Page 20 of Rise of the Vicious Princess

A sob shook her and then another. He rubbed her back gently as she cried until the last streak of light was long gone from the sky and the blue light of the sister moons danced across the distant ribbon of the sea. Even when the tears stopped, she remained in his arms, breathing past the ache until she drifted into sleep.

Nine

THE WEEK FOLLOWING Milla’s death passed in a blur. Charis attended luncheons, sat through meetings, shouldered Mother’s obligations along with her own, did homework for her tutor, and checked on Mother daily. She sent supplies to the army stationed in the north, pulling from the palace’s own budget to pay for extra guards to make sure they arrived safely, and sent gifts to the ambassadors of Rullenvor, Verace, Thallis, and Solvang in an effort to keep the picture of a prosperous Calera firmly intact. She demanded daily reports from Reuben on the progress of shoring up palace security and discussed rumors of Montevallo’s spy network with the head of Mother’s guard. Every moment was filled, every second accounted for. She smiled when it was necessary. Held eye contact when someone needed a reminder of her power. And spoke the right words at the right times.

Tal woke early each morning and stayed by her side until she’d climbed, exhausted, into bed at night. She was almost used to his silent, watchful presence, but it was impossible to escape the fact that there was nowhere she could go to be alone. Nowhere she could drop her defenses and let the loss of Milla knock her down in one devastating blow.

Instead, it took pieces of her, bit by bit, a sly, poisonous knife that cut into her when she least expected it.

When a mukkel bird perched on the balcony early one morning and sang its shrill, piercing song, and she remembered the last time a mukkel bird visited and how Milla had marveled at the brilliant purple of its feathers.

When she caught a glimpse of a redheaded girl moving through the busy market streets of Arborlay and had to ask the coachmen to stop the carriage so she could stare long enough to convince herself it wasn’t Milla she was seeing.

When she stepped into the bath chamber or sat at her vanity or heard Tal moving around in the room that should still be Milla’s.

There was no end to the little reminders lying in wait for her, and bracing for the next cut was exhausting.

“Will there be anything else, Your Highness?” Tal asked as he always did just before she dismissed him to his room so the temporary handmaiden Mother had assigned could help Charis into her nightdress before leaving for the servants’ quarters where she slept.

“No, thank you,” Charis answered as she always did, the words pushed past wooden lips as she busied herself with removing her shoes, refusing to watch him enter Milla’s room.

Her fingers shook a little as she fumbled the buttons on her dainty pair of boots—whether from weariness or because she couldn’t stand to swallow more than a few bites at meals of late, Charis didn’t know. Didn’t care. All she wanted was the sweet oblivion of sleep.

Moments later, she curled up under her blankets, staring at the ceiling while the maid turned down the lanterns and left the chamber. Her thoughts moved sluggishly from one thing to the next.

Father’s failing health. The factions that had split the nobility. The woman in her bathtub. The assassin burying his dagger in Mother’s stomach.

Milla paying the cost.

Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she sank gratefully into the darkness.

There was a sound—a steady drip, drip, drip like fat raindrops gathering at the end of a tree branch and then plummeting to the ground. Charis tried to follow it, but it remained just out of reach. Now in front of her. Now behind her. Now just a faint echo she could barely hear.

Her feet sank into the plush rug of her bedchamber, except it wasn’t her rug anymore. It was a carpet of bones, crisp and brittle, that crackled when she stepped on them.

She turned back toward her bed, but it was her bathtub instead. The assassin lay within it, grinning at her though blood poured from his wounds.

“You can’t run, Princess.” His teeth lengthened into fangs. “There are more of us and only one of you.”

Blood from his neck gathered at his collarbone and then plunged to the floor. Drip. Drip. Drip.

“You can’t run,” a soft voice whispered from behind Charis. She spun toward it, and was inside her closet, her dresses thick as a forest of trees closing in around her while the walls echoed the horrible sound of the assassin’s blood hitting the floor.

“Milla?” She pushed through a billowing cloud of silk and lace that shredded at her touch like jewel-toned fog.

Her feet slid on something viscous and wet, and she was back in her bath chamber, her knees striking the tub as she struggled to keep her balance. The walls tilted, and the steady drip, drip, drip burrowed beneath her skin and thrummed within her like a second heartbeat.

A hand reached out from the tub and wrapped around her wrist. She looked down to see Milla, pale and broken, her mouth a wide slash of red in her too-white face as she whispered, “You can’t run.”

A scream tore its way past Charis’s throat as she tried to free herself from Milla’s grip, her feet skidding through the blood on the floor.

She was going to be pulled into that tub, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“Your Highness!” A firm voice broke into her thoughts, and the dream disintegrated. Her eyes flew open. Tal sat on the side of her bed, his hands on her shoulders, his face hovering just above hers. His eyes blazed with worry. “Are you hurt?”

“I can’t run,” she whispered as the sound of dripping blood faded along with the feel of Milla’s death grip on her wrist.

He frowned. “Run from what?”

---