Wedding Hells (Schooled in Magic Book 8) (31 page)

“Please,” Alassa said. “Just...don’t tell father.”

Emily hesitated - she didn’t know what King Randor would do if he found out - and then pressed her palm against Alassa’s forehead, murmuring the spell under her breath. Alassa shuddered, jumped to her feet and ran into the privy. Emily heard the sound of retching from behind the wooden door and winced, feeling a flash of sympathy. Lady Barb had taught her the spell, warning her that the toxins would leave the body as fast as possible. Alassa was in for a very unpleasant few minutes.

She was starting to get nervous when Alassa opened the door and walked out of the privy, looking pale and wan. Emily rose, passed her the remains of the jug of water and watched helplessly as Alassa poured it down her throat, droplets spilling down and staining her nightgown as she drank. Alassa looked unsteady, but at least she wouldn’t be hungover any longer. She’d still have a rough time of it as the remaining toxins worked their way out of her body.

And if my mother had had that spell
, Emily thought,
she’d have considered it a small price to pay for the freedom to drink
.

“My father supplied the wine,” Alassa said, as she finished the water and moved on to the remaining fruit juice. “Do you think he wanted to teach me a lesson?”

“That’s what he said,” Emily told her. “He came to check on you...”

“Must have had a monitoring spell on the room,” Alassa interrupted her. She sounded annoyed with herself. “He wouldn’t want me to choke on my own vomit.”

Emily shuddered. Her mother had come alarmingly close to doing that more than once. But it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about. Her childhood on Earth seemed like more and more of a dream with every passing day.

“Drink is bad for you,” Emily said, instead. “It’s a very useful lesson.”

Alassa gave her an odd look. “And yet they teach us how to help drinkers cope with their drinking,” she said. She ran her hand through her sweaty hair. “There’s a contradiction, isn’t there?”

“I don’t know,” Emily said. “Perhaps we’re not the ones who are meant to be drinking.”

She looked down at her hands. The mountainfolk in the Cairngorms had drunk heavily to numb the pain of a bleak existence. She was surprised, coming to think of it, that Frieda had keeled over so quickly. She’d have been given alcohol from a very early age. But then, she
had
been the runt of the family
and
she’d spent three years at two different schools of magic, where alcohol was banned. And she’d probably been used to drinking beer rather than very strong wine.

“Never mind,” Alassa said.

She strode over to the door, opened it and shouted for a maid. When one arrived - a terrified-looking young girl who couldn’t have been any older than fourteen - she ordered breakfast for two, with plenty of water and fruit juice. The maid curtseyed and hastily backed out of the room. Emily watched her go, unsure why she was so terrified. She couldn’t have been working in the palace while Alassa had been a right royal brat...

They knew Alassa was going to be drinking
, Emily thought, as the door closed behind the maid.
The bastards dumped the task of tending to the princess on a young girl who couldn’t fight back
.

“I feel parched,” Alassa declared loudly, as she stripped off her dress and headed for the washroom. “Is that normal?”

“Yes,” Emily said, curtly.

Alassa stopped and turned to look at her. “You don’t
like
drinking?”

“No,” Emily said. She
really
didn’t want to talk about her mother. “It’s...dangerous.”

“I know,” Alassa said. She peered down at the empty bottles, her expression darkening. “I was never allowed to drink, you know. Everything else...I could have it...but not alcohol.”

“Your father said as much,” Emily told her. “He wasn’t wrong.”

Alassa frowned. “Really?”

Emily nodded. “Lady Barb told us about addiction,” she reminded Alassa. “Most addictions don’t start at once, no matter what you do. But if you get accustomed to drinking every day, you’ll soon find you can’t live without it.”

My mother certainly couldn’t
, she added, silently.
Every time she told herself she’d stop, she started again within the week
.

“You’re going to be Queen,” she said, after a moment. “You can’t afford to have anything clouding your thoughts.”

Alassa nodded and walked into the bathroom. Emily sighed and settled back on the cushions to wait. When the maid - and a couple of others - arrived with breakfast, she told them to put it on the table and leave it there. The young girl gave her a nervous look as she obeyed, clearly new to the castle. Her older helpmates kept their faces blank at all times. Emily wondered, darkly, just how many of them had seen the leaflets being passed around the city and if they believed what the rebels were saying. They had good reason to know the aristocracy was still human.

The door had barely closed when Alassa emerged, wrapping a towel around herself. “There’s more water, if you want it,” she said, as she picked up a jug of juice and poured herself a glass. It took Emily a moment to realize she was talking about the bath. “You’ll have to filter it...”

Emily shook her head. No one in the castle would bat an eyelid at the thought of sharing bathwater, but she thought it was appalling even if she
could
use spells to filter out anything other than pure water. She’d go back to her rooms in a moment, bathe properly and then go find Caleb. If Alassa had managed to drink herself senseless, God alone knew what Jade had done. Emily had a sudden horrified vision of a dozen noblemen turned into frogs - or worse - before she realized it wasn’t too likely. Randor wouldn’t have been in anything like as good a mood if all hell had broken loose.

The maids had
clearly
known what to expect, she thought, as they started to eat. They normally served a greasy breakfast of bacon, fried meats and eggs; now, they had supplied porridge, bread and scrambled eggs. It would be better for an upset stomach, she thought; her mother had never eaten sensibly after drinking heavily and paid the price. Alassa ate ravenously while Emily picked at the food, not feeling particularly hungry. She’d known Randor - and Alassa - had a hard core of demonstrated ruthlessness, but she’d never thought he’d deliberately allow his daughter to drink herself senseless.

And yet, it was a valuable lesson
, she thought, sourly. She’d sat at the High Table and watched as younger noblemen competed to see how much they could drink. Alassa would have seen that from birth.
She now understands the dangers of getting drunk on a primal level
.

“I don’t actually have anything planned for me for today,” Alassa said. “My father must have anticipated me wanting to spend the whole day in bed.”

“Probably a good idea,” Emily said. She tried to recall the timetable and frowned. “You have a second private party tomorrow night, and the ceremony starts two days after that.”

“I won’t be getting drunk,” Alassa said, firmly. She gave Emily a wink. “Maybe we should sneak out of the castle for the night. Go find an inn and see what
really
happens there.”

Emily shook her head. “I wouldn’t suggest it even if the city
wasn’t
in a state of unrest,” she said, firmly. “Do you have
any
idea just how much trouble you could get into?”

Alassa smiled, brightly. “That’s what I want to find out.”

“You could be kidnapped,” Emily said, tersely. “There are plenty of barons in the kingdom who’d love to have your father over a barrel - and they would, if they captured you. One of them might even force you into
marriage
just so they had a claim on the kingdom.”

“I wouldn’t marry them,” Alassa said.

“You know as well as I do there are plenty of ways to force consent from someone,” Emily snapped. “And there are ways to dim magic for a while. As long as they kept you on the potion, you’d be helpless. You
know
this.”

Emily shuddered. “You’d be a puppet, at best. And that isn’t even the
worst
that could happen to you.”

Alassa scowled. “Really?”

“Remember the field trip we took to Dragon’s Den with Lady Barb?” Emily asked. Imaiqah had told her that it wasn’t safe for young ladies at night, not in the city. Even a magician would have to be recognized as a magician before the criminals backed off. “Remember the girls we saw who came to the clinic?
That
could happen to you if you’re mistaken for a commoner - or a prostitute.”

And perhaps that was the other lesson King Randor wanted her to learn
, she thought, privately.
That there are times when she could lose control - and when she does, it could prove fatal
.

She shook her head, firmly. “Have a quiet night in, just us girls,” she urged. “It won’t be the same after you’re married, so we may as well spend the night together. Invite some others if you wish.”

Alassa scowled. “I can invite Alicia, I
suppose.
Frieda
was
insistent that she wants to talk to you. Maybe we can contrive an opportunity for you to speak with her.”

“If you wish,” Emily said. “Just...just don’t do anything stupid.”

Alassa sighed, dramatically. “I won’t try to sneak out of the castle. But...”

She waved a hand at the walls. “This is just a cage,” she added. “I’m as much a prisoner here as the poor unfortunates in the dungeons. I just get better food and clothing.”

“There are millions of people who would trade places with you in an eye blink,” Emily told her, dryly. “And you wouldn’t be happy if you traded places with them.”

Alassa nodded, slowly. “You’re trapped too,” she said.

“Maybe,” Emily said. Cockatrice was a blessing - but it was also a leash that tied her to the king. “We will see.”

She rose. “I’m going to check on the others, then have a wash. You make sure you get plenty of sleep. Your father will probably ask questions if you look
too
cheerful at dinner tonight.”

“I won’t,” Alassa said. “Luckily, I have a great deal of practice in looking good on the outside when all I want to do on the inside is lie down and die.”

“I
’VE FELT BETTER,” CALEB CONFESSED
.

Emily gave him a sidelong look as he stepped into her rooms. Caleb had changed into a tunic, not unlike the ones he’d worn in Whitehall when robes hadn’t been required, and looked surprisingly fresh. Emily had wondered if he’d taken a potion, but he wasn’t showing any of the signs of having swallowed something to give him some extra energy. He looked as though he’d had a good night’s sleep.

“It wasn’t a good time, though,” Caleb added. He shook his head. “Those
noblemen
!”

“They can be pains,” Emily said, sympathetically. “Do I want to know what happened?”

“Probably not,” Caleb said. He took a breath. “We started by going to a pub on the Royal Mile. The innkeeper served us himself, which was probably a bad sign. Jade did his best to avoid drinking more than a little beer, but they kept thrusting mugs under his nose and daring him to drink. Seven or eight pints of beer later, half of them headed off to drink their way down the Royal Mile while the other half started having a go at Jade for trying to marry the princess. They said he wasn’t worthy of her hand, that he was a giant gold-digger, that he was nothing more than commoner filth.”

Emily winced. “I was right,” she said. “I didn’t want to know.”

Caleb nodded. “One of them, a particularly stupid idiot, challenged Jade to a duel for the hand of Princess Alassa,” he continued. “Jade, by then alarmingly drunk himself, turned him into a slug and declared victory. The idiot’s cronies then offered to bribe Jade into dumping the princess and fleeing the kingdom. I had to grab him before he could kill the closest bastard. They all thought this was a hoot - even the slug laughed when I turned him back - and kept making fun of Jade and his friends. So a giant brawl broke out in the bar...”

“I see,” Emily said, when Caleb’s voice trailed off. “What happened then?”

“We managed to get Jade back to the castle after the Royal Guard turned up,” Caleb said. “I think the king is not going to be pleased with some of the young fools.”

“I don’t think he’ll do anything to them,” Emily said. Given who’d been in the bar, she was surprised the Royal Guard had done
anything
. Maybe Randor had given them orders to keep an eye on things. “Where’s Jade now?”

“He was depressed,” Caleb said. “I got him into his rooms while his friends headed back to
their
rooms. A couple of them were talking about going back out on the town, but I don’t know if they did.”

“Depressed,” Emily repeated. “Alassa wants him. What else matters?”

Stupid question
, she told herself, a second later.
You know the Prince Consort needs to be acceptable to more than just his wife
.

“I offered to stay with him,” Caleb continued, shaking his head. “But he refused to allow me to remain in his rooms.”

“I think I’d better go check on him,” Emily said. Imaiqah and Frieda had been fine, apart from being mildly hungover; Jade, on the other hand, might be a different story. “Do you want to come with me?”

“Father was hoping I’d be able to inspect the musket factory this afternoon,” Caleb said, after a moment. “I could stay if you like.”

Emily hesitated, then shook her head. “I can handle it, I think,” she said. “I’ve already had to deal with Alassa after
she
had far too much to drink.”

Caleb nodded, gave her a long kiss and hurried out. Emily sealed her wards, then followed him, walking down to Jade’s quarters on the far side of the Royal Apartments. A guard stood outside, something that caused her a moment’s panic before she recalled it was intended to remind the nobility that Jade was being chaperoned before he and Alassa actually tied the knot. She smiled at the thought - there were quite a few spells Alassa could have used to sneak past the guard if she’d wished - and then stopped in front of him. The guard looked her up and down, then frowned.