Page 3 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

For the first time, there’s a way for commoners to enter into the palace. Into the throne room. To get close enough to the king to see his cool eyes, to watch the recognition dawn on his smug face when he realizes the fool before him isn’t a fool at all?—

But his demise.

The jester’soutfit costs me everything I have left after all the ale.

A traveling merchant in the next village sells it to me from the back of his wagon. A motley mess of faded black and purple, patched at the elbows, ragged along the collar. The bells are tarnished and dull.

The merchant tells me it was donated by a widow, that the man who wore it before died.

I cock an eyebrow, thinking if he diedinit, by the smell.

“You a performer?” he asks, squinting at me.

I’m tall and gaunt and filthy, and I look about as funny as a funeral procession.

“Yes,” I lie.

Hehumphs, not believing me. He also doesn’t care. He takes my coin—the last I have in this life—and tosses the outfit at me.

I change into it behind his wagon, standing in the mud in my underclothes. The trousers are too short, riding up past my ankles. The hat sits crooked on my head, and the bells annoy the shit out of me every time I move. I look absurd.

“Gods.” I drag a hand down my face.

Kammy would have laughed. She would’ve laughed until she cried, sitting cross-legged on the bed with her book in her lap, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.You look ridiculous, she’d say, and that at least brings a smile to my face.

Before he packs his wares away, I nod to a dull-bladed dagger in the back. “What will you take for that?”

He looks me over, sucks his two teeth. “You have nothing.”

Resigned, I dig deep into my folded trouser pocket, producing the porcelain angel figure. The last tangible thing I have left of my sister. An ache tears through my chest at the thought of giving it away—but I decide I’m not long for this realm anyway.

I’m doing this for her.

I toss the angel at him, and he catches it. The next moment, I’m slipping the small dagger into theankle of my boot.

I catch my reflection in a puddle, and the man staring back at me is a stranger. Hollow-cheeked, one dark eye, the other scared, dressed in dead bells and drab color. My shaggy dark hair lands just below my ears, in need of a cut.

I’m a fucking fool, carrying nothing but grief, walking toward his death.

I trudge ahead.

The road to the palace takes two days. I try to walk through the night, sleeping only a handful of hours in a field. The jester’s hat pulled over my face, the bells rattling an eerie tune every time the wind rustles. I dream about my sister beneath the hawthorn tree, only when I call to her, her sweet smile is gone. Her face becoming skeletal, decomposing.

I wake with a panic, my heart battering the wall of my chest.

“It’s just a dream,” I tell myself. But there’s a grave I left behind, at a home I’ll never return to. The reality of this, of her death, hits me with a fresh wave of grief, knocking the breath from my lungs.

The second day the road fills with other men headed the same direction. I see them trickling in from side paths and crossroads. Men in bright clothing, carrying lutes and juggling clubs. Walking with the swagger accustomed to performers. Tumblers with calloused hands, wits with sharp eyes. One is even a fire-breather.

Hells.

They talk and laugh and size each other up the way dogs do—circling, sniffing, deciding who’s a threat.

Except for me. Who receives a few snide remarks and mocking scoffs.

I’m no threat.

A dark smile ghosts my mouth, and I tip my hat sideways, further owning my ruse.