Page 12 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

Yet oblivion doesn’t come. I lie on the crisp sheets that smell like lavender and stare at the ceiling and think about the princess instead.

I should be thinking about the king. About how to reach him, how to get close enough, when his guard drops. I should be running scenarios, scouting exits, cataloguing which servants carry keys and which corridors go unwatched. The tricks of my trade.

Instead, I’m thinking about the way her sultry lips twitched before she smiled. The almost unnoticeable delay, like she was fighting it. The sound of her giggle, so startled.

I’m thinking about how her gown was black in a court of crimson and gold.

I’m thinking about her eyes—the sadness in them, flowing in the same current of grief as mine. And I’m thinking about the tiny peek she sent me before I was led away.

How did such a frail and sorrowful thing wind up betrothed to that bastard of a king? She is, forall purposes, already his—a possession displayed on a slightly smaller, slightly lower throne. She belongs to the man I came here to kill, and I have no business lying in the dark pondering the exact shade of her eyes.

Dark. They were dark. Nearly black, lined with smoky kohl, and when she looked at me?—

“Stop,” I mutter at the ceiling.

All of it churns my thoughts until dawn crawls through the window.

Fuck, I should’ve slept.

The glaring morning comes with another knock. Not a servant this time—the steward himself, the same wiry man who could barely choke out my name in the throne room.

“You are to report to the great hall every afternoon,” he tells me, in a tone that states what he thinks of me. “Princess Seravyn takes her afternoon repose there. The king will be present.”

Seravyn.Her name echoes around my skull like a sweet note.

The steward pauses, as if reconsidering whether the next part is worth wasting breath on me. “You are to be appropriate. You are to remain at a respectful distance. You are not to address the princess directly unless she addresses you first. You are not to make jests about the crown, the court, or the king’s person. You are not to touch the princess. You are not to?—”

“Is there anything I am allowed to do?”

His lips thin further, which I hadn’t thought possible. “You are allowed,” he says, each word over enunciated, “to be a fool.”

At that, he leaves. I stare at the closed door.

A fool. Right. I rub the back of my neck. A fool who’s entire act consists of confessing I’m a fraud and eating stone with my face.

After I bathe, washing away what feels like years of dirt and filth, I re-enter the chamber to find fresh sheets and a new motley on the bed.

This one still doesn’t quite fit, although the bells don’t sound like a death rattle. I catch my reflection in the window glass and look exactly like what I am: a grieving man in a dead man’s costume. The only difference being that today, I’m the dead man, should I fail to make the princess laugh.

A memory of Kammy surfaces. The way she used to laugh at me—real laughter, that came from her belly. I never had to try with her. I just had to be myself, and she found something in that worth laughing at.

Something worth loving.

I don’t know how to do that for a princess in a black dress with sad eyes and a smile I can still feel like a punch to my chest.

But the alternative is being thrown out of the palace…or worse. And if either happens, I’ll never get to sink a blade into King Aldric.

So I straighten the ridiculous jester hat, grimace at the bells, and set off.

The great hall feels different than the throne room. Less crowded, quieter. Not as many courtiers, and the ones who are present are scattered in small clusters, murmuring over wine and food. Sunlight falls through tall, arched windows in long golden columns that make the dust motes look sacred.

And then I see her.

The Princess Seravyn is seated in a high-back chair near the window, seeming less formal with its plush cushions, positioned to catch the light. Her dark hair falls straight over one shoulder like a curtain of dark silk. She’s holding a book propped in her lap.

The king is across the hall at a long wood table with his advisors, maps spread before him, his goblet half-drained though it’s not even past midday. He spots me and straightens abruptly, his sharp gaze sweeping down my clean motley, and there’s a slight curl to the edge of his mouth. I can’t quite tell if it’s approval or loathing, and that alone tightens my jaw.

He returns his shrewd gaze to his maps and idly waves his hand, an impatient gesture, an order to get to my job. What I’m here to do.