Chapter 16
Simpering Ain’t Easy
She had barely managed to relay her fake poisoning and fake-healing-but-real-poisoning casual morning catch-up with the diabolical commander to her friends before an attendant appeared at the end of their table.
“Already?” Ren seethed, glaring at the man, who had yet to speak.
The attendant blinked at Ren in shock, and Eiko curiously surveyed the fear tightening the edges of the man’s countenance. Nobody had ever approached her or her friends with fear before, but she supposed they weren’t the same people anymore.
Even her own grandmother would fear her, now.
Okay, that was a lie. Her grandmother would be threatening to whoop her butt all the way to Suntide for what she got up to in the stairwell last night.
Ky, who had remained the quietest during her rushed retelling, leaned close, his hand gripping her knee to get her attention. “I’ll try to talk to some of the Eclipse while you’re gone,” he whispered. “We need to know if he’s lying, or if he really did do that to all of them.”
She nodded. The attendant cleared his throat, but Rion interrupted him again by sighing and standing. “I don’t suppose we can finish our breakfast first?” she asked politely.
The attendant recovered quickly. “The King of All has requested—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Eiko grumbled, standing with Rion. “We know.”
Colour rose high in the man’s cheeks as he flicked his eyes between them, before turning on his heel and striding off with an annoyed sniff.
Rion delicately rolled her eyes, drawing Eiko’s arm through her own.
Eiko quickly grabbed a bread roll. She was loath to repeat the embarrassing bread-carcass incident of the previous day, but her second sight needed the calories, and there was no way she was enduring the King of All and the two princes blind.
It would be like baring her neck to a predator.
She needed all the insight she could glean, and as much of the upper hand as she could possibly grapple for.
“Do you think we could refuse?” she whispered to Rion, as they trailed the attendant from the barracks.
The other soldiers lifted their heads to witness the summoning. Their knowing, pitying looks had Eiko’s heart sinking. They certainly didn’t think Eiko or Rion were in a position to do anything except bow to the will and whimsy of the king.
“I’m not very experienced at refusing kings, are you?
” Rion whispered back. She appeared calm as a still lake, but the slightest hitch in her voice and the tinge of pink staining her cheeks belied her true emotion.
On Rion, that hitch sounded like the fuel of bright, flaring anger, buried deep under a very polished mask.
Eiko was in awe of her.
The most polished mask Eiko had was pretending not to hear or understand pointed questions while quickly changing the subject without any tact whatsoever. And she could bury her anger about as deep as surface level, or higher.
Probably higher.
“Practice makes perfect,” Eiko grumbled.
“I see we’re pacing ourselves again today,” Rion remarked, catching her eye, a hint of concern hiding behind her words.
Eiko gave her a guilty smile, releasing her grip on the second sight and immediately tripping down a staircase. Luckily, it was only a few stone steps, but she lay sprawled at the bottom in complete shock for several seconds before the pain began to radiate from her elbow and thigh.
“Eiko!” Rion chased after her, swearing gently. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Eh, it’s my fault.” Eiko waved away her concern, allowing Rion to help her back to her feet. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
The attendant made an offended choking noise, like he couldn’t quite believe she had just made fun of a person with a disability—even though that person was herself—like that sort of behaviour was utterly uncouth so close to the noble gates of Brightfort.
But he wasn’t blind, so he could learn to mind his own business.
“Oh shit, you’re bleeding.” Rion began fussing over her elbow, but the attendant only cleared his throat and began walking again, silently demanding they follow.
“There really is nothing I like more than being summoned like a dog to the foot of a powerful man,” Rion muttered, bending her head to deliver the low words against Eiko’s ear.
Eiko snorted. “But your pretty womb is happy, right?” she whispered back. “It’s getting very prettily excited to make pretty little gold babies, right?”
“So prettily excited it’s borderline obscene,” Rion agreed. “Someone really should cover my face. I’m not sure the prince will be able to wait for our wedding night once he sees just how gorgeously excited I am.”
They both fell into a fit of giggles, but Rion quickly snapped her mouth shut—presumably, the attendant was giving them looks over his shoulder. Eiko sighed, leaning close to whisper again.
“Is there a way out of this?”
“I don’t think so,” Rion grumbled back. “The princes themselves didn’t seem very excited about the prospect—how are we supposed to refuse when they couldn’t?”
“So this is happening, then?” Eiko forgot to whisper, the words coming out flat and disbelieving.
She was about to be engaged to a prince. If she didn’t die, or if none of them found a way to change the king’s mind … she could end up married to a prince.
Her.
Her.
The woman who stabbed peas instead of scooping them and was ridiculed to her face by fancy nobles for using big words like “barbaric” and having dumb, simple dreams like wishing for a horse.
She was going to be engaged to a prince.
What was he going to do? Keep her locked inside so that nobody could ever hear her speak or see her stumble down a set of stairs?
I thought King Grigori was clear on what you would be doing, Hymn said helpfully. You will be breeding, as he wants your power mixed in with his bloodline.
Yes, thank you, very helpful. I meant when I’m not being bred.
Then no, I don’t think he will keep you hidden. From the time I spent in Goldmoor—though it was during his father’s reign, so things might be different now—it was customary for the wives to be put on display. It was the mistresses who were kept hidden.
This was definitely a “one problem at a time” scenario. She barely had time to contemplate an unwilling betrothal; she couldn’t jump ten steps ahead of a wedding and start worrying about a mistress.
Or … a lover.
Her lover, specifically. The one who definitely already existed.
Shit.
“Shit,” she repeated out loud. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“You mean the worst-kept secret in Stonesigh?” Rion asked glibly. “The one you insisted was a hateful rumour for two years?”
Eiko gnawed on her lower lip in shame. “Maybe.”
“Everyone knows about you and Ren,” Rion told her, patting her hand. “Everyone except your stone-headed brother, who would absolutely murder the both of you. Ren is like a brother to him. That’s like his sister and his brother … you know.”
“It’s called fucking.”
“It’s called incest.”
“We’re not related.”
“According to Kaito, you are. According to him, it’s incest.”
“Please lower your tones,” the attendant hissed as they passed through one of the Brightfort halls and began climbing the first of a thousand staircases.
“Apologies,” Rion demurred smoothly.
Eiko waited a beat too long to add her own clumsy apology, and by then, it was too late, so she just kept her mouth stuffed with bread, polishing off the delightfully soft, buttery roll before the second staircase.
By the fourth, she was already hungry again.
They were led to another sitting room and directed to sit once more.
Eiko coaxed her second sight back into focus, drawing just enough to pull the illuminated sections of the room into focus—and the attendant, as he shifted busily around, pouring out little cups of tea and arranging shiny little cakes on a platter as he waved away the castle servants who had brought the fare into the room.
Once the servants left, they were alone with just the attendant who had led them there.
Rion was clinging tightly to her hand and didn’t even glance at the tray of tea and cakes the attendant set before them with a little snap, like dammit, this time someone will eat these cakes.
Not wanting to let the man down, Eiko quickly snatched one up that had been glazed in something shiny to make it look like molten gold. She bit into it, the inside warm, pillowy, and soft, with a custard centre. She tasted vanilla, wild honey, and just a little bit of citrus.
“Oh my sun.” She groaned around a mouthful of the cake. “Holy shit, this is good.”
The attendant just stared at her, a small sigh of despair slipping from his lips.
She polished off that cake and reached for another, making a show of feeling around the platter instead of plucking the cakes up like she could see them perfectly well, which she could, as the sun streamed through most of the room from the windows and mirrored reflections, leaving only the corners shrouded in shadow.
Her next cake was studded with tiny, ruby-red stoneberries; the berries popped in a familiar explosion when she bit into them, making her pause mid-chew, as aching nostalgia spread through her, immobilising her.
The hardy stoneberries only grew in the dust-choked, dry valley corridors of the Fingers, back in Stonesigh.
She had snuck out of the schoolhouse with Rion and Ky on more than one occasion to run wild through the maze, the brambles from the stoneberry bushes catching at their clothes.
They always returned with red-stained fingers and red-stained mouths, and Kaito and Ren were always there to roll their eyes and quickly clean them up before any of the adults noticed the evidence of their exploring.
Eiko swallowed hard, the cake threatening to lodge inside her throat and choke her.