Incredible how so few words and a single look could make her feel the need to bathe until her skin turned red and wilted.
She barely managed a polite nod before grabbing Hannah by the hand and forcing herself to walk at a measured pace to the door. It was impossible that Scarzan knew anything—there wasn’t anything to know. She stopped herself from looking back over her shoulder, where she could still feel him staring. She had mentioned her plans to no one. And yet the sick feeling persisted.I’m being ridiculous.
The servant clicked the door shut, and Elysia gave herself one long exhale to allow the awful sensation to slide away. Truth or not, she could easily see how the rumors of Scarzan dumping his daughter to crime lords like trash had come about.
Honestly, she imagined it would be a waste of her time even bothering to confirm his disgusting actions. But she would. Because she was better than that.
Negligence bred negligence, after all.
“Are you alright, Ms. Parker?” Hannah looked on in concern.
She held out an arm to the girl. “Let’s move along, shall we?” She tapped her ear, making her message clear.
Hannah’s eyes grew, but she stepped closer to Elysia, taking her offered elbow. They walked in silence away from the politics behind them, and both women breathed a little easier with each step. She pressed her lips, thinking as they strolled. “Hannah, Diplomat Scarzan has many, many needs. So many important needs that all the ladies waiting on him would do well to work in pairs. Tell him it is due to his stature that he receives such care. Do you understand?”
Elysia continued to smile blandly as she spoke her words of caution, and she knew her meaning was received when the young maid’s grip tightened on her arm. Oh, she knew alright. Elysia was sure they all did.
“I’ll make sure my mother knows you are to work in pairs. It will not be a problem.”
They stopped in front of the wide double doors leading to her parents’ rooms. The wood was heavy and dark with smoothed etchings of ships, coins, and treasures splayed across a map of their land, a subtle indication of her father’s role within the Crown. Elysia had always thought it rather brainless to declare who slept where in a castle, but maybe she had just spent too much time with an assassin.
Hannah opened the main room with her service key, and once the doors thudded shut, she finally spoke.
Her voice was lower than Elysia would have expected, low, but sweet. “Thank you, Ms. Parker. Working in pairs would make our jobs much easier while the diplomats are here.” She shifted from foot to foot.
Elysia’s smile faded, her brow wrinkling in knowing expectation. “He’s already attacked someone, hasn’t he?”
The girl looked up with a bit of fire in her eyes. “The maids have done a fair job of avoiding hisneeds, but I am not sure the same can be said for those who work elsewhere in the city. I… I heard things.”
Elysia gave a slow nod, thinking through the gift she was just given. “Of course...” She sighed, shaking her head. It was too bad Gage didn’t want to help with this one. She wouldn’t mind his assistance one bit with someone as slippery as Scarzan.
She brought her attention back to the task at hand, glancing around her parents’ suite. She had to get through dinner with the prince before she could worry about Scarzan.
“I should grab those jewels then.”
Hannah recognized her dismissal and left quietly.
Guilt flooded in as the door shut behind the young girl. Elysia stared at the door blankly, lost in thoughts of how the maids stood no chance against Scarzan if he truly attacked any of them. If he ordered one to leave and kept another behind. How no one would believe them or care. Even when it was someone asobvious as Scarzan. He was not golden. He had no charm or false veneer. But he was powerful.
Maybeif he went after the wrong woman, there would be fallout—but the maids? Her stomach felt sick and anger writhed somewhere deep inside her. You didn’t work within the Crown’s court without realizing there were only two necessary ingredients if you wanted to get away with wrecking someone’s life. The first was power, and the second was a fragile appendage swinging between your legs. That was it. If the man was sweet and easy on the eyes, then their path to destruction was even simpler, but it was far from a requirement.
Elysia turned back to face her parents’ rooms and inhaled deeply. Tobacco smoke clung like a second skin to every inch of the room. The smooth warmth of her father’s cologne layered over the smoke, leaving his fingerprint on every surface. Larger than life, he’d become the very air. The rich scent settled her bones, leaving a pang behind in its wake. Comfort, pain. He was both. And all these years later, she still didn’t know what to do with that.
Some might expect the Golden Seal to have rooms filled with excess and decadence, but then they didn’t really know Georgia Parker at all.
Soft grays nuzzled against deeper shades of charcoal. Cool, sea-glass-blue blankets draped over muted brown furniture. It had almost a foggy effect, reminiscent of a Relaclave morning by the docks. That was where her mother had met Jack Parker. It was where she had spent many a morning, waiting, watching—hoping he would be back from his travels. Now, he almost never left. Well into his fifties, he had young ambitious men to do that hard work for him.
Elysia snagged her father’s pipe and sniffed it before setting it back down. She supposed she would have to see him as well this week. She wondered what he made of the possible proposal.
He was hard to pin sometimes, unlike her mother, with whom she always knew where she would stand. Her father swung between his heart and the politics that ruled them all. Sometimes she thought that it was almost worse. The not knowing if it washerthat mattered, or just how she impacted the bottom line. It was a strange sensation, being equally convinced of someone’s love and disgust for your presence. At least her mother was consistent.
She left the sitting room, drifting past her thoughts over to her mother’s vanity. A carved chest made from driftwood stood tall, each thin drawer set with a tiny golden key hole. Elysia freed the drawer she needed with the key her mother had loaned her and stood on tiptoes to see inside.
Two small sapphire drops for her ears. A stack of silver bands for her wrist. Both gorgeous yet understated. They were perfect for dinner. And they were also not why she had come here.
Elysia squatted down, unlocking the bottom drawer of the chest. Sliding her knife out from her ankle, she used it to gently pry the drawer’s false velvet bottom free. Her breath sped a little at the sight of the jeweled hairpin her mother had squirreled away from even her father’s eyes.
Thin, burnished silver branches with edges so sharp they’d slit your skin. The branches intertwined, curving to rest on one side of the owner’s head. A spray of dark rubies and milky opals dripped down the branches.
