“You’ll need to wear it, miss,” Fern interjects, voice hushed.
“And if I don’t?” I snark.
“That is…,” she swallows thickly, “not an option.”
She reaches for the bathrobe at my shoulders, and whispers, “Wear the dress, miss. Suffer the humiliation, and cast it from your mind. It will be a far kinder fate than anything that would come from refusing…” She trails off, and I think she’s done before she adds, “For all of us.”
Her hands are shaking, and the other maids look at me, pleading. Although they serve King Maldrak, I can see the goodness in their eyes—their unwillingness to further my shame. I have always been a fool for birds with broken wings. Ronyn. Seren. Tess. Now these three.
“Fine,” I acquiesce.
The maid removes my robe, revealing my bare body. Broken, bruised, scarred. But not defeated.
The other maids hold the dress open so I can step into it, and I wince as my ribs press together with the movement.
The maids shimmy the dress up over my thighs and hips, and position the bodice around my breasts, before pulling it taut at the back.
“Fuck,” I curse, as the bodice squeezes my splintered ribs.
“Forgive me, miss. His Majesty will accept nothing less than perfection,” Tura apologizes.
“Just do it,” I grit out between my teeth.
The women pull and tighten until my breasts are pressed firmly in the onyx-bejeweled bodice, a deep V dipping through the center to reveal more cleavage than is decent—and I’m not one for propriety.
I stand as tall as I can manage, and pin my shoulder blades together—the only dignity I can give myself.
I limp to the ornate standing mirror in the corner of the wardrobe to behold myself, and my breath hitches in my throat.
A high slit cuts through the translucent black skirts, revealing my long, slender thigh. My breasts are displayed so seductively that I barely recognize the woman staring back at me. The Heart of Ashara still hangs from my neck—the crimson jewel dangling between my breasts like a beacon to lure the eyes. No one can touch it. They’ve tried—using their hands, their weapons, their servants—but the Heart of Ashara knows they are not of my blood, and so on me it stays.
A safe harbor when I start drowning in fear.
The only thing that can remind me who I am when all of Kryntar Castle begs me to forget.
“These need to go on, too,” Hilda reminds, lace gloves draped over her palms.
I nod and take them from her, delicately fitting them to my fingers and rolling them up my skin. The lace snakes almostentirely up my arms, stopping at my biceps—the same place I used to wear my mother’s cuff.
I close my eyes for a moment—wishing away images of my mother, and taking a breath to remind myself of her sacrifice. I swallow my pain, pushing it down into the pit of my stomach, burying the past with my fear, and bringing only the future to my mind’s eye.My throne. To reclaim my throne and take down everyone who erased it, everyone who sought to take it from me, everyone who sullies my parents’ sacrifice, I need to get through this dinner. Thischarade.
Hilda gestures for me to sit, and pulls out thin-strapped shoes with a platform for my heel. I feel naked enough without my weapons, but wearing something so impractical feels like sacrilege.
The maid pulls them on, fastening them at my ankle, just beneath the lillath ankle cuff that cages my magic.
I gaze at myself—auburn hair coiled into a crown of braids, face painted into a mask of seduction, body wrapped like a fucking present.
I take another look at the freckles that race across my nose—the ones Kael traced with his fingers, kissed with his lying mouth. I hate that I can still see them. If the cosmetics should do anything for me, it is to temporarily erase the parts of me I wish to forget.
I fight the urge to scrub and claw at my own skin, and instead, I turn to the maids. “I’m ready.”
“I assure you, miss—you’re not,” Fern says, fear heavy in her eyes and breaking through the cracks in her voice.
I swallow thickly, skin breaking out in gooseflesh at the thought of what lies ahead.
The maids lead me out of the wardrobe and back into the main bedroom. The guards at the door respond instantly to mypresence, their eyes raking over my body in a way that makes me want to recoil in disgust.
But I steel myself.This is only the beginning.
