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Chapter 7
Ihad just fallen asleep maybe an hour or two ago when the door to my room was opened. Restless, I had been up all night, thinking about my poor mother, my angry father, the ball from the night before, and how much I had insulted Alrick for his beard. Even I, the Night Queen, was not quite monster enough to insult a man in mourning.
All night, I thought of how to apologize to him without, well, apologizing. I was too proud for that and also worried it would make me look weak and undo all the torture I had caused to keep my life to myself. It was too late to turn back now, and I refused to be some kept animal to a proud, Northern husband.
“Your Highness,” Frida said softly, trying to wake me.
“Not yet, Frida. I don’t feel well.”
“Your Highness, it’s very important.”
That tone in her voice. I instantly pushed the silken blanket down to my hip and sat up. My curls were hanging loose over my white silk nightgown, which fell down to the floor in several layers. It was a little too big and sometimes slipped over my shoulders.
I looked straight at Frida. Her lips were trembling, her face white as if she’d seen a ghost.
“Frida, are you not well?”
I gently placed my hand on the wrinkled, rough one she’d placed on my bed.
“No, Your Highness. It’s not me.”
“Then what is it?”
A cold shiver crept up my spine as I stood.
“Father? Is he sick?” Flashes of my mother’s lifeless eyes filled my mind.
I was about to storm out of the room when Frida grabbed my wrist. My eyes fell onto her firm grip.
“Your father is well,” she quickly said.
I let out a forced breath of annoyance.“Then what is it?”
Frida looked at me, then away.
“For Christ’s sake, Frida, speak!”
Frida placed a trembling hand to her mouth. “It’s almost too horrid to say,” she said as tears formed in her eyes.
Grabbing her trembling hand, a storm of emotions ran through me. If it wasn’t my father, and my mother was already taken from me, then there was only one tragedy left. The one thing I’d feared more than death.
“He has settled on a suitor, hasn’t he?” For some strange reason, my first thought jumped to Alrick and how I had insulted him for nothing. Then my emotions turned into rage. Rage, rage, rage. How could my father do this to me?
Frida nodded as the first tears started to run down her cheek. I put an arm around her, feeling the strange need to comfort my old maid even though it was my life that was about to end.
“It will be all right, Frida. I will talk to him. I won’t let him marry me off to some Northern nobleman.”
Frida wept louder.
“Your Highness, it’s terrible, most dreadful.”
“It will be all right.” But Frida kept crying. I sighed. “Is it the dried branch he wants to marry me to? That would still be better than the wine barrel with his buttery chicken hands,” I joked, trying to cheer her up. But rather than laughing, Frida threw her head into both of her hands and wept more.
“It’s worse than that.”
My hand slipped off her shoulder as I took a step back.
“How could it possibly be worse than that?” I asked.
