Page 1 of Betraying Korth

CHAPTER 1

The sight of a beggar woman fleeing with her children from the king’s guards set my insides to boiling with anger. The fact that homeless life on the streets was preferable to the so-called employment at the king’s palace, it spelled out just how dire the situation in our kingdom was. I kept my facial features relaxed and eyes averted from the woman’s pleading as the guards seized her children and forced them into shackles.

“What a fuss,” Princess Odette sniffed to me as she passed, unfazed, by the woman’s screams. “Honestly, she should be grateful we are saving her offspring from a life of crime and poverty.”

Saving them?Is that what they were calling slavery now? King Raquel had refused to educate his citizens, stifled the economy through over-taxation so that gainful employment was nearly impossible to procure, then had the audacity to pretend that kidnapping children and forcing them into unpaid servitude was in any way helpful. His daughter, Odette, had bought into the lie without question. Why would she not, when she wanted for nothing and had been raised in the lap of luxury? Such luxurywas not afforded anyone else and was paid for through the blood, sweat, and tears of the oppressed citizens of Ebora.

When the smallest of the children squirmed free and attempted to dash back to his mother, one of the soldiers struck him around the ears. With a small cry, I dropped Odette’s train and stepped toward the child. Odette immediately snapped for her guard, whose braided horsewhip whistled through the air and cracked against my back.

“Mind your place,” Odette ordered.

Back stinging and biting my tongue against the pain, I returned to my position and continued to step sedately, maintaining the required three paces behind my mistress.Not long now,I reminded myself. Soon, we oppressed citizens would have our revenge. Hatred smoldered like a fire inside me, impossible to quench. It served to fuel me even when fatigue and exhaustion set in. Simple dissatisfaction or discontentment would never sustain anyone’s ambition if they wanted to overthrow the sovereign ruler. It wasn’t enough to desire change; they had to be willing to sacrifice their entire life for it, as I was.

“Our servants are the lucky ones,” Odette continued, undisturbed by my silence and placidly indifferent expression. “We keep all of you fed, clothed, and housed without charging a single copper for it. I don’t understand why anyone wouldnotwant their children to have that life. What a glorious opportunity, to be taken from life on the streets to being raised at a royal palace. Don’t you think so, Dahlia?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” I murmured meekly, keeping my eyes downcast.

The injustices being dealt to our people were becoming too great to bear quietly. How many more years would I be forced to continue this sycophantic playacting? The royal family deserved a hanging for how they treated their subjects, and yet the pocketsof the guards were lined deep while the other servants were given barely enough food to live on as payment for work that wore our fingers to the bone. Then, if they so much as breathed a word of complaint against their superiors, they were beaten or whipped. Even as Odette walked through the town, she was surrounded by a veritable army of guards and citizens scurried away in fear.

No one person should ever have the amount of unchecked power that the king did. It didn’t matter how many people joined our underground rebellion if they were all too terrified of civil disobedience to do anything about it and were simply desperate for the next meal’s bread to feed their families. My blood pulsed, hot and fast, through my veins all the way back to the palace as I held the train of Odette’s long dress out of the sewage running in the gutters along the streets, hating everything about the woman I served, from her pointed, upturned nose to each of her prancing steps as she strode past her citizens who so clearly needed help.

“A correspondence from Haven Harbor, Your Highness,” the footman said, bowing low and holding out a heavy envelope as we entered the palace.

Odette yawned and flicked her pale fingers at me. “Take it, Dahlia. You read it and tell me what it says. No need to hold my train here. At least it’s clean whereIlive…more than those peasants can say.”

I obeyed, submissively accepting the thick parchment and accompanying Odette up to her suite of richly furnished rooms. My back’s smarting pain from the whipcrack had faded to a dull throb, but I felt the wet stain spreading across the back of my dress, an injury that was all too common among the castle staff.

Once Odette was settled with a plate of sweets and a steaming teacup, I lowered myself into the hard wooden chair by her sofa, leaning forward so my back wouldn’t press againstthe chair and aggravate my injury further. Even Odette’s letter opener screamed wealth. The ivory handle had been carved to display flowers and hummingbirds, and the blade was trimmed with a silver finish with an emerald set into the handle’s tip. What a fitting analogy for the royal family. Such a colossal waste of money when it could be replaced by something much more convenient and efficient. I set the letter opener down and shook out the contents of the envelope.

It was another letter from Odette’s betrothed, Prince Korth of Haven Harbor. I scanned the note.

“See, this is another way that the servants here are luckier than those who live on the streets,” Odette said as she watched my eyes skate from side to side before I flipped the parchment over to skim the back. “You know how to read and write. Never forget how fortunate you are!”

I didn’t waste my breath pointing out that all citizens should know how to read, not just me, or that the only reason I had learned was because I’d attended all her tutoring sessions with her. Odette had been genuinely thrilled to discover that I’d learned to read… if only because I could read aloud any passages she didn’t care to attend to and pen responses in her stead. She occasionally listened as she shoved more candied figs into her mouth, but it was half-hearted at best, and she usually pawned all responsibilities off on me.

“Prince Korth is requesting your presence so you can proceed with your wedding,” I informed her. “He has invited you and your attending servants to come to Haven Harbor immediately.”

Odette sniffed. “Papa will be pleased. He’s been overly eager to secure that alliance and doesn’t even care that it’s my future. No one thinks about me.”

“And what are your thoughts on the matter, my lady?”

She shrugged and picked at the tassels on one of her many cushions. “It has some potential, I suppose. Are there any more figs?”

I pushed my tongue against the roof of my mouth so it would hold back the words I longed to fling at her. Did she care more about procuring more candied figs than she did about the well-being of the kingdom she was heir to? Even if she was completely selfish and only cared for herself, which was the case, was she so shallow that she cared less about the identity of her future spouse than her next indulgence?

Keeping all these thoughts to myself, I checked the drawers, then crossed to the dumbwaiter, jotted down a note requesting more sugared figs to be sent up to Odette’s room, and placed the small stone over the note to hold it in place. I tugged on the rope three times, and after a moment’s pause, the small dumbwaiter began to lower. I watched its descent into the dark shaft below, wishing I had free time unencumbered by Odette’s demands to inspect the fascinating machine without distraction.

“More figs are on their way, Your Highness.”

Odette coiled a loose strand of her long blonde hair around her finger then released it, staring out at the window that opened onto the sea. “Relay the letter’s contents to Papa. I hope the figs come soon.” She sighed and stared out at the distant town. “I need something to comfort me after such devastating news.”

“As you wish, my lady.” I folded the letter and curtsied as I left her room, once to Odette then to each of the guards outside her door.

“Inform the kitchen staff if they don’t hurry with the figs, I shall have them whipped!” she called after me.

Devastating news. I wanted to snort my derision. Being sent to marry a prince who was sure to be just as stuffy, self-absorbed, and disgustingly rich as her father would certainly be devastating news to anyone who was familiar with the kingand his loathsome daughter. But she would undoubtedly still be coddled and pampered, without having to do so much as lift a finger. How was that in any way devastating?

At least plans were in place to remove the odious pair from their positions of power, but it had its own set of struggles. Finding those who were sympathetic to the rebellion’s cause had been difficult enough, as any expression of dissatisfaction with the king could result in imprisonment or execution. Convincing anyone to join our rebellion was even more difficult. When we were constantly surrounded by well-fed armed guards, it was nearly impossible to think that we even had a sliver of a chance at overthrowing the king.

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