Chapter 28
Afternoon Tea
Morning comes sooner than I would like, and by noon the message arrives: the Prince requests that I serve him afternoon tea.
It is delivered with the same politeness one might use for a scheduling change or a reminder about attire.
I know the timing is intentional. The ball is tonight.
The court will be watching. He wants to remind me, and the palace with me, that I do not take tea with him.
I serve instead. Whatever passed between us yesterday, he intends to correct it before the court sees us together.
I dress with care, because I have learned that humiliation is never accidental, and I will not meet it unprepared.
Outside the study, Emva waits. She presses the tray into my hands, steadying it before I can. The porcelain is warm. Her fingers remain there a moment longer than necessary. “Do not let them break you,” she murmurs, her voice low enough that the corridor will not carry it.
Them? I nod once anyway.
She pulls me into a brief embrace, fierce and wordless, then steps away at once.
I enter alone.
I expect to find only Colsar. Instead, my father stands near the windows, his posture rigid.
Mysin stands beside him, one eye swollen shut, bruising still dark along his cheek.
His bandaged hand rests where I cannot avoid seeing it.
Neither of them bows. Neither of them acknowledges that I am now a Princess of the realm.
Colsar sits behind the table, already at ease, as though he has been waiting.
“Pour,” he says.
I cross the room and obey. Tea for the Prince first, then my father, then my brother.
I note where I stand in the room and the distance to the door.
My father accepts his cup. His eyes drag over me with contempt.
“You made a spectacle of yourself at the wedding,” he says.
“Unveiling as though restraint were beneath you.”
“How else was I meant to do it?” I ask quietly.
“You did not need to reveal your eyes,” he replies. “Glamour is the only thing you have ever been competent at. Hiding yourself. Masking what you truly are.”
He studies me, unsoftened. “You disgust me.” The words are familiar enough, yet they still hurt. All the same, I keep my posture composed.
Mysin lifts his cup.
Then, casually, deliberately, he lets it slip from his fingers. It shatters at my feet. Tea splashes across the floor, dark against the pale surface. He looks down at the mess, then at me, faint amusement tugging at his mouth. “Well?” he says. “You made it. You should clean it.”
For a moment, I am no longer in the palace. I am smaller. Lower. Waiting to be told when I may rise.
Colsar does nothing.
I kneel. The floor is warm where the tea has spilled. I gather broken porcelain carefully, methodically, as though this is an ordinary task rather than an offering. Mysin watches with open interest, savoring the slowness of it. The control.
And still, Colsar says nothing.
My father watches me for a moment, then turns to Colsar with the ease of a man offering advice on livestock. “She responds to firmness,” he says. “Always has. When she was insolent, confinement worked. Removal of comfort. There were nights she was put outside. It corrected her quickly.”
Mysin’s smile widens.
“If she forgets herself here,” my father continues, “I would recommend the same. Especially if conditions are unpleasant. It reminds her where she stands. The whip works too.”
Colsar does not look at my father, but the porcelain cup in his hand cracks slightly beneath his fingers.
For a moment, the present thins, and I am back at the Baron’s house, my back bleeding as I listen for footsteps that never come.
I remain silent.
Colsar’s attention stays on me. “I will ensure,” he says, “that you do not forget where you came from.” His voice is cold. Conversation moves on as though this has all been incidental.
The Threns pressing the border. Supply shortages. The usefulness of my father’s funds. Alarna’s uncertain position and the danger should they align as expected. They speak of war as though it is an accounting exercise.
I stand there holding a tray, already dismissed without being told so.
“She has fulfilled some terms of our contract,” Colsar says, glancing toward me. “Though not all.”
The implication is pointed. My father’s satisfaction is unmistakable.
At last, I am waved away. I turn to go. At the threshold, I pause. “I will remember this,” I whisper.
Colsar does not answer, but the silence that follows tells me everything I need to know.
The corridor beyond the study is cooler, the marble holding the last of the afternoon’s shade.
I walk without direction at first, only away from the shattered porcelain, from my father’s voice, from the quiet satisfaction in my brother’s smile.
My knees still remember the floor. What I cannot stop thinking about is the Prince.
My father’s contempt and Mysin’s cruelty are old wounds, familiar enough that I know them well, but it is Colsar I cannot make sense of.
Only yesterday he had stood beside me at luncheon with his mother, amused in a way that felt almost dangerous. Only hours later he had dragged me into the corridor outside the baths, furious that anyone might see what he called his. His hand had hovered at my jaw. His mouth had nearly touched mine.
Like something I want, he had said.
And today he made me kneel. He let my father speak of me as though I were an animal to be corrected, let Mysin enjoy it, and watched me gather shattered porcelain from the floor.
I slow at the end of the corridor, breath catching in my chest.
Was yesterday the lie, or today? Was the man at the baths real, all heat and hunger and restraint? Or was that only another form of cruelty, another way to remind me that whatever softness I imagined was mine alone?
Against my will, I remember the way he looked last night, damp from the pools, shirt half fastened, his voice rough. There was tension in his hands, as though touching me might break something he did not trust himself to control.
I hate that part most of all. The way my mind reaches for the moment anyway. The way some traitorous piece of me still wonders which version of him is true. This is what power does, I think. It confuses. It teaches the body to mistake danger for gravity.
I force the thought away. Tonight there will be a ball. The court will watch. And the Prince will stand somewhere in that room, whether beside me or beside another woman. Before the night is over, I will learn which of us he intends to humiliate.