Lillian woke at her usual time the next morning. Today the air held the heaviness that meant a storm was coming: when she looked out the window she could see it off to sea.
"We're talking about it after the duel," Chaol had said sternly yesterday. "You will not get out of discussing why you think you were possessed by a ghost."
Dorian had nodded, and Lillian nearly joked about being tempted to lose to Cain in that case, but that would upset them.
Now she disentangled herself from a Dorian, who complained sleepily as she climbed over him and out of the bed, and went to her room.
She walked Glory as usual, gave her the cheese she'd brought, and returned her to the kennel.
"You're such a good girl," Lillian whispered, hugging Glory for what may or may not be the last time, and went back to her rooms.
Elaine was waiting with her oatmeal and fruit. "Philippa told me yesterday," she said. "I have your outfit ready."
"My outfit?" Lillian asked.
Elaine managed to look down her nose at her. "Lady Lillian," she said primly. "If you are going to die today, you are going to be dressed well when you do."
Lillian stared at her for a full thirty seconds before she burst into full-throated laughter. She pulled Elaine into a tight hug, which Elaine returned shakily.
"A woman after my own heart," Lillian said when they released each other.
Elaine sniffed and gestured pointedly at breakfast, so Lillian sat and ate.
Dorian and Chaol seemed to understand that she wanted a little time alone, finally, so she was sitting on her balcony enjoying the scent of the oncoming storm when Elaine brought her a note from Nehemia asking Lillian to visit.
Please, Nehemia had added before her signature.
Alarmed, Lillian left immediately. Abidan let her in without question, and Nehemia sat on her own balcony, staring out to sea herself. Her staff lay at her feet, though Lillian couldn't recall her carrying it in her rooms before.
"Is everything alright?" Lillian asked.
Nehemia sighed, which was not an answer. Lillian pointed that out, and Nehemia turned to glare at her.
"A duel, Lillian?"
"Kaltain needs to mind her own business," Lillian said.
"I have half a mind to have Abidan and Natan tie you up and hide you under the bed until it's over," Nehemia said. "Let the Adarlanians find somebody else to fight their battles."
"It's a little late for that," Lillian said, and less flippantly continued, "Nehemia, I am Adarlanian."
Nehemia turned back to the view, muttering under her breath. It was not complimentary.
Lillian let her run through a string of insults heaped on the country at large until Nehemia grew tired of it, stood, and without warning scooped up her staff and threw it at Lillian.
She caught it easily, feeling the weight and balance.
When they had visited family in Eyllwe, Lillian's aunts and uncles and cousins had talked about the court fashions involving ribbons or lace or even sometimes carvings decorating noblewomen's staffs, but this one was plain and undecorated, with darker spots where Nehemia had clearly held it most often. Since she was a princess, it was obviously well-made: since she was Nehemia, it was obviously well cared-for. Lillian spun it appreciatively.
"Use that," Nehemia said. "Kaltain said yours was misplaced. Don't die. Don't kill anybody you don't have to."
"Words to live by," Lillian replied. "Thank you."
"Lillian," Nehemia said, and hesitated.
Lillian waited.
"I want you to say your name," Nehemia said. "I want you to say it - oh, many times. I want you to remember it, and what it means, and who your mother wanted you to be."
"Elentiya," Lillian said, instead of anything clever. "I know what it means. I didn't do very well living up to it."
Nehemia said, "Didn't you?"
Brendan Gordaina had never called her Elentiya. Her mother had told her he shouldn't, because it was Lillian's to say, so he didn't. "But Lili," he'd say to Lillian, on the few occasions it came up, when Lillian had wondered why her mother didn't give her a declarative that meant 'I am happy' or 'I will be prosperous.' "It seems like a good name to have."
Elentiya meant, in the archaic forms of Eyllwean that hardly anybody used anymore, "I will not break."
The idea that Lillian hadn't broken in the mines was frustrating. If she hadn't, as Nehemia implied, then how could she have changed so much? The Lillian who sewed and said 'yes my lady' and 'no my lord' to customers and didn't want to use a staff because it might affect how she could hold a needle didn't seem to line up with the Lillian who had killed and corrected a prince on a regular basis, even if she was now kissing said prince also, probably, on a regular basis.
But if she had, how was she still here?
Those sorts of questions were too complicated to ponder in the last hours before the duel, so Lillian set them aside, used the time to warm up with Nehemia's staff, and went to bathe and change.
Elaine looked to have modelled the clothes after the guards' uniforms in line, though she hadn't made them black and there was nary a wyvern to be seen. Instead the trousers and tunic were cornflower blue and the high-collared shirt white. Elaine had contrived to add white lace at the cuffs of the shirt and neckline and hem of the tunic. She helped Lillian braid her hair down the back of her skull and tuck the end up and under.
"The odds the lace gets out of this unscathed are vanishingly low," Lillian pointed out.
"I made it, I can do what I want with it," Elaine retorted, and Lillian shut up.
Chaol and Dorian met her in her sitting room, Dorian in one of the outfits she and Elaine had picked for him and Chaol in his fussiest guard uniform, which was admittedly not very fussy at all. Lillian supposed he was injured and therefore excused.
The duel was in the throne room rather than the human-made audience chamber, and the wide, arched glass windows provided a view of the entire city and out to sea.
The king hadn't arrived yet, though a few courtiers milled around the door. They parted for Lillian, Dorian, and Chaol.
Lillian surveyed the room.
"Do the windows rattle?" Lillian asked.
"What?"
Lillian gestured to the storm, still rolling slowly in. Her hands ached a little from the difference in pressure, but it was nothing she couldn't handle.
"I don't know," Dorian said. "I've never been up here in really bad weather."
"I should probably try not to break the windows."
"Break them if you need to," Chaol said automatically, and frowned. "Just don't fall afterwards."
"Are there usually chairs?"
"Just the throne," Dorian replied. "There's usually a long rug."
"Nice of him to clear it out so I won't trip on it," Lillian said.
Cain hadn't arrived yet. Lillian assumed he knew the layout of the throne room better than she did.
The throne was set on a smaller dais than the audience chamber. It was a large, clunky thing with gilt and red velvet cushions, and it nearly overflowed the dais it sat on. Lillian wondered what the block of faestone had been for originally, but didn't wonder long: Cain and Hollin arrived, followed by a small man who would have been forgettable if Lillian wasn't fully aware of the knives on his person and the way he was surveying the entire room for easy escape.
Hollin frowned when he saw them and led Cain and the other man over.
"You're making Lillian fight?" he demanded. "She's injured, Cain said."
"I don't really make Lillian do anything," Dorian said tersely. "If I could, she wouldn't be here."
"Lillian is here and I can talk and fight," Lillian informed them. "Who else did you think would, Hollin? Chaol is worse off than me."
Hollin flushed. He was all in royal white, which did as little for his skin tone as it did for his father's or brother's, and his acne had come in worse. Lillian suspected stress was the culprit. "You could get someone else."
"There isn't anyone else," Cain said, watching them. "Sometimes when you're fighting a war, Hollin, you have to make the best choice out of a group of bad ones."
The king was announced before Hollin could answer. He entered with only a single guard for company and strode immediately for the throne. Even Lillian almost missed Kaltain slipping in a moment later.
"Champions, step forward," the king said.
We're champions now, Lillian thought wryly as she and Cain followed the order.
"You fight until you die," the king said. "No follower has the right to forfeit in the name of their liege lord."
Cain sighed through his nose and shifted, just a little. Lillian didn't, instead looking the king in the eyes. If she was going to die - she wasn't resigned to the possibility, but if - she wanted him to know who she blamed. The king frowned at her, head tilting as if he saw something curious. He looked long enough that it was noticeable.
"Majesty?" she asked lightly.
He shook his head. "Square up."
They obeyed that order to. The courtiers pressed themselves against the windows on the side without the throne as Lillian looked Cain over.
Cain carried a staff too. He'd known who he would be fighting. Lillian found herself grinning at him, oddly giddy at the idea of fighting someone who so clearly took her seriously.
The corner of Cain's mouth twitched. "If it's any consolation, Lillian, I'd rather it wasn't you I had to kill."
"Yeah," she said. "I'd rather neither of us died, to be honest."
"Begin," the king said.
