Page 176 of Promise of Darkness
Andraste looks as if I struck her, and I wonder how many times I’ve said those words. “So be it,” she finally whispers. “Hate me if you must, but at least you’ll be alive to do so.”
And then I lift the cup to my lips and drink.
44
My eyes blink open.
Sunlight pours through my bedroom window in Hawthorne Castle. My head aches like I drank far too much elderberry wine, and while I have barely any recollection of the night before, I do recall one thing.
Andraste giving me a glass of wine.
Strange. She must have put aside her enmity of me for one precious night. I know we’ve been at odds of late, though perhaps we can make amends. It feels like a peace offering, and a part of me longs for it. I’m tired of fighting with her. I’m tired of feeling like an axe hovers over my head.
Servants flutter through the doors, looking hesitantly in my direction.
“The queen insists you dress, Your Highness,” one of them says. “Today is a day for… celebration.”
“Judging by the ache in my temples, I think I celebrated too hard last night,” I drawl, flinging aside the covers and slipping from my bed.
They exchange looks.
“It’s… been three days,” one whispers. “Since the ball.”
Three days? Good grief. I must have been ill.
“Did she say what we’re celebrating?”
Instantly, the nearest maid goes pale. “N-no, Your Highness.”
No doubt she’s terrified of my mother.
Aren’t we all?
As a child, my nurses tried to scare me with tales of the boggart who would steal me away at night, but those stories never frightened me. Why would they, when I’d faced Adaia’s wrath time and time again?
I feared the darkness of the oubliette, with only the company of its bats to keep me sane.
I feared to love a single servant, for fear she’d send them away or remove their heads.
I feared her wrath when I failed, time and time again, to make use of my recalcitrant magic.
But myths and books were my companions. I loved to read of the Old Ones, despite the warnings against them. I loved to dream of the dangerous Unseelie courts, filled with riotous hobgoblins and Sorrows. I even wished—just once—that Old Mother Hibbert would steal me away and place a changeling in my bed.
Alas, there’s no escape from my mother.
“What should I wear?” I ask with a friendly, placating smile.
Both servants nearly fall over themselves trying to dress me.
The queen insists I dress in red and gold, which are Asturian colors, but my fingers linger on a gown of midnight silk instead. Someone’s shoved it in the very back of the wardrobe, and the glitter of tiny chips of diamonds woven in the skirts catch my eye.
“This one,” I say.
“But the queen—”
“This one.” I pull it out of the wardrobe, feeling the furious urge to wear it. “I’ll tell my mother I spilled wine on the red.”
Both servants bow, looking stricken.
