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“I’m sorry. I should have gotten word to you sooner.” I brushed back her hair, then sat beside her on the bed. “She…Em…The Reaperis dead.”
Sophie’s eyes widened and she made the sign of the three mothers across her chest. “A Reaper? By the gods, I thought such things were gone?”
“Not as gone as they should be.” I muttered.
“Then I’m the one who should be sorry, my lady.” Sophie was as white as the sheets on my bed. “She was your friend. Did you…did youkill her?”
“I had no choice, I’m only sorry she hurt you, Sophie.” I scrubbed my face, resolving to deal with Ember’s death later. “I need to bathe. Then I have to attend today’s audience. Then figure out how to get into my father’s royal offices and find something.”
Sophie’s lips pursed, as if she wanted to counsel me against such madness, but then she hopped up and got a tray off the side table. “When did you last eat?”
“I have no idea.”
She set the tray on the bed. “Eat first, then a bath, then I’ll help you get dressed. The seamstress brought a new gown this morning. No one came looking for you, except for that awful Lord Gravelock. But I heard he returned to the Shadowlands late last night.”
I drank the cold coffee in three swallows, the stale toast in two bites. “Good. I hope I never see him again. He’s probably still angry I married Tavion Montgomery instead of him.” I stripped off the jacket, plopped on the bed and started on the strawberries.
Sophie barked out a laugh. “I thought that was a wild rumor. Well…at least he’s handsome. And rich.” Yes, there was a time when that might have mattered, but now I had bigger things to consider. Paper rustled as she opened the package.
“Well…this is quite beautiful.”
She held the dress up and I narrowed my eyes. The gownwasbeautiful. Beautiful and revealing, and nothing like the others. “Did you ask the seamstress to make this?” I rubbed the velvet between my fingers. It was the finest quality I’d ever seen and the lace was exquisite.
“No, my lady. I just took the delivery this morning.”
“All right.” I was too tired to care what I wore. I fell asleep in the bath, slipping under the water and popping back up after nearly drowning myself, then dozed off while Sophie fixed my hair into a complicated arrangement.
But I got my second wind when I saw myself in the mirror, the midnight blue dress hugging every curve. I actually had breasts, plumped up over the lace, a tiny waist, the skirts flaring out over my hips. Sophie painted my eyes extra black, my lips red and stepped back. “You look beautiful, my lady. The king will be proud.”
“My father will not care one bit. I’ve already filled his coffers.”
But every day put me further away from the slave girl in the worn-out slippers and a little bit closer to the cold-blooded Descendants who’d once owned me.
The air in the throne room paused when I stepped passed through the doorway, as if the entire realm knew I was heading to my doom.
“Wife.”
Tavion’s deep voice froze me in my tracks, every muscle in my body going taut. “Allow me to escort you today, as a good husband should.”
I turned in slow motion, to find Tavion Montgomery offering me his arm. His white hair was swept into a long tail, there was no sign he’d been brawling an hour ago, his knuckles completely healed over.
“Take my arm, Anaria.” He murmured quietly. “The vultures are watching.”
Too tired to fight, I slid my hand beneath his, my arm pressed firmly against his warm body, his calloused hand trapping mine when he turned us down the center aisle. “You look exquisite today. The dress becomes you, as I knew it would.”
“This is from you?” My heart hammered in my chest. Of course, this was from him. Another game, another chess move on a board I couldn’t even see.
“A gift.” He nodded to someone in the crowd as we passed, but I was busy watching the king, his dark gaze leveled upon us, as if waiting for me to make a mistake.
“I should have known.” I lifted my chin higher, turned my smile up a notch. “I never would have ordered something like this.”
“And yet you look like a queen.” He said smoothly, settling me into the front row before sliding in beside me, close enough our thighs touched. I went to scoot away and he grasped my wrist. “He’s watching. Stay still. We are married, after all.”
Being told what to do by Tavion Montgomery sent my hackles rising, but I stayed where I was and before long, my father forgot all about me, focusing instead on line of terrified supplicants.
I blocked out the scene in front of me and tried to figure out Tavion’s game.
He’d be better off letting Gravelocke cart me off to the Shadowlands, instead of paying a trunkful of gold for someone he despised. Which meant Tavion benefitted by keeping me in Blackcastle.
