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“Spoiled at your command, Mother,” I said. “Surely you will not blame a daughter for her parents’ poor choices where her childhood rearing was concerned?”
“Always so clever in your responses.” Her eyes narrowed, a rare display of emotion that looked utterly out of place on her usually straight face. “I should have allowed Risa to take a belt to your behind.”
I shifted, my breathing somehow spurred on by the sudden image of leather striking my rear. What kind of pain would it cause? A hot sting? Or more like an expanding chill? I wouldn’t know.
Pain was a stranger.
“Perhaps you should have,” I challenged, as if I was ready to lift my skirts to Risa, even though I stood over a head taller than the old woman. “Why didn’t you?”
Something restless swirled around in my chest as I waited for a response. A remark on my impudence, my mulishness, my disobedience. Anything! How about my lack of a penis? She hadn’t lamented about it for months.
Mother only clenched her lips.
Cold. Distant. Silence.
How… disappointing.
I watched this woman who’d birthed me—and under great strain, if Risa’s accounts were to be believed. The dreary bit of light that caught on Mother’s pearl-embellished braid only emphasized her graying hair, and the way her jaws clenched distorted her regal features. Worse was how I still found her beautiful, with a natural grace that must have been the envy of all nobility once upon a time.
With seemingly nothing left to argue about, I brushed a curl from my face. Those erratic coils Risa had put in my hair were subdued by the same pearl pins Mother wore. She hadn’t bothered to remark on them, probably hadn’t even seen them, for that would require her to look at me. Might as well get rid of them.
I pulled one from my hair, lowering it onto my coverlet. Why had I even chosen them? As much as Mother loved pearls, they never truly stood out against my alabaster tresses.
“But I agree,” I said after endless moments of uncomfortable quiet. “This betrothal is a blessing. Unto the crown, that is.”
After all, Tidestone remained the last stronghold between the Raven’s ruthless revenge and Dranada’s capital, Ammarett. Whereas some human lords had sworn fealty to the usurper who led those black-haired warlocks and witches now, Father remained steadfast in fighting off their attacks. What better way to keep the Lord Brisden loyal to King Barat than to join houses?
“You should thank your father for arranging this match, and all he has given you.” Mother waved her hand over the ornate interior of our carriage, likely as a reminder of all the niceties I’d been afforded in lieu of something as simple as a kind word uttered from my parents’ lips. “Truly, Galantia, there’s no room in this for your dismay.”
“Dismay?”
Stifling a laugh, I ran my hand over the fine threads of gold that adorned my ivory dress, every stitch carefully placed to bring out the value of my womb. If anything, I was looking forward to a life away from Father’s silent disappointment and Mother’s vocal disdain.
Not to mention the suffocating restrictions of nonsensical rules that had wrapped me like porcelain for years.Don’t run, Galantia. Don’t cry, Galantia. Don’t walk in the rain, Galantia. Don’t touch the knife, Galantia.
For someone who only ever found scorn for me, the Lady Brisden had an unhealthy obsession with my safety—something I used to tell myself was her way of showing that she loved me. In the end, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t so much a desire to keep me alive, but simply not to watch another child of hers die.
“You mistake me, Mother.” I opened one of the panes on the window, the fields stretched before me burnt black, which we passed at a fast trot. “I am quite pleased with the match.”
I would marry King Barat’s only living son, heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Dranada. That he was about as appealing to look at as mutton stew was of no concern to me. Maybe it took a ghastly prince to make me feel wanted. Adored.Loved.
For just once in my life.
In the field ahead, a woman knelt in the blackened mud, her white bonnet smudged and her threadbare dress coming apart at the seams. Not once did she glance toward our carriage, her entire focus on tilling the ground while the baby strapped to her back with linen wailed.
“Why did they burn all the fields?” I asked.
“Plant lice, potato wilt, worms, swarms of crickets.” Risa shook her head, letting the polished bone of her needles clank together in quick succession. “The only way for the farmers to get rid of these pests is fire.”
Pests the Ravens had spread across the lands, leaving Father’s subjects starving and his army at half rations. I’d overheard a kitchen maid tell another not long ago that entire flocks of them had darkened the sky, devastating our harvests.
My temples ached with each piercing cry as we passed the woman and her baby, and the road so deeply furrowed after days of rain, the carriage jostled me around. “It’s strange, don’t you think? That the Ravens have been holding Deepmarsh Castle and the Hanneling Hold for months now, but never attacked Tidestone?”
“It’s the ocean breeze and the wind cutting along our cliffs,” Risa said, her hair long since as white as her bonnet, pinned-back under the cotton as strictly as ever. “Thank the gods, Ravens struggle to fly in those currents, making them easy targets for our arrows and nets. Without them, no doubt this… Lord of Shadows would have turned our guts into a feast for his followers by now.”
Lord of Shadows.
That name was whispered with fear and worry from the kitchens to the stables. With nothing but a thought, that warlock could cast an entire village into the blackness of his shadows, or so rumors had it. Where he’d come from, I didn’t know, but in five short years, he’d managed to assemble a devout army of Ravens around him.
