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“Very good use.” I’m blushing again—I can practically feel my chest and cheeks getting heated and splotchy. Someday perhaps I’ll learn to control that reaction.
Rupert chants the spell over the cupcakes, using Elvish words this time. There’s no glimmer of magic, no sign that his words had any effect.
I frown, puckering my lips. “Are you sure it worked?”
“I’m sure.”
“If you’re wrong…”
“I know.”
We both stand there for a moment, staring at the cupcakes. If he’s wrong, I’ll have to fuck the King.
There’s nothing else to say after that. We finish cleaning the kitchen, and then I set the cupcakes neatly on plates and place them inside a box made of stiff brown paper. I tie it up with string, and then Rupert and I head back to my room. The guard unlocks the door for us, and Rupert helps me move over a few peacock figurines and set the box on the dresser.
Fuck… I didn’t ask him how much the King needed to consume before the spell would take effect. A few bites? One whole cupcake? Two? And I can’t ask now, because the guard is standing in the hallway, holding the door, waiting for Rupert to leave so he can lock me in again.
“We made a lot of cupcakes,” I say pointedly, hoping Rupert will perceive the question behind the words. “I may have some left over.”
“I hope His Majesty enjoys them,” he replies.
He didn’t understand my question, and I don’t dare clarify, because the guard clears his throat impatiently.
Our time together is over for tonight. I hope Rupert knows it will be too dangerous for him to try to see me tomorrow while I’m the center of the maids’ attention, under the supervision of the matron, Lady Reese. He should spend his time trying to track down the fennisley.
“I’ll have a busy day tomorrow, preparing for the King,” I comment as he heads for the door.
“Such an honor to serve the King,” Rupert says tightly. “Goddess be with you.”
“And with you.”
I wish I’d thought to kiss him once more in the kitchen, but we were so busy tidying the place and packing the cupcakes that I forgot. So I can give him nothing but those three words and a cool little nod. And he has to walk out of the room without a backward glance, as if I am nothing to him—just another royal concubine.
We haven’t given a name to the thing between us, the tenuous invisible cord that seems to grow thicker and more solid which each passing hour we spend together. I’m afraid to label the connection. Afraid it will disappear, or worse—be snipped apart by the ruthless shears of the King’s will.
I think if that cord was cut, it would drip my heart’s lifeblood.
15
The next evening, after a day of ablutions and beauty treatments, I stand at the door of the King’s chambers, flanked by two guards, with two more bracketing the doorway and others standing a little farther down the hall. In my hands is a box of the charmed cupcakes, already tested and approved by the King’s taster, the boy who served as the living table for His Majesty in the audience chamber. After taking a bite of one cupcake and being observed for several minutes, he retreated into a room across the hall from the King’s.
I’m not sure what the King’s relationship with the boy is. He looks barely eighteen, if that, and by all accounts the King prefers women. But there’s something in the boy’s manner—the half-jealous, half-pitying way he glances at me, the placement of certain bruises on his half-naked body—I suspect the King takes pleasure with him occasionally. I don’t envy the boy his dangerous placement, so near to the cruel and fickle Crown.
Tonight, I’ll be the one in the presence of that toxic power, utterly vulnerable to the King’s word and whim. With every bit of my body and soul, I hope Rupert laid the right spell on the cupcakes. I hope it works.
But I have a plan if it doesn’t. Breathe through the pain, keep my mind on pleasant things, and endure until it’s over. Do whatever the King demands, then erase the whole incident from my mind afterward.
I can do this. I must do this.
A man opens the double doors to the King’s chamber. “You can bring her in now.”
The guards on either side of me advance, and I walk forward with them. Ivory silk whispers around my body, clings to the curves of my breasts and belly. I’m entirely smooth, clean, scented with the King’s favorite fragrance, and my hair flows in loose waves down my back. My feet are bare, my nails tinted pink, my calluses filed away, and my lips and lashes enhanced with cosmetics.
I am the perfect offering for His Majesty.
When my brother lied, did he know what would happen to me? He must have guessed some of it, surely.
Prain put me in this position. He set in motion the chain of events that brought me here, into this magnificent cavern far too spacious to be called a bedroom. My brother should have realized that I would be forced to pleasure the King in the great silken expanse of his royal bed.
