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“Reckon because it looked plenty like chicken once plucked and roasted.” Risa walked away from the wooden tub in which I’d bathed earlier and rounded my bed. “The people are starving, Galantia.”
“I know.” I turned away from the window, pressing a hand against that sudden cramp in my stomach. “Gods confound it. Eating aside, I shouldn’t feel so ill over this. She was a Raven.”
Evil. Wicked.
The reason for devastated fields, starving subjects, and nearly twenty-five years of bloodshed and hostility. All in the name of a Raven who had kidnapped and raped King Barat’s betrothed, breaking faith with us humans in the most corrupted way.
I stroked a hand over my hair, sleek again since the curls had been washed out, thinking back on how Father had patted my head after I’d killed that Raven boy.The prince.Who’d apparently been kept in our dungeons after all, for reasons I’d never dared to ask.
Not that it mattered.
Had I been born a boy, I would hunt down those Ravens myself, doing Father proud once more. The bells had tolledfor methat day, and I wouldn’t let this unpleasantness drive out the memory of those chimes.
“Ravens are an evil pest that need to be burned away like the ones they spread over our fields,” I said, my spine straightening with new resolve. “One more Raven dead is one less Raven our soldiers will have to face on the battlefield.”
A moment of silence and then…
“I told you not to look.” Risa’s berating remark drew my attention to where she frowned at the sweat-dampened, crumpled sheets on my bed, which she flattened with even strokes of her hand. “But you wouldn’t listen, and now you tossed and turned all night.”
“Because yousnored. Truly, it’s become rather excessive over the years.” I stepped over to the fire in the hearth where my clay curlers heated in an iron basket that sat in the embers, already wearing my shoes, my gemstone necklace, and a green silk gown with too many frills, laces, and grommets. “I’m fine, and you’re fussing too much.”
When her gaze settled on a white down feather that must have escaped the pillow during said tossing and turning, her hand stalled for a moment, only to brush it off the bed with a disapproving shake of her head. “Yes, you’ve gone from a child to a woman grown. The old nursemaid stays behind with nobody left to fuss over. At least let me fuss while I still have you.”
While I still have you…
Pressure built behind my eyes, strange and unwelcome. Two more weeks on the road, and I would finally escape Tidestone. I would run, and cry, and walk in the rain, and touch all the damn knives I could!
And also leave Risa behind.
Father had meant to dismiss her when I’d turned twelve, saying that she had long outstayed our need of her, but Mother insisted on keeping her. Likely so she wouldn’t have to deal with me.
My nose suddenly turned stuffy as though I was about to cry. Unlikely. I hadn’t shed a tear in… gods, I couldn’t even say how long.
I blinked. Blinked again.
No tears came.
Just as well. How I would manage Ammarett without Risa, I didn’t know, but I could hardly bring my nursemaid to the marriage bed…
“Very well, the pipe clay should be plenty hot now.” I walked over to the upholstered stool and sat. “The gods know it takes quite some fussing to get my hair to coil without it breaking. Will that do?”
A smile hiked the wrinkled corners of Risa’s mouth as she hurried over, grabbed the long handle of the iron basket from the fire, and carefully set it on a small table beside me that had already gone black from old burn marks. “There will be no finer bride in all of Dranada the day you wed the prince.”
Clad in the tightest corset yet, I sat compliantly still as Risa ran a soft bristle brush over my scalp. “Why I’m forced to survive on little gasps of air still many days away from Ammarett is beyond—”
Thud.
Dust rilled from the crossbeams, making me look up into the gables before I glanced over my shoulder back at Risa. “What was that?”
She squinted up, fingers slipping off my hair, but it was the barks of soldiers that had her spin toward the door. Heavy footsteps, metal clanking against metal, the sound of wooden furniture shifting over the floorboards… it all drifted into my room through the gap at the bottom of the door.
A feverish chill spread across my nape, clashing with the waft of heat from the clay curlers sitting beside me. Was I imagining this for lack of sleep? Making a fuss of it for something as simple as the guards readying themselves for our departure?
The moment I rose toward the window, trying to see if they’d finally finished preparing the carriage, Risa grabbed my arm. “No. Don’t let anybody see you in the window. We will stay in this room, Galantia, until Captain Theolif says otherwise.”
Surely she had to be overreacting. “Maybe a brawl—”
Glass shattered.
