Page 9 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

Something about the way he pauses pulls my gaze toward the center of the throne room, and my heart stammers.

Goddess, everything about this jester is just criminal. The outfit doesn’t quite fit him. The bells are tarnished. He’s tall, yes, but gaunt, and he moves with a quiet fury, like a man walking into a fight he doesn’t deign to win.

There’s mud on his boots, and he’s tracking it across thestone. I can tell by the hard set of his jaw that he doesn’t notice nor care.

This is who has come to make me laugh? It feels entirely wrong—hefeels wrong. And it makes me wonder what his true purpose is here.

I question this the way I question most things, by some extra sense that lives beneath my skin. Like the way I know when a storm is coming by the charged, ozone taste of the air, or when a plant is poisonous by the way the leaves feel.

The craft, my mother calls it—what the Thorn Court women carry in the blood.

Right this instant, that buzzing sense beneath my skin is warning me that this man walked into the throne room carrying something far heavier than a jest.

He reaches the dais, sunken eyes aimed at the floor. Then he looks at me.

And I feel the intensity of his gaze down to the marrow of my bone.

He’s beautiful in the way a pressed flower is, its dead petals brittle yet still carrying the memory of when they were once soft and vibrant. His ink-black hair spills across one eye, trying to conceal a scar that runs through it, from brow to cheek, stripping the color of the once deep shade. Now pale and ghostly, like the rest of him—a specter in a torn and ragged costume haunting the hall.

While the courtiers look at me with a morbid curiosity, and Aldric looks at me with ownership, this hardened man looks at me like he’s justbeen struck. As though I’ve hit him square in the chest, and he can’t catch his breath.

He looks at me with such a bottomless emotion—and I recognize it so deeply that it nearly fractures my composure.

Grief.

It’s heavy and fresh. The kind that reshapes a person from the inside. I know its face. I see it in my mirror every morning before the handmaidens arrive to paint over it.

The jester—Ren—bows. Graceless, too fast, and the bells give off a death rattle instead of a jingle. His eyes return to me when he straightens, and an uncomfortable flush warms my face. Because, despite his ill-fitting motley and ragged appearance, he’s strangely beautiful. The chiseled, lean muscles that sculpt his body. The full lips, the sharp cheekbones. That arresting mix of pale and dark eyes.

When he opens his mouth and begins telling the oddest story about a potato striking him, I feel my lips twitch. His baritone voice alone moves me, but it’s the candor of his words—raw, stripped, matching that openness of his eyes—that fills the silence, and I feel something crack behind my ribs.

My lips further betray me, fracturing with an almost smile. I press them together, fighting it, because if I smile, it will be just another thing Aldric claims as his.

I glance sideways, the barest flick of my eyes, to where Isolde stands near a stone pillar. My handmaid. My shadow. My friend. The one piece of home I was allowed to bring with me. She’s watching the jester with an intrigued,bewildered expression, her lips pressed thin. She catches my glance and quirks an eyebrow in amusement.

I look away before she makes me crack a smile.

Ren bows again, retreating, and I think it’s over, that I’ve held strong—then goddess divine, he trips, muttering an oath.

The silence that follows is uncomfortable, making it worse. And the sound escapes me before I can cage it—a giggle, bright and traitorous, rising to echo around the room. I clap my hand over my mouth, but it’s too late.

It feels like the first full breath after being held underwater for twenty-nine days.

Aldric’s smug eyes slide over me, a victorious smirk stretching his own lips, before he surges forward, bellowing orders to get the jester quarters, food, whatever the fool wants. And the jester, Ren, is hauled to his feet and steered toward the door.

He looks back just once.

Our eyes meet across the length of the throne room. For one breath, the mask slips, and the smallest smile graces my mouth. Maybe, at least, my failure will grant this man some kind of hope.

Then I tuck it away. Fold my hands. Fix my gaze on the far wall.

The king’s hand returns to my knee. He’s speaking about a celebration, about more festivities and drink. I let his words pass through me like water throughstone, unmoved.

And yet, beneath my composure, something has shifted. Something small and dangerous, like the first hairline crack in a dam.

Later in the evening, Isolde finds me in my chambers.

She doesn’t knock, simply appearing the way she’s appeared at my side since I was nine years old and she was fourteen, assigned by my mother to be my handmaid, my tutor, my keeper. She’s the only person in this palace who knows me.