Page 8 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

Chapter 3

Seravyn

Ihaven’t smiled in twenty-nine days.

I know this because I’ve been counting them. Every morning, before the handmaidens come to dress me in silks and paint my face, I add another mark to the tally I keep scratched into the wood of my wardrobe.

A small, private rebellion. One I took up when the king all but commanded me upon our first encounter togive him a beautiful smile.

I made it a point right then that I’d never give in to his desires.

It’s been twenty-nine days since I left home. Since my mother pressed her lips to my forehead in the courtyard of our keep, her hands trembling but her voice steady. “You are not a sacrifice,” she told me, though we both knew the truth. “You are a blade. And blades do not weep.”

I haven’t wept, either. My mother would be proud of that, at least.

Now, King Aldric has made it his personal cause to cheer his sad princess.

I don’t know what infuriates him more. That I refuse him a simple smile, or that I simply refuse him.

It would be a lie to say the king isn’t attractive. His outside, yes—with hair so light is flows white beneath his heavy crown of gold, and eyes of the clearest blue sea, he’s as beautiful as the alabaster statues that adorn his rich kingdom.

Yet it’s what tarnishes the inside of his striking façade that casts him in the darkest shadow. No light to be found in those dark-rimed pale eyes that watch me with a calculation that makes my blood run cold.

I shiver as the cool air of the throne room settles against my skin. Giving my hands a purpose, I adjust my silver and amethyst crown against my head, my Thorn Court heirloom. I can feel the touch of Aldric’s gaze slipping over me, even as he appears to look ahead.

Jesters of all kinds have been parading through this room since dawn. Jugglers, acrobats, performers with pet animals. Each one enters overly confident and leaves dejected. Some even furious, all because they couldn’t pry so much as a grin from me. As if my smiles, my laughter, are something owed to them as much as the king. As if I’m just an ornament on top of a music box to wind and perform forthem.

I’m not some broken thing. What I am is in mourning. For my home, for the life I’ve had to leave behind, the one I wanted for myself. For the version of the girl I left standing in the courtyard.

When my expression remains impassive, the current jester exits the throne room, his head hung low.

Aldric’s strong hand finds my knee as he leans close. “Perhaps the next one, my love.”

I am not his love. I am his purchase.

My family’s dominion—Threnmere, seat of the Thorn Court, whose black keep, Vassal, has stood since before the realms had names—is dying. Has been dying for longer than I’ve been alive. The mines ran dry two generations ago, and the crops that replaced them never took in our soil. Our land is beautiful but barren. It grows nightshade and wolfsbane and belladonna with a fervor, but it will not grow wheat. Our people are hungry. Our walls are crumbling. And the dark craft that once made our name feared across the realms is now the only thing keeping the fire burning in our great hall.

King Aldric of Kravenholt offered my father a fortune. A reverse-dowry—a Bride Price. With enough gold to feed Threnmere for a decade. All he wanted in return was me.

A young wife to bear his heir.

A trophy to parade before his court.

While my father wept when he told me this, he still inked his name to the marital contract. My mother did not so much as frown. She took my hands,looked me in the eye, and said, “You know what we are. You know what you carry in your blood, my daughter of Morrishan. This king is buying a bride, a thing he can own. Your father is paying a debt. Yet Vaelstrom does not realize he’s bringing a serpent into his house.”

My father sold me to settle a debt centuries old. My mother weaponized the sale.

And somewhere beneath both, in the deep soil where the Thorn Court’s workings root, is a promise my mother made to Morrishan long before I was born—one she has never named, but never ceases to remind me.

I carry her words like a second spine. On the days when the king’s hands find my waist, when his breath warms my neck, when his deep voice curls around my name like he owns every syllable—I recite her words.

A blade does not weep.

A blade sharpens while it waits to find its home.

I think we’re almost through with this day until another fool enters. I almost don’t bother looking up.

The steward hesitates as he says, “Just Ren. The…jester.”