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“Have your servants bring your baggage, and ours will take you to your room,” she went on as if I had said nothing at all.
My jaw slacked as I realized the King wasn’t coming to meet me. The King had sent his… housekeeper?
“Who are you?” I asked, indignation flooding me. “Why am I hearing all this from you and not King Cade himself?”
A cold, mirthless smile touched her lips. “I am Grisella. King Cade asked me to meet you upon arrival.”
“Okay, butwhoare you?” I insisted. “Are you the head of the household or a concubine or what?”
The staff gawked at my rudeness, Grisella raising an offended eyebrow. Her nails dug into the flesh of my arm.
“Miss…” Maywin breathed.
The smile never wavered from Grisella’s lips, but the temperature in the courtyard dropped another five degrees as her steely white eyes hardened toward me, confirming what I had suspected: she wasn’t blind at all.
“I wear many hats in this palace, as you’ll come to find out. Concubine, however, is not one of them. Feel free to ask me for whatever you need.IfI can accommodate you, I’ll try.”
That didn’t sound promising at all.
“Where is the King?” I wanted to know. “He’s not coming to meet me?”
My voice took an annoying twang that bothered me.
“King Cade has his hands full running Ironhelm. He will send for you when he has time,” Grisella replied, as if that answered any of my questions. Then she turned away.
“No!” I growled. “I didn’t travel all this way to be locked in a room like a mail-order pet—”
“Miss,” she interjected firmly, her head swiveling, those eyes seemingly fixed on me now to send chills of apprehension down my spine. She most certainly could see, despite the milky, blank stare. It unnerved me to the core. “I understand that you are new to the kingdom and unaccustomed to how things work in these parts. But I really must ask that you abide by King Cade’s orders. Shall we go? The staff has other matters to attend to tonight, and I would rather not stand here arguing all evening.”
Snapping her fingers, the staff all fell away to do whatever bidding she had lined up for them, and I stared helplessly after her as she marched toward the door. At the threshold, she paused to look at me in exasperation. “I suggest you come along, or you’ll lose your way. There are many twists and turns to this palace.”
“I have a good sense of direction,” I told her, frowning slightly. “And magic to guide me. You don’t need to worry about me.”
But again, Grisella didn’t seem to hear me—or more likely, wasn’t listening.
“Come on, miss,” Maywin whispered in my ear. “Let’s do what she says. She doesn’t seem like the type to antagonize.”
Every fiber of me wanted to argue, but what choice did I really have but to follow her? In reality, I was exhausted. The long travel had taken its toll on me, and the indignation had drained me of the rest of my passion. The idea of a soft bed wasn’t so bad.
I turned to Rufus and gestured for my driver to collect my bags from the trunk of the SUV before reluctantly following Grisella.
Tears of frustration burned in my eyes, but I blinked them away furiously. I wasn’t about to let anyone see me cry, regardless of how defeated I felt at that moment. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the King hadn’t been there to greet me. He didn’t want me any more than I wanted to be there, it seemed.
This truly was a perfect match. We already despised each other.
Through the monstrosity that King Cade called home, I followed Grisella. Maywin was still firmly on my elbow, but I barely felt her there as my body grew numb. With every step we took deeper into the shadowy corridors, a piece of my soul slipped away.
It wasn’t that the palace was just big—it was massive, with ceilings that hurt my neck to see when I peered upward. Skylights punctured intricately decorated ceilings, dappling gold, silver, and crystal chandeliers dangling haphazardly without rhyme or reason. The wainscotting reeked of endless labor, etched in pretty designs from eras past.
It oozed of history and some kind of sadness, a melancholy echoing through the creaking wood, like ghosts reaching out from the past to warn me.
This was my future, my soulless, dead home. Hopefully the palace was equipped with the modern conveniences I was used to.
My eyes took in the expressionless eyes of the portrait figures who graced the walls, staring down at me as if to judge my actions as we headed through the maze of paths. Grisella hadn’t been joking about the maze. I already wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find my way back to the front door without enacting some kind of locator spell if I had to. I would never learn my way around that building. Nor did I really want to in that moment.
“Who designed this place?” I muttered sardonically to Maywin.
It had been a rhetorical question, but Grisella felt obliged to answer it.
