Fuck.
CHAPTER 20
The Taster
Morning arrives pale and cold. By the time I am brought to breakfast, the light over the inner court has turned the snow to silver. Thin sunlight lies across the long table in the smaller dining chamber Aunt Petunis prefers, touching the rims of the dishes and the polished necks of the pitchers set out between them. Nothing in the room looks dangerous. Honey glows in a shallow bowl. Steam rises from tea. Slices of dark bread rest beside winter fruit cut open to show jeweled flesh.
It is almost enough to make the whole palace feel civilized.
Almost.
Aunt Petunis is already seated when I enter. Nyara sits to her right, wrapped in pale green this morning, her dark hair braided with small golden rings that catch the light whenever she turns her head. Two attendants stand back against the wall. Another waits by the door with the stillness of someone trained not to be seen unless needed.
Petunis lifts her eyes when I approach. Her gaze moves over me once, taking stock. Not warm. Not cold. Simply thorough.
“You look better,” she says.
“I feel marginally less dead.”
“That is improvement.”
I sit across from her. My body is still tired in the deep and stubborn way that sleep does not cure, but the scouring and Hyverin’s work have taken enough of the sharpness from the pain that I no longer feel as though I am being held together by thread alone. That in itself is dangerous. It is easy to mistake less pain for strength.
An attendant moves toward me with a cup. I reach for it.
“Not yet,” Petunis says.
The woman stops at once.
I look at my aunt. “You brought me here to watch other people eat?”
“I brought you here to learn not to behave like an idiot simply because you are hungry.”
Annoyance rises at once, quick and familiar. “I am beginning to suspect that is your preferred way of speaking to me.”
“It produces the clearest results.”
She does not look away as she says it. One hand rests lightly beside her untouched plate. The other holds a folded cloth, which she sets down with almost absent precision before nodding toward the table. “You will not eat until the taster comes.”
I only stare at her. “Surely that is excessive.”
“No.”
“It is breakfast.”
“It is food placed before the queen heir in a palace that spent the better part of yesterday deciding whether to kneel to her, manipulate her, bind her, or fear her.” Petunis lifts a brow. “So yes. We will begin with breakfast.”
The title strikes harder than the rest of it, but she gives me no time to follow the thought. Nyara glances between us, saying nothing. There is sympathy in her face, though it is carefully hidden. She has already learned what can and cannot be shown in rooms like this.
I fold my hands in my lap and force myself not to reach for the cup simply to prove I can.
“My husband--”
“Is probably dead if he has attempted to find you. And worthless if he has not.”
“That is not my question.”
“No,” Petunis says. “I imagine it was not. Your question was probably some childish query for us to open our wards so that he may enter or so that you may find him." She looks up at me. "And the answer to that is no, and do not ask me again."
