Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Aurelia
A s temple bells peal the seventh hour of the evening, Melisse arrives to lead the way to dinner as promised. We travel along a couple of sprawling hallways and down a sweeping staircase to a room nearly as large and grand as the one where I met the emperor earlier this afternoon.
A line of gold-and-crystal chandeliers glisten overhead amid a ceiling painted with animals in elegant outfits frolicking across clouds. And they literally do frolic. My breath catches when I realize they’ve been enchanted to twirl and dip in their fanciful dance.
Tapestries and paintings of hunting scenes adorn the walls between gilded panels, blessed with more illusionary magic. Animals poke their heads from around trees; hounds run in place amid horses’ clopping hooves.
Several sturdy but gleaming wooden tables stand in a couple of rows at the nearer end of the room, each capable of holding a dozen diners. A massive banquet table twice the size dominates the farther end, with a throne-like chair at both the head and the foot.
Those two seats are currently empty, but it’s easy to guess who’ll be sitting in them. I recognize several other faces around the table: women who were called to compete for Marclinus’s hand, nobles from the crowd who are perhaps relatives of theirs… and the four foster princes.
Keeping Melisse’s comments in mind as I approach, I attach names to their faces.
Prince Raul, the tall, brawny one with his cocoa-brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, sits a couple of seats over from one of the throne-like chairs, flashing a smile at the noblewoman seated next to him.
Leaning back in his seat at the opposite end of the table is Prince Lorenzo, the well-built but not quite as massive man with the rich brown skin, intense dark eyes, and apparently no tongue. He has Prince Bastien—hair the reddish brown of cinnamon, pale and slender and missing a lung—as a neighbor.
I can only see the back of Prince Neven’s white-blond head and wide shoulders, but his teenage gangliness sets him a little apart from the figures around him.
Prince Bastien’s gaze flicks my way briefly. His dark green eyes seem to harden before he tugs his attention away.
Each of the place settings with their gold-rimmed plates and polished silverware appears to have been assigned. Melisse directs me to one specific chair, with a woman whose name I think was Lady Iseppa at my left and Lady Rochelle with her cloud of pale curls at my right.
I’m a little relieved not to directly face any of the princes’ glowers, understandable or not. Across from me sits a woman I haven’t met yet, perhaps in her late twenties, with her black hair arranged in sleek, coiled braids. The upswept style tells me she’s married.
She’s an odd pairing with the flame-haired Lady Fausta next to her—as voluptuous as Fausta is slim, her smooth brown skin contrasting with Fausta’s porcelain pallor.
When I looked at myself in the mirror a couple of hours ago, I was decently satisfied with what I saw. Across from these contrasting beauties, it’s hard to imagine I’ll catch the imperial heir’s eye. In comparison with their striking coloring, I’m a much drabber alternative. My figure is neither as gracefully delicate as Fausta’s nor as impressively curvaceous as her neighbor’s.
But both Marclinus and his father made it clear that looks are hardly the only factor that matters.
The unfamiliar woman cocks her head at a coy angle, studying me through her eyelashes. “And here’s the wild princess in our midst.”
There’s nothing outright insulting about her words. Accasy is often referred to as the “wild north” even among those of us who live there, if more tongue-in-cheek when speaking of our home. But her arch tone suggests she means it as a subtle jab.
Lady Fausta gives her neighbor a teasing nudge with her elbow, a familiar enough gesture for me to gather that they’re friends. “Let’s not nag at the poor thing, Bianca. She’ll have little enough time to appreciate the splendor of the palace before she’s gone.”
My competitor’s smirk leaves no doubt about how exactly she imagines I’ll depart: with my throat slit in a pool of blood.
I keep my returning smile demure. “It is a lovely palace. I’m actually thinking I’ll stay quite a while. ”
One of the ladies a little farther down the table makes a sound like a muffled guffaw. At the edge of my vision, I think I see Prince Raul’s head twitch our way.
Bianca trails her graceful fingers along the edge of her knife. “Such high aspirations.”
Fausta has narrowed her eyes. “You’re going to find—” she starts.
A chime rings through the room, and everyone falls silent, their gazes dropping to the table. When I tense in confusion, Lady Rochelle leans a little closer with a rustle of her unruly curls. “Their Imperial Eminences,” she murmurs from the corner of her mouth.
We’re not supposed to look at the emperor and his heir as they arrive at the table? Restraining my eyebrows from shooting up at this absurdity, I flash her a grateful smile and fix my gaze on my plate.
It’s then that I recognize the distinctive whorled grain of the ruddy wood beneath it. This table was built from bream cedar.
A vise closes around my chest. I knew the Darium shipbuilders favored breamwood above all else, but I didn’t realize it was being imported for other uses as well.
Bream cedars, those towering evergreens so vast it’d take three of me to wrap my arms around the trunk, only grow in Accasy. How many men and women did the emperor drag from their homes and force into the arduous trek across the continent to deliver the trees that made this piece of furniture, with his “gratitude” as sole payment?
My family compensates the conscripted workers once they return. But they don’t all make it back. And the ones the emperor’s representatives like, who they call back to the job with barely a break, are lucky to see their families more than a few days a year .
All so His Imperial Majesty and his nobles can dine at this damned table.
My teeth have set on edge. I inhale and exhale slowly, expelling the prickle of anger. It won’t serve me right now.
This is simply a reminder of why I have to beat the emperor’s game. Of all the people who need me to be in a position to advocate for them.
With a rasp of chair legs, Emperor Tarquin and Marclinus take their seats.
“Your respect is noted,” the emperor says in a wry tone, as if the nobles are offering deference of their own accord and not because they fear for their heads if they disappoint him.
Postures straighten around the table. Servants circulate the room, carrying carafes of amber-colored wine.
That looks familiar too.
I don’t react as it’s poured into my goblet, glancing around the table instead. The emperor sits confidently erect at his end, his lips curving slightly as the man next to him says something with an ingratiating expression. Marclinus lazes in his seat like he did in his throne in the audience room, carelessly flicking his hand at a server to add more to his glass.
Between them, a number of the ladies have stiffened. Bracing themselves in case another trial is announced.
The voices I can hear sound studied, performative. With every statement, eyes dart across their neighbors to gauge the response. Even the laughter of the lady at my left sounds more artful than spontaneous.
The homesickness that hit me earlier swells between my ribs. Suddenly, all I can picture are the dinners back home with my family’s closest allies, the jovial ribbing and spirited debates. The warmth that filled the space from far more than just the hearth .
Rochelle’s gaze slides toward me. She wiggles the handle of her fork. “So… how long does a carriage ride from Accasy take, anyway?”
The genuine if quiet curiosity in her voice relieves the strain just a little.
I keep my voice light but low so only she will hear. “The better part of three weeks. It would have been faster riding horseback, but harder on my ass.”
I wait to see if she’ll blanch with revulsion or sputter indignantly at my undignified language. Instead, Rochelle presses her knuckles to her lips against a chortle.
All right, at least one person in this place isn’t completely awful.
My new acquaintance opens her mouth as if to say something else, but at the same moment, Emperor Tarquin raises his goblet. Another silence sweeps over the table in an instant.
“We have such wonderful company for dinner tonight,” he says in a regal tone pitched to carry throughout the room. “So many fine ladies for my son to consider. In honor of the most recent arrival among those ladies, we’re drinking creekvine wine tonight, transported all the way from distant Accasy. I hope Princess Aurelia will enjoy the taste of home. But drink cautiously—I hear this is a potent vintage.”
Who did he hear that from? The soldiers and overseers who tramp into our taverns to demand the stuff, who call it “wild wine” and let themselves run wild in the most savage possible way while they’re drunk on it?
I force a grin and lift my goblet to match his informal toast. My first sip burns down my throat, tart and heady.
Every Accasian knows half a glass of creekvine wine is enough, meant to be savored slowly.
The servants pass around slivers of fresh-baked bread dipped in pungent oil, then collect our plates before bringing the first full course. Each plate arrives covered in a silver dome.
Rochelle receives her food first: a roll of crisp pastry stuffed with herb-speckled cheese and drizzled with crimson sauce. As the server deposits mine, my eyes drop to the plate—and my heart skips a beat.
There at the base of the roll, small enough that no one would notice it except at the angle of my seat, the sauce appears to have congealed into the blurred but readable shapes of seven letters. They burn into my vision like a message written in blood.
TRAITOR.