Page 5 of Cruelest Kiss and Fairest Blood
“Of course not, Mother,” she says, her voice laced with sucrose.
“Inside, back to bed. You are expected to attend your lessons in the morning, regardless of how late you’ve chosen to stay up. I will see you in the greenhouse for breakfast first thing. Come,now.” The queen closes the balcony door, leaving the princess and I alone.
“More lessons. Lucky me,” Lenore mutters under her breath. She scoops up the fallen bird. Odd little thing, isn’t she? Most humans would do almost anything to avoid touching something dead. She holds the bird gently, its puffed-out feathers cradled against her bare skin. She is Death’s muse, stirring over the carcasses of animals. A raven in human guise.
“I’m sorry,” she speaks softly to the unmoving animal. Something about those whispered words sends a shiver up my spine. She deposits the black and yellow bird in a shallow grave beneath the nearest rosebush. Her soft features turn down. I don’t like the way sadness has stolen the mischievous spirit she had just moments ago.
Lenore takes one final look around the darkness. I am utterly distraught when she turns away, and strides briskly up the path to the castle. The urge to follow her, stalk her back to her bedroom, whisk her away to my world of death so that no mortal may ever lay eyes on her again, has my monster clawing to the surface. My usual control unravels. I take my first step toward the castle doors.
A raven lands in my path, cawing its concern. Another joins it, then another. They squawk their displeasure. I sigh, my monster receding as rationale reenters my thoughts.
“You’re right. It’s time to go home.” But I’ll be back. I have to come back.
And so the seed of madness takes root in the garden of shadows that consumes my mind, dropping me into a freefall from which there is no return.
She will be mine.
I welcome my mind’s dark descent with a grin.
Chapter 3
Lenore
The blinding light of day assaults my senses as the curtains in my room are drawn open. Sunbeams streak across my eyelids, stealing my ability to see. I don’t know what the hour is, but it’s not nearly late enough for the evening I had. Even after my return to the inner sanctum of the castle, sleep eluded me. I stared at the ceiling of my room, my mind replaying the briefest flicker of a memory over and over again.
Hair as bright as moonlight. Eyes like liquid stars.
He was only visible for a moment and thenpoof. He was gone. I spent most of the night trying to decide if he was ever really there. It wouldn’t be the first strange thing I’ve seen. Maybe he was a ghost.
“Rise and shine, Princess. Yer mother wishes ye to attend breakfast before yer lessons.” Melly disappears into my closet, returning with a simple grey gown. “Move that bony arse or I’llbring ye not but blueberry jam from now on.” Her speech has always been the most informal type.
“Bleh.” I wrinkle my nose in distaste. There’s something so foul about blueberries. Like little pillows of mushy, tart torment. And why aren’t they blue inside? Their yellowish center is as unappealing as eating a worm. Everything about the fruit is suspicious and repulsive. “You’d let your princess starve?” I tease, folding my arms.
“I’d do what I must to get ye out of this bed and off to yer daily duties, ye right spoiled git.” Melly has always been my favorite company to keep. We’re the same age. We even managed to organize a small, conjoined party for our twenty-second birthdays last month. She’s one of the only people who speaks to me as if I’m not some porcelain royalty.
I grin. “If my brutish handmaiden insists.” The gown hits me straight in the face, knocking me back onto the pillows. “Melly!” My gasp of shock brings a wicked smile to her face.
“Brutish, am I?” Her smile widens, tugging at the many burn scars that dominate the left side of her round face.
Melly and I have much in common, but our early lives could not have been more different. My parents spotted her while riding through a nearby village. She’d been badly burned by a town drunkard after she’d denied his advances.
Roseheart is a kingdom ruled by beauty. Everything about you and your status is determined by your looks. For someone like Melly, with a burned and disfigured face, options were limited, if not nonexistent. She’d have ended up masked in a brothel, living out her days in misery. Thankfully, my mother possesses the ability to see beyond physical beauty.
It’s ironic. Queen Elowynne is known to be the most lovely woman from here to the Roviana Sea. Well, I suppose the praise for her beauty has quieted in recent years. The day I turned eighteen, those same comments passed to me overnight. But Ido not possess the gentle spirit and endless kindness that my mother dons each day as easily as she dons her crown. Her beauty is as true on the inside as it is on the outside. She brought Melly back to the castle and introduced her to a whole new life. That was thirteen years ago. We’ve been best friends ever since.
“Now tell me, why do ye look so knackered?” Melly asks as she laces up my dress.
I tug at the itchy, intricate lace that covers my neck and presses up against my chin, unwilling to accept that fanciful collars will be a part of my wardrobe for the foreseeable future.
Melly notices my discomfort. “Ye could have ’em remove the collars. Maybe if people saw what’s underneath?—”
“No. Leave it.” I push away an unwanted memory attempting to wriggle to the surface.
Melly nods. She’s the only person who sees me without my collars. The only one aside from my parents who have seen what lies beneath. Understanding my unspoken feelings, she drops the subject. Her fingers move to my hair. “As ye wish. Now, why are there dark circles beneath those royal eyes?”
I debate telling her about the mysterious man in the garden.Well, a stunning, handsome stranger was watching me when I snuck out to the garden last night… I tried to call out to him, but he vanished like a ghost. Something tightens in my gut and the words slide back down my throat before I can speak them. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“There.” She finishes adding a few sprigs of baby’s breath to my braid. “Now off ye go.”
