“Mariana, darling, let me take care of this,” Edmund drawled, stepping around the witch. And suddenly, it was her own son who was blocking her escape into the corridor, though she could have very well still turned and darted down the stairs. She would eventually end up in the kitchens. She could escape out into the courtyard.
As if sensing her thoughts, her own flesh and blood warned, “Don’t even think about it,” before he grabbed her by both shoulders and slammed her against the wall behind her, jolting the air from her lungs.
Her mind flashed back to fifteen years ago, when her round-cheeked little boy had delighted in flinging his arms around her neck and telling her how much he loved her, how he would never love another woman more.
Her throat thickened. Her eyes burned.
Where had that boy gone?
“Mother,” Edmund whispered against her ear, his voice barely audible even that close. “I need you to trust me. I am going to get you out of here. Not tonight, but soon.”
Confusion seized her aching heart. She thrashed against his hold. “You let her kill Hews!”
“Trust me,” he whispered again, squeezing her shoulders. But then he pulled away and shouted, “And I will let her kill you too if you keep vexing me, woman!” Glancing at Igor, he commanded, “Take her back to the dungeon, but this time, clap her in irons.”
Her son stared straight through her, as if he couldn’t see her at all, when he added on a softer note, “She cannot be allowed to escape again.”
Chapter seven
Seraphina
The sudden press of her godmother’s hand against hers lured Seraphina out of dark fantasies about angry Elmorian mobs coming for her in the middle of the night and back to the present.
To the elegantly arranged dining table before her. To her untouched dinner plate. To Olivia lounging in the chair at her side, watching her with those amber eyes that missed nothing despite the medicated haze clouding them at present.
To the worried frowns of her godparents sitting across from them both.
“Are you all right?” Duchess Edith asked. “You have been distant all evening.”
“I’m perfectly all right,” she lied with a smile, refusing to spoil their private “family” dinner further with her morose mood. Gently extracting her hand from beneath her godmother’s, she plucked up her fork and pushed around the wilted greens on her plate to make it seem as if she had eaten something. “I’ve merely been thinking.”
Her godparents exchanged a glance.
But it was Duchess Edith who delicately asked, “About…the wedding tomorrow?”
Without missing a beat, Olivia drawled, “Probably more about that shouting match she had with the Crow earlier, just outside the council chamber.”
Seraphina’s fork clattered against her plate. She kept her eyes lowered, unable to meet the prying gazes of these three people most dear to her. Here, she should feel most at peace. Most able to just…be herself.
But how could she when even her godparents and best friend could not help but study her like a caged creature within the royal menagerie? With the weight of their eyes boring into her skull, a great weariness settled into her bones like a chill she could never hope to shake. She was growing so very tired of having to constantly pretend all was well and that she was all right.
Especially when she was anything but.
“Yes, if you must know,” Seraphina confessed, shoving her food away. “I am thinking about all of it. The wedding. Mysai. Arlund. Lothmeer’s silence. This”—with a sigh, she settled deeper in her chair—“businesswith the pamphlets.”
Duke Percival frowned, his goblet of cider held suspended halfway to his mouth. “Pamphlets? What pamphlets?”
Olivia waved her hand through the air, as if the question were a mere tendril of smoke she could brush aside. “Someone is trying to turn the public’s opinion against our queen. But it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
Her blood ran cold as she slid her best friend a sidelong look.Aldrichad told her something Olivia had not? A sting that felt rather like betrayal plucked at her heartstrings. Olivia had never kept secrets before.
At least none of this magnitude.
“You knew about them?” Seraphina asked, fighting to keep the hurt thrumming through her chest from leaching into her voice. Her eyes searched the other woman’s face through the shadows cast by the candlelight, desperate to spy something that might explain what Olivia had been thinking in keeping this of all things from her.
But whatever her friend was feeling, she hid it well behind an expressionless mask. Unclipping the flask from her hip, Olivia took a heavy drag of its contents and mumbled against the flask’s opening, “I have some good leads to follow. Don’t worry. I’ll have it taken care of soon.”
“Don’t worry?” Seraphina echoed as a heavy silence fell across her personal sitting room, where the four of them dined together.
