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It was a bathing chamber, like the one from the other day, and Benton gestured for her to get in. After a few minutes of Benton scrubbing some kind of salt scrub into her skin, Kerrigan couldn’t remain silent any longer.
“She’s Fordham’s sister?”
Benton nodded. “Half-sister. King Samael has had five wives. The first wife produced one sickly daughter, who died young. She wasn’t even a hundred. The next wife was replaced for producing no children. And then Fordham’s mother, Queen Kamara, was nearly displaced for lack of an heir when, miraculously, we got Prince Fordham.”
“What happened to her?” Kerrigan whispered.
“We do not speak of it,” Benton said. “But it was tragic. Wynter’s mother was Queen Wisteria, an alliance to appease Laurent family, but she wasn’t all there. She was removed from her role as queen as she slowly went mad.”
“How terrible.”
“Indeed.”
“And now, he’s remarried a fifth time?”
“Yes,” Benton said with a bite in her voice. “Queen Viviana from family Blanchard.”
“She’s not your favorite?”
“Family Blanchard hates half-Fae more than the other two families.”
Kerrigan startled and glanced up at Benton’s covered ears. “You’re half-Fae?”
“Yes, miss. My mother was a lady from Blanchard. The human male who … seduced her was beheaded.”
Kerrigan gulped, reading between the lines. “I see.”
“Bayton and I were given to King Samael as a gift with his new bride.”
“A gift,” I said flatly
“Yes, we don’t have rights in the House of Shadows.”
Fury burned in her veins, and she had to tamp down the rising magic that wanted to respond to the injustice. “Then, why ever am I being dressed for a royal ball?”
Benton looked at her in surprise. “You belong to Prince Fordham.”
“Belong,” Kerrigan repeated, unable to fathom these words.
“Of course. To belong to a male such as the prince is a great honor. It’s a prized position, even after he weds. You receive much protection from all, except the males.”
Kerrigan felt sick. This was worse than she’d thought. Worse than Fordham had even suggested. He’d said she’d be his concubine but nothing more. Had he wanted to save her feelings or suppress her rage?
“And what am I supposed to do at this ball?” she asked, clenching her hands into fists as she came out of the bath and wrapped herself in a towel.
Benton looked startled by Kerrigan’s apparent anger. “You truly do not know these things? Prince Fordham has not made you aware that you belong to him?”
“He has not made me aware of that.” There was no use in explaining to someone trapped within these walls that this was not how things were done outside.
“Well, you will attend as a sort of ornament. You decorate his appearance. Only the wealthiest Fae have the means to have such a person at their side.”
Kerrigan wanted to tear this mountain down from the inside. No wonder they had been trapped away in here for a thousand years. When she had heard that they tortured half-Fae, she had assumed physical abuse. Not… this emotional abuse and, clearly, abuse of the sexual nature. How could property ever say no?
“And did Prince Fordham ever have a half-Fae as an ornament before?”
“No, miss,” Benton said, fear creeping into her voice. “He was entirely against it, as it was a condition of his exile.”
Kerrigan wanted to ask more, but she didn’t need to. Fordham had never done this before. It was a misunderstanding. She would go to this ball and be his little decoration if that was how they needed to be seen publicly. Then, together, they would fix this, as they had fixed everything else. They had just over a week to make this backward society see her for who she really was. It wasn’t long enough. Not by a long shot.
But she knew exactly how to play it in the meantime.
She wouldn’t be going to this ball as she was. Kerrigan of the House of Dragons, the scrappy and rebellious fighter, had to die in these halls. No, tonight, she would don a persona she had long ago discarded, but to survive, it was necessary to become someone else. Tonight, she would be Princess Felicity, First of the House of Cruse, a Bryonican royal.
7
The Ball
“Well,” Wynter said, her clear gaze sweeping Kerrigan’s gown, “this is an improvement.”
She spun her finger in a circle, and Kerrigan obliged, swishing in the sumptuous black-and-silver gown and letting her get a full look at the layers of soft satin. Kerrigan had never seen anyone wear a gown like this. The bone-fitted corset crushed her ribs and pushed her breasts up to her throat. A billowy plume of skirt fell to her feet. At least the bodice was more modern than the typical square neckline she had expected with this design. This one pushed the long, diaphanous, velvety sleeves off of her shoulders with a wide-open neck embroidered with Ollivier silver, accenting her pale throat and collarbone.
