Read Online Heartless by Anne Elisabeth Stengl - Free Book Online Page B

once more, glaring in unconcealed fury.
    “Your weapon?” Aethelbald said.
    Felix retrieved it and lunged again. A third time he was disarmed. He grabbed up his sword, attacked, and lost. Glaring daggers Aethelbald’s way, he shouted, “You don’t fence by the rules, sir!”
    “Neither will your enemy,” Aethelbald replied.
    Felix took in the man’s horrible form. Aethelbald’s stance screamed inexperience, yet Felix noticed suddenly something in his posture that hinted otherwise. Though Aethelbald stood like a wooden block, his knees were ever so slightly bent, and something in the set of his shoulders implied strength and quickness. One might not notice such details if one had not experienced, in four successive encounters, being disarmed by a single stroke.
    Felix lunged again and was once more disarmed, but this time he snatched up his sword in an instant and attacked without preamble, forcing Aethelbald to move out of his wooden stance and actually engage him. But at the end of the engagement, Felix stood empty-handed.
    “What are you doing?” he cried, but now his voice held less anger and more curiosity. “You’re doing something I haven’t seen. What is it?”
    Aethelbald smiled, but though Felix looked for it, he detected no smug amusement, only pleasure. “I’ll teach you. Fetch your weapon. Watch your back, prince!” He slapped Felix lightly across the shoulders as he retreated. Felix rolled his eyes and groaned but took up his weapon again and whirled into a defensive stance.
    “Teach me,” he said.
–––––––
    That morning Una woke freezing. Nurse scolded her, saying it was her own fault for letting in all that unhealthy fresh air when sensible people would have left the windows shut. Monster refused to leave his nest beneath the covers at the foot of the bed, obliging the maid to make the bed around him. Una wished she could join the cat there, keeping the quilts pulled tight over her head all day. She was cranky and ill-rested. Vague impressions of dreams haunted her, but she could remember nothing specific.
    It was all Prince Aethelbald’s fault, she was sure. She hoped he burned his tongue on his morning porridge.
    No lessons were scheduled for that day due to Prince Aethelbald’s visit. Una planned to while away her time in the gardens, penning odd thoughts in her journal as she thought them. But following a private breakfast and before Una could make an escape to the gardens, Nurse caught her and made her sit down to her tapestry stitching.
    “It’ll steady your nerves,” Nurse said.
    “I’ll impale myself.” Una’s skill with a needle was feeble at best and worsened by her strong dislike of the pastime.
    “Nonsense,” Nurse replied. Against this argument there could be no rebuttal, so Una took her place at one end of the large tapestry – which depicted a gory scene from the epic poem The Bane of Corrilond – and Nurse settled at the other end.
    A stony silence followed, for they had not yet forgiven each other for yesterday’s argument. With nothing but tedious stitching to occupy her, Una could find no relief for her mind, which skittered back every chance it got to revisit that awful scene at dinner the night before.
    I did the best I could, she told herself over and over. I handled the situation with the most grace possible. What else could I have done?
    Clear as a bell, she heard Felix’s snorting laugh while the rest of the court had exploded in a flurry of whispers, all drumming her ears at once.
    Una shook her head, trying to drive out the memory, but she could still see Prince Aethelbald’s face as he’d knelt before her with such hopeful uncertainty in his eyes.
    What else could I have done? she asked herself again, poking violently at her tapestry. She stitched a troop of soldiers and townspeople fleeing the fire of a monstrous red dragon, which Nurse was busy working in the opposite corner. Una’s people looked more like beans stacked on top of