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“Where the hell have you been!”
I took a moment to check if my skin was still tethered to my bones or if their yell had scared it off.
Perhaps it should have concerned me that Cryssa and mother’s voices had been in perfect tandem.
I shut the double doors firmly behind me, refusing to offer any further fodder for the domestics’ gossip.
“Mother,” I acknowledged with a tilt of my head. “You made it.”
“Of course I did,” she snapped, frowning at me as though I were an imbecile.
“How was the journey?” I asked evenly, flicking the locks on the doors. “The view of the valley always takes my breath away.”
Nothing but silence greeted my question.
Between the two armchairs flanking the mantel, the fire had been kindled to a furious roar, spitting, and crackling as though mirroring my mother’s wrath.
Cryssa stepped forward first, her palm soft on my arm.
“We were so worried, dearest. No one saw you leave the suite, and you’ve been gone for so long,” she chided gently, tugging back my hood to gaze into my eyes. “I thought you’d been kidnapped—or worse.”
“Kidnapped?” I echoed, bewildered. “In the palace? With our guards right outside?”
“We arenoton friendly grounds, Olympia,” mother intoned, thrusting her nose in the air. “Guards or no guards, you would be smart to remember that.”
I flinched at the reminder, but my obvious discomfort did not slow my mother down.
“Now, where have you been, dressed like a…”
She flicked her wrist in the air, at a loss for words. Gold rings glittered on her fingers, catching the light from the fireplace.
“...an assassin,” she concluded, raising a brow.
“I fancied a walk to clear my head,” I told them both, stepping forward out of Cryssa’s grasp. A powder blue side table offered a cool glass of water, and I sipped at it slowly with my back to them, taking the last taste of citrus from my lips.
“You do realize the coronation ball begins in thirty minutes,” mother emphasized. “And your braids are out of place. We need to make an impression, Olympia. This is our glorious return to Highblade Palace—something I believed would never happen after what your father did.”
I felt Cryssa’s presence at my back, just beyond my left shoulder.
“I would advise caution, dearest,” she murmured, letting her scent soothe me. “You may have been familiar with these grounds twenty years ago, but they may have changed. We cannot underestimate the trouble that could await you without your guards.”
Mother’s voice grated against my nerves. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Highblades brought us here only to humiliate us or do us harm. After what your father did, embarrassing our family, tearing us apart—”
Icy fingers of dread closed into a fragile fist around my heart. A righteous river raged through my blood—the need to defend a man who had been dead far too long to defend himself.
“Enough, mother.”
I wondered who I’d surprised the most. The words had tumbled from my lips with a quiet calm, but Cryssa stepped away as though they had hurt her.
Mother laid a hand on her chest, aghast. Her acrid scent of disapproval twined like a noose around my neck.
“I have only one wish tonight,” I continued, setting the crystal glass back onto the side table with an audible clink. “If you have any respect for me at all, you will abide by it.”
I divested the dark cloak, placing it carefully on a nearby armchair as I strung the words together in my head.
“No more talk of father,” I said slowly as the room pulsed with anticipation. “Not today. And perhapsever.”
Silence met my request. Not a single breath whistled in the room.
