"She has always been soft toward the tainted ones." Another voice, one of his sycophants. "Strange, for Gün Ata's daughter."
"Strange?" Ferit's laugh scraped across my nerves. "It is not strange at all, when you understand what she truly is."
I should have walked away.
My feet refused to move.
"The court whispers about her," Ferit continued. "About whether the divine blood runs as pure in her veins as her father claims. Her mother spent years in those border villages. Far from the palace. Far from her husband's watchful eye. Who knows what manner of creatures she entertained?"
"Ferit, careful?—"
"I am merely saying what everyone thinks." Something shattered—a practice blade thrown against stone. "Ada plays at being the pious princess, but we all know what she really craves. Shadow-touched cock between her thighs. That is why she wastes her tears on plisk—she wishes she could spread her legs for them openly."
The world narrowed to a single point of white-hot focus.
"The servants talk, you know," Ferit pressed on. "They say she visits the lower quarters at night. That she lets half-blood guards touch her in dark corridors. That she moans like a commonharlot while shadow-tainted filth use her like the border-bred whore she?—"
"That cannot be true."
"Why not? She is her mother's daughter." Ferit's voice dripped venom. "A shadow court slut hidden behind divine light. The only reason that whore still breathes court air is because no one has the courage to tell Gün Ata what his precious daughter does when he is not watching."
Silence.
Then laughter—his companions joining the mirth, their voices rising in waves of aristocratic amusement.
I stood frozen behind the hedgerow, something dark and terrible rising in my chest. My hands had clenched into fists. My breath came shallow and fast.
A shadow court slut.
A whore.
Spreads her legs for shadow-tainted filth.
I thought of her standing in the Golden Hall three days past, trying to save that servant girl. The way her voice had cracked when Lady Seher silenced her. The way she had walked from the hall with her spine straight even as something in her shattered.
She was the only person in that room who had seen the ceremony for what it truly was.
And Ferit called her a whore for it.
The training blade in my hand snapped. I had not realized I was gripping it until the wood splintered against my palm, until blood welled from a dozen small cuts.
I looked at my bleeding hand.
And began to plan.
Sarp found me an hour later in the Golden Bull, a tavern near the Academy gates. He slid onto the bench across from me, took one look at my face, and signaled for two cups of whatever was strongest.
"You have that expression again," he observed.
"What expression?"
"The one that says someone is about to suffer tremendously and you are going to enjoy every moment of it." He accepted the cups from the barmaid and slid one toward me. "Who has earned your wrath this time?"
"Ferit Ercel."
"The princess's cousin?" He whistled low. "What did he do?"
"He disrespected Ada."
