Roderick’s stomach twisted with dread.  Henry’s grip on his shoulder tightened.  In the crowd, he spotted Earl Wymond, now frozen with horror as his daughter did as she pleased.  As she always had—because he always let her.  But this time, she was taking her liberties before a princess of their nation.

Her Highness Rohesia stiffened and took a deep breath.

“Your words are quite rude, Lady Calanthe.  Both to Sir Roderick and to myself,” she warned.

Calanthe smirked as though she’d won.  How she could possibly think so was beyond him.

“There is nothing wrong with making public my claims,” she declared.

“I have heard of no such reports, either from Earl Wymond or from Sir Roderick,” Rohesia said firmly.  “And whether true or no, you are of no position to tell me when or where I overstep.  Mind yourself, Lady of Endshire.”

“A woman may always defend the integrity of her own against the advances of others.”

“A man’s integrity is his own, and I do not appreciate your slander.”

“Slander?”  Calanthe laughed, sharp and derisive, a haughty sneer on her painted lips.  “You approached what is mine with neither introduction nor accompaniment and still call this slander?”

“Milady, you’re out of line,” Roderick rasped quietly.  No matter how quietly he said it, the onlookers still heard.  To speak against her was to put his position was in jeopardy, as Calanthe outranked him, but he had no other options before the face of such scandal.  “Please.  As Her Highness says, this is slanderous nonsense.  You mustn’t be this way.”

Calanthe looked to him with such fire in her gaze, he could not distinguish it as either passion or rage.

“How dare you accuse me!” she hissed.  “I shall prove every word true.  You are mine.  See?”

From a pocket on her belt, she plucked a tiny cloth-wrapped something.  The corners glittered as she pulled them back, and the scent of willows and water wafted from the fibers.  In the folds lay a seed, the size of a fingernail and flat as a coin, unmarked by groove or grain.  It shone like polished gold as she held it up in the light.

He might have thought it pretty, if not for the frightful, feverish glint in Calanthe’s eyes.

“I speak no untruths, Sir Roderick.  Place this on the tip of your tongue, and it will be plain for all to see that you are meant to be mine.”

The banquet hall frothed with tension as more people left off their merrymaking to watch.  There were the amused and the aghast, and no small few struck dumb by the absurdity of the circumstances.

And the king stood in the shadows of a curtain upon the dais, warning the courtiers to say nothing of his arrival.  By the look of it, His Majesty intended to watch the scenario unfold as it would.  Roderick briefly debated whether that was more or less nerve-wracking compared to the hungry stare of fascinated minstrels, or the scribes that viciously scribbled anecdotes in the room’s corners.

“Do it,” she demanded.  “Prove my words before them all.”

Princess Rohesia eyed the seed suspiciously.  If she pressed him to eat it, he would have to…but Her Highness said nothing.

The decision was entirely his.

And Roderick wanted this unbelievable humiliation to end.

“I shall honor my lady’s words, then.”