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“I’m nineteen,” Mattias confirmed, setting down his load and flexing his arms. “What am I going to do?”
“Nothing.” Scarlett jerked the satchel of tea from her bag.
“Delivering a secret message to Princess Meera.” Tarley dropped her voice to whisper the name.
“What?” Mattias stopped moving. “Why?”
Scarlett straightened, her back stiff. “Absolutely not. Everything I have done has been to keep you all safe from danger. Why would I agree to send my son into the heart of it?”
“Mother, she’s in danger. Failure to act–”
Mattias stepped forward, looking as if the world suddenly made sense. “I can do it.”
“What’s it to us—to our family?”
“It could be everything, Mother!” Tarley exclaimed. “Do nothing and the Law of Means possibly becomes something worse?”
Scarlett sighed.
“Tarley’s right,” Tomas said, stacking wood next to the stove. “The queen and her sister are Kaloma’s greatest chance for change. Without them–” He shook his head.
“I can do it,” Mattias leaned over the counter. “It will be easy.”
“That would be an overstatement,” Tomas warned.
Mrs. Barnwell walked in through the door. “Well, look at this! I need you Fareviews here every night!”
Scarlett sighed and filled a steaming cup. “I’ll take this.”
Tarley put a hand on Scarlett’s arm. “I’ll do it.”
Scarlett looked like she wanted to argue, but then didn’t and slid the cup toward Tarley. “This will make her drowsy.”
Tarley squeezed her mother’s forearm before retracing her steps back to the queen’s room. At the door she stopped and took a deep breath.
Ollie is Prince Lachlan.
Her cheeks heated, recalling his head between her thighs.
She shook her thoughts away and took another deep breath, knowing she couldn’t afford to allow her past to invade her present. He was a prince. She was a commoner. The two didn’t mix. When they’d still been in the woods, she’d accepted he would leave, and she would remain. Wanted it even. She would pack the experience away in her mind to take out and treasure every so often.
After a quick knock, she entered. “Your tea, Rose.” She shut the door and crossed the room to the queen’s bedside.
“Just the woman we were discussing,” the queen said.
“Keyanna–” Lachlan warned.
Smoothing her skirt, Tarley’s gaze jumped back and forth between Lachlan, whose presence reminded her what she wanted to forget, and the queen, whose smile unnerved her.
“I need you to–” the queen started.
“Keyanna, wait,” Lachlan interrupted. “Please–”
“Please what? Tarley’s a Kaloma subject. She’ll do what her queen needs her to do.”
“I know how that works,” Lachlan said, sounding annoyed.
Tarley’s heart tightened in her chest. “Excuse me?”
