here, "They make use of what — and who — is at hand."
He chuckled. "And if she means to make use of you?"
Her gaze met his without wavering. "Then I will decide whether she's using me… or I'm using her." It was a bold statement of the girl, but it worked.
It was his turn to smile... And this time, it reached his eyes.
They finished the wine long after the last course had been cleared. The Queen had not appeared, no attendants had returned, and the two of them had settled into something far less formal than either had expected.
As they rose, Chaitav offered his arm. She took it, the contact light but deliberate. In the brief moment before they parted for the night, his thoughts caught him off guard — the image of her in his gardens, her pale wings and white silhouette, would look delightful within his gardens, the deep black and pale whites of his estate.
Perhaps, he thought, this betrothal wouldn't be so bad. Perhaps... she would look better in his garden than a Raven Princess ever would have.