“I don’t care where they go.” Adalbrecht doesn’t even look at him, overseeing the deposit of his canvas bundles. Once they’re lowered to the flagstones, he strides over, flicking a dagger from his belt. It slices through rope and fabric. The first coverings fall away to reveal a golden life-sized statue of a bristling wolf on its hind legs, mid-lunge.
He can’t beserious.
The second statue is . . . also a golden wolf. This one has its teeth buried in the throat of a shaggy granite goat bleating in terror, garnets spilling from the wounds.
Adalbrecht looks at me expectantly.
“How, er,” I stammer, “thoughtful.”
He finally acknowledges Barthl. “I want these up within the hour.”
“Within—but m’lord, we wouldn’t want to damage anything in our haste,” Barthl begins.
Adalbrecht’s bright blue eyes bore into him. He grips Barthl’s shoulder with a ferocious smile. “And I’mcertainyou don’t want to disappoint my bride. These are, after all, her gifts.”
Barthl looks like his teeth hurt. “Of course not, m’lord.”
I would laugh at the absurdity if it was anyone but Adalbrecht. Instead I clasp my hands together. “They’re truly exquisite, darling, I can’t thank you enough. Now please, you haven’t been home for a year, so don’t let me keep you another moment. I’ll go bring some more charity to Minkja while you settle in.”
“Hmm.” Adalbrecht’s glass smile turns brittle. “Charity from my treasury?”
Oh,scheit, I should have seen this coming. Well, I don’t need to pull all one thousand gilden from the treasury, just enough to test if charity will cure the curse. “I wasn’t thinking more than fiftygilden. Nothing too dear, of course, just a few coins for the needy and poor.”
“The poor are rarely needy,” Adalbrecht drawls. “They need fewer handouts, and more of a boot to the a—forgive me, I must remember I am not in a war camp. A man will forget your money once he wastes it on drink, dice, ormietlingen. A kind act will go further than any amount of coin.”
Spoken like a man who gives neither.
“Barthl. My lady may have fivegildenfrom my treasury.” He pats my cheek like I’m a too-eager hound as Barthl bows and hustles away. “Make them stretch. The ills of the poor will not be cured with money, my little dove, but with deeds.”
The gold of his signet ring is unsettlingly cold against my cheek. I cover his hand with mine and make myself smile before tactfully peeling his fingers away. He finally seems to notice the ruby below my right eye, staring a long moment as if wondering whether his treasury paid for that too.
Slowly that gaze begins to simmer with something much, much too close to hunger.
I swaddle his hand with my own to distract him. It works. Adalbrecht steps back as a clatter of wheels announces the arrival of another of his wagons, and every new inch between us loosens the vise around my ribs.
When he pulls his hand away, his signet ring stays hidden in my palm. He doesn’t seem to notice its absence at all. Nor does he notice as I slip it up a lace-cuffed sleeve.
I think I’ll drop it down a privy, just to give him a headache.
Barthl lopes back into the hall with another purse just as Adalbrecht flicks his hand at the two soldiers stationed by the door. “You. Accompany my lady on her errands today, and make sure our charity is . . .” He lets the pause hang as he turns, headed for a corridor. “. . . practical.”
The little purse lands in my empty hand with aclink, and then Barthl follows Adalbrecht without another word.
For a moment I stand in the entrance hall, fist tightening on the leather. ThePrinzessin’sfaçade slips from my grasp.
I hate him. I hate himso much. I hate how he talks, how he touches me, how the whole castle freezes around him.
I hate how we can be standing in broad daylight, with dozens of people careening around us, and still he knows how to make it clear that with him . . . I am utterly on my own.
The trinity of want will not protect me from him; nothing will, save myself.
But Adalbrecht went to the trouble of annexing Gisele from the von Falbirgs for a reason, of that I am certain. As long as I wear the pearls, he thinks he needs me alive.
All the same, I won’t forget to lock my bedroom door tonight.
I make myself focus. Better to break the curse and get out as soon as I can. The weight of the purse in my hand is promising . . . until I open it up and find it full of dull bronzesjilling, each worth a fifth of a white penny, and maybe threegildenall told. Barthl’s shorted me again.
If Eiswald is measuring my penance in coin, this will barely put a dent in what is owed. You could melt it all down and still have barely enough to buy a single stick ofoneof the seven gleaming silver candelabra in this hall.
