Page 35 of Betraying Korth

“No, I don’t,” she murmured sadly. “I missed a lot, didn’t I?”

Korth released my hand so he could crouch down to be on eye level with his grandmother. “No, you didn’t miss anything. You’ve always been there for me, Nona. And soon, you get to be at my wedding. This is my fiancée, Odette.”

Nona stared at me and for the first time, her features didn’t contort into something angry. “Are you happy together?”

“Yes, we are,” Korth answered immediately.

“I want to hear it from her.” Nona didn’t take her eyes off me.

“Your grandson is truly a remarkable man, and he does make me very happy. I wish more men shared his values.”

Nona nodded slowly. “You must be good for each other.”

My heart swelled as I crouched down next to Korth, who looped his arm around me. “I think so.”

“I hope I remember your wedding when the time comes,” Nona said, placing her gnarled hands over mine. “You’ll be a beautiful bride, and I hope you make my grandson happy for the rest of his life.”

My abdomen contracted painfully. “I’ll do my best,” I said. This charade was becoming more difficult by the day. “I want him to be happy.”

While Korth attendedhis meetings each afternoon, Tess normally came to keep me company. When I’d first arrived, she had wiled away the hours by playing her musical instruments or practicing her penmanship, but lately, she came for shorter periods of time and on each occasion, her young forehead was lined with stress until finally one day, she didn’t come at all. That afternoon, I didn’t have a single dress fitting or decisions to make about colors or table settings for the wedding. I briefly toyed with the idea of going to visit some of the members of the rebellion before remembering that all but Curdy and Garrik were in the process of traveling to Ebora to prepare for the impending coup. As much as I wanted to see how Odette was adjusting to life as a gooseherd in a mildewy, leaky shack, it was pouring down rain.

For an hour, I stared at a blank sheet of parchment, trying to decide how to word a letter to my father that would both convey my genuine concern for him and the well-being of the other rebellion members while also maintaining my charade in case the letter was intercepted. My fingers drummed lightly on my desk as the sound of the relentless rain filled my head and drove every thought of an encrypted missive from my mind.

Finally deciding that no words would come, I shoved the parchment back into the desk drawer and corked the ink bottle and took to wandering the long corridors, staring at the windows and counting the flashes of lightning.

What else was a princess to do when she wasn’t part of the committee meetings that took up the bulk of her fiancé’s day? I could have gone to the library to read but didn’t feel much like sitting. My wandering feet took me to Tess’s room, but when I knocked, a maid answered the door and said in hushed tones that Tess was resting and not feeling well, no doubt from the stress of her first trial compounded with the ever-fluctuating weather.

“Can I get her anything?” I asked, desperate to do something,anything.

“Odette?” Tess’s voice croaked from within the darkened room. The maid hurried to the bedside, switching out the cloths on her face.

I stepped inside. The curtains had been drawn and the only light came from a few flickering candles that the maids had set on tables, giving just enough light so that they could tend to their mistress. “I’m here. I heard you aren’t feeling well.”

“Blah.”

I grinned. “A very accurate description. I hope you get feeling better soon; I missed seeing you today. Do you want anything?”

“Pudding.”

“Consider it done,” I told her. “I’ll fetch some now. Any particular flavor?”

“Banana.”

“I’ll be back soon,” I promised, quietly closing the door behind me.

My steps were quick and purposeful after that. After all, what were sisters for if they couldn’t fetch pudding when the other was feeling poorly?

The kitchens were on the ground level, easy to find when all I had to do was follow my nose. After relaying Tess’s request to one of the cooks, I occupied myself with examining the tapestries around the kitchen while the pudding was prepared. Most depicted great feasts or sumptuous dishes being served to nobility or else consumed by a variety of creatures. My favorite was a dragon lapping up chocolate mousse beside a flaming castle.

An extensive trestle table was laden with hearty-looking meals along the longest of the kitchen’s walls, and servants frequently entered one of the side doors, picked up some food, and either ate quickly or else carried it off through a door on the opposite side of the kitchen.

Just as the cook brought the pudding over, topped with a mound of whipped cream, a cherry, and chopped walnuts, Curdy entered the side door, toting a sack and so wet that water dripped from his clothes and hair to puddle on the floor anywhere he went. The cook handing me the pudding took a long look at the sopping floor, heaved a long-suffering sigh, and turned, calling a kitchen boy to collect a mop and tend to the mess.

Curdy’s eyes darkened when he saw me, then he sharply inclined his head. “Da—Princess Odette. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.” Resentment tinged his voice, and he glanced down at the sumptuous pudding in my hands. “I see you’re eating well.”

“It’s for Princess Tess. She’s ill.”

His eyes narrowed and his mouth became the thinnest of lines. “And what better way for a royal to heal than with decadent desserts?”

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