Chapte 1
I never thought the tale of my daring escape from servitude into the glittering world of the royal palace could be boring, but after the hundredth telling it had begun to lose its shine. I was seriously considering stabbing myself in the leg with a fork as an excuse to leave the dinner party early. The only problem was that I really liked the gown I was wearing, and I knew from experience that removing bloodstains from silk was a pain in the ass.
Instead I had to school my expression while Lord Hollish to my left expounded on the story that the poets were already calling the Romance of the Century. The embellishments being woven into my adventure with every new iteration were reaching the realm of the ludicrous. I couldn’t think of a bigger waste of magic than turning a pumpkin into a carriage, although mice into horses was a close second. And apparently my shoes had been made of glass. How impractical.
I curved my lips with a fetchingly sweet smile and cast a glance toward the star-crossed lover of my magical tale, Prince Everett of Solis. He was grinning broadly when he met my eyes, somehow not yet bored by our epic love story. With his charming dimples and warm, open countenance, he was much more dashing than his elder brother, and kinder too, which I’d never stopped being grateful for. As for me, I’d been told by my stepmother on numerous occasions that my genuine smile made me appear less genuine than my fake one did. “Devious” was the exact term that Seraphina had used. Ah well. I was practiced enough at my fake smile that it didn’t matter much.
The noblewoman across the table from Lord Hollish clapped her hands together in glee.
“How magical,” she said, with too much vim to be entirely sober. She was a regular in the queen’s sewing circle, but her name escaped me. Tasia or Tansy or something. “Lady Aislinn, you must tell us how your shoes did not break.”
“I’m very light on my feet,” I said, my eyes demurely downcast.
“I can attest to that,” said Everett, jumping to my rescue. He knew how much I disliked the attention, though the reason was much different than he imagined. “She is grace itself when she dances, like the fey of old.”
I didn’t have to fake modest embarrassment at his praise; a flush rose in my cheeks. Everett certainly had a way with words. He was thirty-three and a fine statesman. His brother the king was already making good use of him as an ambassador. All the more reason for me to embed myself in these people’s hearts as a symbol of everything bright and beautiful, which meant letting the ridiculous tale of
my and Everett’s whirlwind courtship continue to grow from a starry-eyed story into a legendary romance.
Maybe that’s wishful thinking. It’s equally possible that I was merely a novelty. A fine topic of gossip until Everett came to his senses and realized that—second-born or not—the royal prince of Solis marrying a nobody was simply untenable. Even if I was technically a blueblood on my father’s side.
A burst of laughter at the end of the table caught my attention. Queen Mariana was radiant with a smile as everyone around her laughed uproariously. Her wheat-brown hair was woven with strands of tiny pearls tonight, and her forest-green dress, trimmed with creamy lace appliqué, draped elegantly off her lily-white shoulders. She lifted her wineglass for a sip, and I saw that she’d laid her right hand, gently and unobtrusively, onto her husband’s. Whatever the joke had been, King Ryland didn’t seem amused, but that was to be expected. The king wasn’t known for his levity.
I stared for a moment too long. Ryland’s glare locked onto me, and his frown deepened. I dropped my gaze quickly. Out of everyone of consequence in the palace, the king was the only one who had yet to warm to me. I poked at my vegetables with my fork, calculating how much lustre I had left. Only three vials. Possibly enough to soothe Ryland’s suspicions of me for a few days, but that was hardly worth it. I would have to meet with Seraphina soon and see about replenishing my stock. My stepmother wouldn’t be happy about it, but at this point losing control of the delicate balance I’d created would prove fatal.
“Lady Aislinn, what do you think?” asked Lord Hollish.
I set down my fork and looked up. Everyone at our end of the table was watching me expectantly. Damn it. I needed to get better at scheming and conversing at the same time.
“I beg your pardon.” I dabbed my napkin at the corner of my mouth. “I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention.”
“That’s all right,” said Lady Ta-something (what was her name?). “It wasn’t terribly interesting.”
A good-natured laugh rippled through the guests, but I just took a sip of wine. Hollish owned one of the largest lustre factories in the city, and it was safer not to risk antagonizing him if I could help it. Wealth and power were two things I always tried to keep on my side.
Judging from the venom-laced smile that Lord Hollish was currently leveling at the drunk Lady…Tallia, he was the sort of man who kept a precise tally of enemies and allies. Not that she noticed. She had already launched into some rambling anecdote about her own experience at the ball. Seeing as it didn’t involve any magic pumpkins or royal proposals, no one else was terribly interested.
“I must say, Aislinn.” Lord Hollish turned to me with a tone that was much too familiar. “It’s refreshing to have new blood around here, and you’re such a lovely girl, I’m sure you’ll do quite well in the palace.”
A tad condescending, especially considering who I was about to marry. Hollish reached over and patted my thigh in an intimate gesture he could claim was fatherly if I were to raise a fuss. I’m sure it was only coincidence that he’d timed it while Everett was distracted by conversation with someone else. I didn’t raise a fuss. Lady Aislinn never did.
“That’s so kind of you, my lord,” I said, clasping his hand between both of mine in gratitude—and so that I could move it discreetly but firmly away from my lap. Before I released him, I flicked open his diamond cuff link and palmed it. “I’m lucky to have made so many wonderful friends here.”
Lord Hollish beamed at me. I smiled prettily back and thought about how satisfying it would be to plunge my fork into his beady eye. An even more effective way to end the dinner party. I rolled his cuff link between my fingers. I didn’t have a way to pawn it right now, but it never hurt to stay sharp. I waited until Hollish’s attention was claimed by the lady on his other side, then surreptitiously flicked the cuff link into his gravy. Maybe he would choke on it.
Lady Tallia was still meandering through her story, which I was beginning to fear didn’t have a point. Even so, it was vastly preferable to Lord Hollish’s conversation. I nodded and made affirming noises in all the right places, and even managed to get a word in edgewise to compliment the gown she’d worn on the third night of the ball. I didn’t have any idea what she’d worn, but she was too drunk to consider that and only launched into a new story about her seamstress.
To call those royal dinner parties exhausting would be a comical understatement, but I had no choice but to partake. I had to give everyone the dazzling, perfect Lady Aislinn that they had created with their stories of magic and romance. I took another sip of my wine—I never let myself have more than a single glass during a meal—and noticed that Everett was watching me from across the table. He mouthed something when he caught my eye. I love you.
Despite myself, I blushed again. He was too charming for his own good. The sort of charisma that was bred from a lifetime free of uncertainty and self-doubt, from the unwavering assurance given to him ever since he was in his cradle that he was inestimably precious. But it was more than that. He was generous with his confidence, gifting
it to others as easily as a handshake. If I wasn’t careful, I sometimes caught myself falling prey to his benevolent trap.
You’re nobody. Seraphina’s words were a refrain in my head, drowning out the blissful promises that Everett gave with every gentle smile, every enamored glance. Only a nobody can be anything they want.
And everything depended on me being a princess.
Chapter 2
It was easier than I’d expected, making a prince fall in love with me. With the quality of lustre Seraphina had afforded me, three nights were more than enough time to convince Everett that I was the love of his life. The hard part was making sure he found me after the glamour and mystery of the ball had faded. Love at first sight is a little harder to believe in the stark light of day.
The shoe was Cecilie’s idea. There was a shoemaker in the city who specialized in lavish, unique shoes for noblewomen, and he happened to be sweet on my stepsister. I didn’t like how complicated the plan was, how much it depended not only on Everett’s motivation but his investigative skills. Wouldn’t it be so much simpler to tell him my real name or mention where I lived?
But Seraphina was adamant that Everett had to track me down himself. How could anyone accuse me of trying to hook a prince when I hadn’t even told him who I was, when all I’d left behind was a single shoe? Golden, with delicate, crystal-wrought vines and leaves wrapping around the heel and snaking along the sides. The shoes were truly a piece of art, and like most art, they were more beautiful than functional. My feet hurt for days after. But Cecilie’s idea worked. The shoemaker had notched his mark into the sole, and less than a week after the ball, Everett showed up at our door.
Cecilie and Adelaide thought it would be funny to put on a show of simpering and sidling their way into Everett’s good graces, each claiming ownership of the shoe. Seraphina watched their antics with murder in her eyes, though her expression remained carefully detached. It wasn’t part of the plan, as there was no way Everett had managed to completely forget what I looked like in the past few days, but—ever the gallant—he graciously let my stepsisters attempt to prove their claim. The whole scene would have been funny if I hadn’t been so tightly wound with nerves.
Cecilie is taller than me, and her foot was clearly too large, even before she tried to squeeze it in. Adelaide, on the other hand, is about my size, and I knew as she took the shoe from Cecilie that it would probably fit. She gave a convincing performance of not being able to slide it on, and even flung it into a wall in fury lest anyone doubt.
Anxiety churned deep in my stomach as I waited for Everett to notice me in the doorway of the parlor. His eyes met mine, and I saw his shock at Adelaide’s outburst transform into recognition. We’d known from the shoemaker that he would be coming today, so Seraphina had spent all morning making sure I was a picture of charmingly tragic neglect, in an ill-fitting smock that nonetheless managed
to hug my curves in all the right places, with my copper hair falling in tousled curls around my shoulders and smudges of soot on my cheek and forehead. If she hadn’t been born with such uncompromising ambition, my stepmother could have made a career costuming actors for the stage.
“Hello,” Everett had said softly, approaching me with the care of someone trying not to spook a flighty woodland creature.
“Y-your Highness.” I dropped a clumsy curtsy (my curtsies are actually impeccable, but Seraphina isn’t the only one who would have thrived in theater). I kept my eyes downcast while Seraphina went through her little speech about how I was only the help and therefore couldn’t possibly interest the prince and wouldn’t he like to sit down for some tea?
Everett ignored her. He retrieved the shoe from where it had landed and asked me to take a seat. Seraphina made tittering noises, eyeing the pristine upholstery, but said nothing. Honestly, you’d think Everett was as dedicated to the theatrics as we were, the way he knelt before me and presented the shoe with a flourish. It fit, of course. Seraphina and my stepsisters protested, of course.
“You lying little whore.” Cecilie smacked the back of my head with more force than was strictly necessary. “Tell him the truth. Tell him you weren’t there.”
“Cecilie, dearest, kindly keep your hands to yourself,” purred Seraphina. She fixed her eyes on the prince. “I apologize for my daughter’s behavior. She is overwrought, as you can see.”
“It’s Lady Isbel you should be apologizing to, not me,” Everett said, from where he still knelt at my feet.
“Who?” asked Adelaide.
“Forgive me, Your Highness,” I murmured, interlocking my fingers in my lap. “My name is Aislinn. Isbel was my mother’s name.”
Everett opened his mouth to reply, but Cecilie cut in.
“See? She’s a liar, and fitting into a shoe isn’t proof of anything.” She crossed her arms and huddled into the corner of the sofa with a pout puckering her bottom lip. Her angelic features and big blue eyes, crowned with dark blond hair, lent themselves marvelously to aristocratic sulks.
Recognizing my cue, I rose to my feet to retrieve the other shoe from its nook behind the fireplace. I had wrapped it in a scrap of muslin, and my hands trembled as I uncovered it to show the room. A lonely girl on the brink of a new world.
Everett was joyously radiant as he stood. He looked like he wanted to take me in his arms right then, to hell with my stepfamily and his retinue of hovering footmen and Falcons—royal guards nicknamed
for the brass sickle-shaped insignia they wore on their breast pockets, reminiscent of claws and curved beak. There were no fewer than six of them, and none seemed amused by the comical overkill of them protecting the prince from three ladies of luxury and one beleaguered serving girl.
Everett took my hand in both of his. I think he must have said something charming and romantic, something worthy of a prince rescuing the love of his life from her tragic past, but to be honest I don’t remember what it was. My mind was a maelstrom, churning chaotically around a single placid thought: I did it.
Soon enough, the parlor was in an uproar as Everett swept me off my feet—not literally, thank goddess—to lead me into my new life. He ordered someone to gather my things, and Adelaide informed him with sweet venom that I didn’t own anything but the clothes on my back. I think she was enjoying herself by then. Everett looked like he had something to say to that, but I pulled him gently away. The last thing we needed was for Everett to try his wits against my stepsister’s.
Before we left, Seraphina leaned in close, her vicious smile never leaving her lips.
“Don’t fuck this up,” she told me, so quietly that the words were a mere breath among the mayhem.
I didn’t bother replying. She knew very well that I was aware what was at stake. She knew very well that I didn’t intend to fail. I only smiled back at her, the essence of fragile humility. Lady Aislinn rose above. Lady Aislinn was as gracious as her prince. Lady Aislinn didn’t have time for grudges and jealousy when her life was about to change forever. I didn’t look back at my stepfamily as Everett handed me into the royal carriage. They were in the past. A painful memory of the trials that had made me stronger, kinder, better.
Besides, I only had eyes for my prince.
Chapter 3
One of the things that I had not anticipated about the palace was that it never slept. There were only a handful of nobles—all of them related somehow to the king or queen—who lived in the palace with the royal family, but there were always at least ten or fifteen visiting nobles or dignitaries to whom the Crown offered hospitality. Between all the private dinners and afternoon teas and friendly games of billiards or croquet, the grounds were constantly crawling with people, and when those people were asleep, the servants crept out of their hidden passages to keep the palace clean and functioning smoothly. This meant that during any clandestine ventures in the dead of night, there was no hope of remaining unseen. I just had to make sure that to the people who did see me, I had plausible reasons to be where I was.
When I first arrived at my new home and discovered this unfortunate state of affairs, I started roaming the halls at night with an oil lamp, telling any servant who appeared that I suffered bouts of insomnia and walking helped clear my mind. Once the word spread, the staff stopped paying me any attention when they saw me in the middle of the night, except for the occasional thoughtful soul who would offer to fetch me some warm milk or whatever other home remedy they’d learned from their grandmother or aunt or friend of a friend for curing sleeplessness.
That was why nobody noticed when one late evening I left the palace to wander the gardens on my own. Oil lamp in hand, I meandered through the now-familiar paths with a false air of aimlessness. It wasn’t terribly late, and the palace still hummed with its occupants’ after-dinner amusements. But the sparsely lit gardens tended to be empty after dark, other than the cherry tree grove and the rose gardens, which boasted several cloistered benches and therefore were a favorite spot for lovers’ rendezvous. I stayed well away from those as I made my way to a rarely visited corner of the vast gardens. The area hadn’t been forgotten exactly, because it was kept cleared of brambles and weeds, but the flower beds were mostly barren, filled instead with an odd collection of stone statuettes and chipped bird fountains that must not have had another home.
In the swaying light of my lamp, the blank stone eyes of dancing fey and woodland creatures watched me with an eerie prescience. I slipped a handkerchief from my pocket and let it fall to the ground. I knelt to retrieve it, but first turned over a lichen-crusted rabbit beside the path. The hollow inside held a scrap of paper with a single word inked on it in familiar, spidery handwriting:
My heart skipped a beat. After all these weeks of waiting, the time was finally here. I was ready. How could I not be? In some ways it felt as if my whole life had been leading up to this.
But I couldn’t afford to lose focus. Right now, I was still Lady Aislinn, on an innocent evening ramble. I wiped my thumb across the letters, focusing on the spell worked into the liquid lustre that had been mixed with the ink. Once I could sense the threads of the spell, gossamer thin, I blew softly on the paper. Instantly, the ink vanished, as if carried away with my breath.
I tucked the now-blank paper into my pocket and returned the rabbit to its spot, careful to match its edges to the grooves in the dirt. Then I picked up my handkerchief and sauntered back the way I’d come, not looking back.
Merrill, my lady’s maid, was waiting for me in my room. She’d been assigned to me on my first night at the palace. I hadn’t yet figured out what connections or loyalties had scored her the position. There had to be something. The personal maid of royalty wasn’t a job filled lightly, not to mention that she was clearly of Elorian descent. Considering her lack of accent, I assumed she’d been born in Solis, but it was possible that she emigrated from Eloria as a baby when the borders reopened twenty years ago at the end of the war. I never could figure out a casual way to bring up the question. I didn’t want her to be afraid that I held the anti-Elorian sentiments that were still rampant among many Solisti citizens.
I also hadn’t figured out how she always knew when I would be needing her help. It would have impressed me if it weren’t also perturbing. It made me wonder what else she knew without me telling her.
She had run a bath for me—I could smell the fragrance of the oils she used as soon as I walked into my bedchamber. My nightgown and robe were laid out on the bed.
“Good evening, milady,” she murmured with a curtsy.
“Please don’t,” I said, without thinking. Her wide, worried eyes flicked to mine. They were stunningly dark, almost as dark as her hair, which had escaped her white cap in a few curling tendrils. “You can dispense with the ‘milady’ and curtsying when it’s just the two of us.”
She went right on staring at me, now with a hint of suspicion nudging aside the worry, as if she thought it was some kind of trick. I gave her my best reassuring smile.
“You forget that not long ago I was scrubbing floors and washing
laundry. Surely you can understand why all this formality makes me uncomfortable. You can call me Aislinn. No one else has to know.”
Slowly, she relaxed, and I thought I could even detect a small smile.
“If that’s what you wish,” she said, “Aislinn.”
“Thank you.” I hadn’t intended to have this conversation, but now that we had, I knew it was a good play. Friends made better allies than servants.
I soaked in the tub until the water went cold. Keeping up with the strategies that had landed me in the palace was exhausting, and the bath did little to ease the tension in my muscles. At least I didn’t have to worry about Everett stopping by to wish me good night. He had a bad habit of popping in unexpectedly, which I suppose might seem romantic to some, but in reality it meant I was constantly on edge, even in my own bedchamber.
But that night Ryland was meeting with his council of advisers (including Everett) in his study. I knew those meetings tended to last into the wee hours of the morning—I’d made it my business to know. So Everett would be safely out of my hair until tomorrow.
Once I was clean and dressed, I sat down at my vanity so that Merrill could brush and braid my hair for the night. For such a petite girl, she had a grip like a seaman rigging the mainsail.
“Fuck.” It slipped out through gritted teeth before I could stop myself. I swear she was trying to rip a handful of hair out of my head.
Her hands slackened. I saw a glimmer of surprise across her features in the mirror, no doubt shocked by the crack in Lady Aislinn’s perfect demeanor. She ducked her head and kept working, softer this time.
“Sorry, mi—sorry.”
I smiled weakly but didn’t reply. It was best to keep my mouth shut. ...
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