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Prince?
I eyed the boy. He didn’t look like a prince. Princes were handsome, gallant, and strong. This boy was filthy, skinny, and dead.
“While the others took care of the commotion in the cells, I pursued the prince but…” The guard looked at me. “It was the Lady Galantia who stopped this one for good, or so it seems.”
“Mm-hmm, just as well. This one was useless in lifting that blasted curse from Valtaris.” Father cast his judging stare over the scene once more, the sun glinting off a white stone amulet around his neck, but it softened slightly when he set his gaze on me. “Is what the guard tells me true? You brought this Raven to justice?”
I swallowed past a lump in my throat, for Father rarely spoke to me unless he was pleased with me, and he wasneverpleased with me. “Y-yes, my Lord—”
“My Lord!” Healer Targen scurried out the gate and hurried over to Father, his thin strands of white hair blown in all directions on his speckled scalp the same way the wind tugged on his brown robes. “My Lord, I bring… gods forgive me for what I must say.”
Father straightened in his brown leather hunting outfit, jaws tightening for a brief moment. “Do you bring news of my firstborn son?”
“My Lord…” Targen bowed his head, leaning closer to Father where he murmured, “Your son lived but a short while, looking content one moment, only for his breaths to fade into silence the next… just like the others.”
My muscles tensed when I watched Father’s hands first tremble, then fist by his sides. Did that mean my brother was dead? Like all the others before and after me?
Father looked toward the bell tower of the chapel for long moments, then his attention returned to me. He unclenched his hand, placing it atop my head. Nothing but a single pat, but it made my heart dance in my chest.
He walked off, shouting to his guards, “If anybody asks why Tidestone rang the bells this day, let it be known it was because my strong, dutiful daughter, the Lady Galantia, killed a filthy Raven.”
A single tear rolled down my cheek, then another, turning my chest heavy as if they all collected inside my heart. For the first time, it felt full. For the first time, I felt loved.
ChapterThree
Galantia
Present day, Road to Ammarett
“The painter probably rendered him double as handsome.” Back aching from too many hours of sitting in our carriage, I held up the gold-framed likeness of Prince Domren. “Which means he’s truly only about half as good looking as the donkey in the stable. Quite literally. Rather long in the face, this one.”
“Galantia!” Risa’s sharp scold drowned beneath its familiarity where she sat across from me beside Mother. “It’s not becoming of a lady to speak so ill about any man, but certainly not when he’s no less but a prince.”
Not any man.
Not even any prince.
My betrothed.
“Oh please, I’m merely practicing my future role.” I tossed the likeness wherever it may fall, and folded my arms beneath this ridiculous nest of pinned creamy curls I was forced to wear—its torture second only to my stifling gown of heavy brocade. “If a wife cannot speak ill of her husband, then what joys are there left for her in marriage?”
Risa sighed the way she’d done daily for the last decade, except that she’d also started to weave her frustration with me into whatever she was currently knitting. Another shawl in the color of our house, by the looks of the pale green rows, which she pulled from the wicker basket on the floor to place beside her on the golden velvet coverlet.
I rose, slipped off my seat, grabbed her knitting needles from the basket, and reached them to her gouty fingers before I sat back down. A silent apology for every contemptible remark I’d made over the last two weeks on this road.
And the remarks still to come.
I couldn’t help it.
Mother called me quarrelsome, obstinate, or worse each time she had to spend more than ten minutes in my presence. Being forced to endure my company in this carriage for so long didn’t improve her harsh assessments of me, and it positively diminished my ambition to prove her otherwise. Poor Risa was caught somewhere in the middle.
“Rotten.” Mother continued to stare out at the fields of brown and green-speckled wheat stalks, which weren’t a novelty as of late, so the word was likelier another timely appraisal of her disagreeable daughter. “The union between House Brisden and the crown is as much an honor as it is a blessing, even for a spoiled being such as yourself.”
My throat narrowed.
Spoiled…
Oh yes, the Lady Brisden had always been quick to give me everything I’d never asked for, and nothing of what I’d so desperately wanted. Her hug was in the tightness of my silk corsets. Her caress in the rich fabric of my dresses. Her kiss in the green gemstone that sat in a golden socket against my sternum.
