The first thing that Ciamon Caelt did to help Beatrice was to recall Aunt Alys to Lord Gruffydd`s mansion. The old woman hadn`t gone very far, only just to a friend`s house in the outskirts of Mahaut, anticipating the wedding and the glorious public feasts that would come with it. With an auntie there to act as chaperone for Beatrice, Ciamon reset the bone in her ankle himself.

　　"Bite down on this," he said, and held out a cylinder of wood wrapped in silk. It smelled sweet and tasted faintly of cinnamon. Beatrice chomped on it while clinging to Riccardo`s arm. With Aunt Alys standing at his shoulder, sniffing with reproof when Ciamon touched Beatrice`s leg, the man examined her ankle, then gave it a short, sharp tug.

　　"Fuck me," Beatrice swore, the cylinder falling out of her mouth.

　　Aunt Alys hissed in disapproval at her outburst. Ciamon and Riccardo both laughed at it. Beatrice`s face flushed with embarrassment, but she was so relieved to have it over that she couldn`t care what words came out of her mouth.

　　"That`s the worst of it, I promise," said Ciamon. He brought out long linen bandages and wrapped her leg. "Keep this elevated on a pillow when you rest in bed. For the first few days, stay off it completely. Then try to put a little weight on it."

　　"Are you a doctor?" Riccardo asked.

　　"No, but I`ve tended wounds at the garrisons Gruffydd keeps for His Majesty," Ciamon said. "The border with Nynomath is mostly quiet, but men get hurt all the time, falling off horses or tripping on rocks."

　　"Do I really have to stay off it for days?" Beatrice asked. "I`ve been so bored already waiting for the prince to come home."

　　"Well, we must think of things to amuse you," Ciamon said.

　　Riccardo carried Beatrice down the stairs to the great hall for supper with Aunt Alys. Beatrice peeked at Ciamon from over his shoulder. He caught her eye and smiled before stepping off on the second floor to go to Rocheter`s library. Riccardo puffed with the effort of carrying her the rest of the way down.

　　"I can`t understand how you went five days without eating and still weigh this much," her brother complained.

　　"Shut up, Dick," Beatrice said. Glad that Ciamon wasn`t there to hear.

　　Riccardo left Beatrice in the dining room, closing the pocket door to the antechamber so that the ladies could dine without the veils.

　　The old woman fairly ripped the thing from her head when she was sure that Dick was gone. A few pins scattered from her steel gray hair. She plucked them from her lap and held them between her teeth while she gathered the strings of her bangs out of her face.

　　"Blessed be the Lord our God for a fine feast at a table without men!" she muttered around the pins in her mouth.

　　When Aunt Alys was once again neatly coifed, she reached into a pocket and took out a small black Bad-Luck doll. She pressed it at Beatrice.

　　"I am sorry for your troubles, my dear. I heard it was quite the fall at Lady Teqwyn`s! Unlucky& Here, keep the Winze under your pillow. He`ll trick the Devil into plaguing him instead!"

　　Beatrice accepted the doll graciously. It was not as fine as the ones she`d seen at the market—it looked to be smeared with soot rather than made from ebony. But the glass shards for the eyes were painted green.

　　The same color as Ciamon`s, she thought, unbidden. She quickly put the doll away and tucked into her first proper meal.

　　Aunt Alys ate voraciously for such a small woman. Three buttered rolls, two fried chicken legs, and a whole cheese pie vanished from the serving platter before Beatrice had so much as managed to finish a cup of wine.

　　Aunt Alys smacked her lips and sighed. "Oh it`s good to eat at a fine table again. I haven`t dined like this since my husband passed away nearly a decade ago!"

　　"You live alone, Auntie?" Beatrice said.

　　"I live where my nephew sends me. Widows own no property. But my nephew tends to my comfort well enough and sends fine young men like Caelt to see to my needs. He`s a big one, isn`t he? Looking after all the horses when he was only thirteen, and even then he was nearly six feet tall!"

　　"When was that, lady?" Beatrice asked. She glanced at the pocket door; with it shut, she had no way of knowing whether he was still there in Gruffydd`s house.

　　"Oh& twelve? No—ten years since he came into the house. It was when the summer plague swept the valley. Carried off half the household—my husband, the second late Lady Gruffydd& It would have taken little Griff, too. Ciamon came to the house to help get us back on our feet."

　　Beatrice filed this information away. Ciamon was younger than she`d thought. Just two years older than Riccardo! It made him seem less ugly to Beatrice. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

　　The next day, Ciamon came to visit her and Aunt Alys again. True to his word, he brought things to amuse her: fresh cut flowers, the shoe she`d left behind at the disaster of Lady Teqwyn`s dance, and armfuls of books from Gruffydd`s library at his other home.

　　"I`ve read all these," Beatrice complained when he laid them out for her.

　　It came out more plaintive than she`d intended. She was still irritable from the pain in her ankle, unable to sleep more than a few hours before the throbbing ache woke her.

　　"Oh, I`m sorry," Ciamon said. He ignored her childishness. "I will bring you some from Gruffydd`s other house this afternoon. Is there something that you would like to read? Cookbooks, something about gardening&?"

　　"I like fairytales," Beatrice admitted. Embarrassed, she tried to think of more sophisticated reading material to ask for. "And& the histories of great naval battles. If you have any of Holdings` anthologies on the lost islands of Nynomath, I would love to read them. My father only had the third book in the series in his study."

　　Ciamon raised his eyebrows. One of them had a scar, like the kind Beatrice saw on sailors who gambled on fist fights. "You must be very good at languages if you can read Holdings."

　　"Oh, yes," Beatrice said, eager to assert her worldliness. "I speak four languages and can read six. Mother said it was fit for a future queen to be well-read."

　　Beatrice stopped, surprised to hear herself chattering to Ciamon about these things. The truth was, she missed Riccardo`s company. Her brother spent nearly all of his time with Gruffydd, or shut up in the library.

　　Ciamon Caelt wasn`t family, but hadn`t the Duke told them to adopt local customs? To ingratiate themselves in Ammar? Beatrice told herself that it was appropriate to talk with Ciamon. After all, her host trusted him. Surely there was no harm in a little conversation. Aunt Alys was only ten steps away, sleeping off her fried chicken in the next room.

　　Ciamon seemed happy to talk with Beatrice. He came to visit again that same afternoon, bringing the armfuls of books she`d asked for. He sat with her while she read and paged through a few of the books himself, sometimes asking her to read him a word or a phrase to test her knowledge of the language. Laughing when she corrected his pronunciation of foreign words.

　　"I`m saying it right—p-e-n,` is what I said," Ciamon insisted. He held up the dip pen Beatrice used for writing to her mother. "Everyone in Bocce calls it that."

　　"No, you said pin`," Beatrice laughed. She picked up one of her broaches and showed him the stick pin on the back of it. "Like this? This is what you said in Boccean. I heard it!"

　　Ciamon laughed, and Beatrice thought that it made his nose look less crooked.

　　"Let`s see how that ankle is today," Ciamon suggested. "Will you try to stand? Put a little weight onto it?"

　　Beatrice cringed at the suggestion. The swelling was down, but her ankle still ached with a cold burn that pulsed into her foot. Each throb reminded her of the moment she heard the crack—of Queen Eva`s hidden smirk and hidden hair. Beatrice would not say any of this to Ciamon. She did not want to look weak in front of him, and she did not want to admit that she knew the Queen dyed her hair.

　　"Come on," Ciamon coaxed when she did not answer. "I`ll tell you what& if you can walk on my arm back and forth across the room, I`ll bring you a surprise tomorrow."

　　Ciamon offered his hand. When he smiled, Beatrice didn`t notice his protruding lower lip. She twitched her veil away from her hand and reached for his.

　　Ciamon helped her back and forth across the room, one hand under each of her elbows to support her weight. When the dull ache in her ankle flared into a sharp pain, she squeezed his hand. He let her stop while she gasped, biting her lips against the pain.

　　"It hurts as bad as all that?" he asked.

　　At the gentleness in his voice, Beatrice felt herself dissolving. Hot, shameful tears rushed out of her eyes into the gauze of her veil.

　　She would look so pathetic on her wedding day, limping into the church. She might even need to be carried. If that happened, Beatrice could not even wear the floor-length veil with the long train she`d brought from Sanchia. Bitter irony that she had not even wanted to wear the veil of Ammar in the first place, and wept now that the possibility was taken from her.

　　"I`m sorry," Beatrice sniffled when she was calmer. She pressed her veil against her nose to catch the dribble from her nostrils. "I don`t& I don`t think I can dance at my wedding&"

　　Ciamon was quiet, letting her cry. When her breathing steadied, he said, "Perhaps& the wedding could be postponed until your leg is healed. Would that make you feel better?"

　　Beatrice bit back her first reply—No!—not wanting to sound like a child. She struggled for the words to tell him how she felt. Waiting this long was the main source of her suffering. Delaying the wedding any longer would start her marriage off on literally the wrong foot.

　　"Sanchia and Ammar are counting on me to be married," Beatrice said, finally. "As soon as Prince Anryniel returns to Mahaut. Even if I have to be carried to the altar on my brother`s shoulders, I am getting to that church."

　　Beatrice pulled her wet veil from her head. Not caring if the sight of her face scandalized him. She saw a black stain on the silk and reached into her pocket to take out the Bad-Luck doll Aunt Alys had given her.

　　"Damn this cheap thing," Beatrice said. She tossed it on the floor.

　　Ciamon stared at the doll on the ground. His face darkened. "Well& I suppose it won`t be long now. He`s expected here by the end of the week."

　　For a moment, Beatrice worried that he looked away to avoid the sight of her face. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying, willing her eyes to stop watering, her nose to stop running. She wanted him to look at her again.

　　After a moment, Ciamon rewarded her with what she desired. He looked into her face, his brows knitted with concern, and said, "You should rest. I`ll have some special tea brought up for you to drink to help with the pain. Tomorrow, I will bring you that surprise."

　　The drink he sent was a strong tea, flavored with anise and sugar to cover the bitter pain killing herbs brewed with it. Beatrice drank it down, and laid her head on her pillow. She prayed to wake up at home in Sanchia.

　　Beatrice dreamed of the wedding. Her ankle ached terribly, each throb of pain piercing the fabric of her dream like a threaded needle going through cloth. Hands wrapped around her, steadying her. They were not Prince Anryniel`s, but Ciamon Caelt`s.

　　The sweetness of their touch lingered when she woke.

　　"Fuck," she said. Her brilliant plan to fall deeply in love with her husband was ruined. Had the Queen of Ammar planned that as well?