A Sea of Shields

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Selese exited the house of the sick and removed her frock, a broad smile across her face, done with her healing duties for the day. It was a beautiful summer afternoon, both suns shining, the wind blowing back her hair, and she breathed in deeply. She set off through a field of flowers, feeling a buoyancy she had not felt in years, dreaming with every minute of her wedding.

She felt butterflies in her stomach. Her wedding to Reece, the love of her life, was but a few days away, and she could hardly think of anything else. All morning, even as she was tending the sick, the hours had flown by as she’d imagined the wedding to come, saw her and Reece walking down the aisle together, saw the thousands of spectators that would be there to witness the joyous ceremony, the double wedding with Gwendolyn and Thorgrin. Most of all, she imagined Reece kissing her, holding him, taking their vows to be together for the rest of their lives. She imagined the joy she would feel in knowing that she was finally his wife, after all these moons of waiting, that nothing could ever tear them apart.

It was all that Selese wanted. Reece had taken her heart the moment she had laid eyes and him, and being officially wed to him would be the greatest day of her life—and the beginning of her new life. In some ways, she felt her life had begun the day she met him.

Selese broke into a jog, skipping through the fields, anxious to get back to King’s Court and finish all of her wedding preparations for the day. There were last-minute dress fittings, choices of flowers and bouquets, and sundry other matters awaiting her, and she did not want to be late for any of them.

“Selese!” rang out a voice she did not recognize.

Selese turned, caught off guard by the stranger’s voice, and was surprised to see, riding toward her through the fields, a man she did not know. He wore an armor of another place, and it took her a moment to recognize it was the dress of the MacGils of the Upper Isles. She wondered what he could be doing here on such urgent business, and how he knew her name.

“You are Selese, yes?” he asked, as he approached and dismounted, short of breath.

Her heart fluttered upon seeing the serious expression on his face. She knew Reece had recently traveled to the Upper Isles—she anxiously awaited his return—and she suddenly wondered if this man came bearing bad news, perhaps that Reece was ill or wounded, or that something bad had happened to him.

“Is everything okay?” she asked quickly, alarmed.

“My name is Falus. I’m the eldest surviving son of Tirus, of the house of MacGils of the Upper Isles. I come bearing bad news, I’m afraid.”

Selese’s heart pounded at his grave tone. She felt her hands begin to tremble.

“Bad news?” she echoed.

She immediately stopped, frozen, bracing herself for news that something bad had happened to Reece.

She rushed forward and grabbed the man’s wrist.

“You must tell me—is he okay?” she pleaded.

Falus nodded, and she sighed with relief.

“Reece is fine. That is not the news I bring.”

She looked at him, confused. What other news could he possibly have for her?

Falus held out a scroll, then placed it in her hand. Selese looked down at it, confused.

“I’m sorry to have to bear this news but we, the MacGil family of the Upper Isles, take our honor very seriously, and we thought it pertinent that you should know this right away. The man you love, Reece, is preparing to betray you. He is in love with someone else.”

Selese felt her entire body go cold at his words, as she stared back at him, baffled, trying to process what he was saying. She lost all sense of time and place; it was like a terrible nightmare unfolding before her.

She found herself unable to speak.

“My sister, Stara,” he continued, “Reece’s cousin, she is in love with him. And he is in love with her. Their love affair has blossomed ever since they were children. Years before the two of you met. On his recent trip to the Upper Isles, Reece sought out Selese and pledged his love, and vowed to marry her. In secret.”

He sighed.

“The scroll you hold bears proof of their love. You will see her letter to him, and his to her, each professing their love. You will, no doubt, recognize Reece’s penmanship.”

Selese’s heart pounded in her ears so loudly she could barely think. With shaking hands, she unrolled the scrolls, hoping this was all some awful lie, some terrible mistake.

But as she began to read, she recognized Reece’s handwriting at once. She felt like throwing up as she read his profession of love to Stara. The scroll seemed old, brittle, yet somehow she did not recognize that. She only focused on Reece’s words.

She felt her entire world splitting in two.

How could this be? How could someone like Reece, so proud and honorable, so noble and devoted, do such a thing? How could he betray her like this? How could he have lied to her? How could he love someone else?

Her head swarmed, trying to understand. None of it made any sense. Just a minute ago she was prepared to marry him. This was a man she loved him with every fiber of her being, a man who had made her whole life, and she had been sure that he loved her, too. Had she been so wrong? She had not taken Reece for a dishonest person. Was she such a fool?

“I’m sorry to bear this news,” Falus said. “But we thought you should hear it from us first. Reece has humiliated you before both kingdoms.”

Selese burst into tears. It was more than she could take. She wanted to respond, to tell Falus to leave her alone, to drop dead.

But her voice was stuck in her throat, and he had already turned, like a messenger of death, and taken off on his black steed, kicking it and charging farther and farther away, disappearing into the horizon. He rode through the fields of flowers, but now she could no longer see their color. Now they appeared as fields of thorns.

Selese looked at the scrolls in her hand, sobbing, her tears making them wet, running the ink. She reached down and tore them into pieces, again and again and again.

“NO!” she screamed.

With every tear, she felt her entire life being torn into pieces. Everything she had imagined, everything she had ever thought she knew, was now being torn to nothing.