Chapter 11 A friend
The dinner ended, mercifully, an hour later.
I did not wait for Cardan to escort me. I did not wait for Elowyn's parting shot or Adrian's cheerful farewell. I rose from my chair, Ash leaping onto my shoulder, and walked out of the dining hall with my head high and my shadows curling behind me like a thundercloud.
My handmaidens fell into step around me as I reached the corridor.
"Princess..." Liriel started.
"Not now."
"Your face is..."
"Not. Now."
We walked in silence through the gilded halls. Past the drooping golden plants. Past the marble statues and the frescoed ceilings. Past the guards who pretended not to see me and the servants who scurried out of my path.
When we reached my quarters, I slammed the doors so hard the walls shook.
"You knew," I said.
Liriel, Thalia, and Sera had lined up against the wall like soldiers awaiting execution.
"Princess, we..."
"You knew he had a lover. All three of you. I saw your faces in that hall. You knew and you didn't tell me."
Liriel stepped forward. Her face was pale but steady. "We suspected. We didn't know for certain. And we didn't want to distress you before you'd even..."
"Before I'd even what? Met him? Been humiliated in front of his entire court?" I laughed, that cold, dangerous laugh that made the shadows dance. "I have spent years upholding my end of this arrangement. Years of chastity. Years of waiting. Years of turning away every male who looked at me with interest because I was bound, because I was promised, because I was to be faithful to a male I had never even met."
My voice cracked. I hated that it cracked.
"And all that time, he was..." I couldn't finish the sentence.
"It's not uncommon in Fae courts," Sera said quietly. "Arranged marriages are political. Emotional attachments are... separate. Their males have a lot of liberty when it comes to emotional attachments. Unfortunately, it is not the same for their females."
"This isn't separate. He brought her to dinner. He sat her at the family table. He let his sister present her to me like a cat dropping a dead mouse at my feet."
"That was cruel of Princess Elowyn," Liriel agreed. "But Princess—Nyx..."
She used my name. Not my title. My name.
I stopped pacing.
"We will face this," Liriel said. "Together. The way we have faced everything. But you need to decide what you want to do."
What did I want to do?
I wanted to storm into Cardan's chambers and demand answers. I wanted to fly home on Ash's back and never look at this golden cesspool again. I wanted to shake my dead father and ask him why, why, he had bound me to a male who couldn't even pretend to honor me.
But I was the Princess of Hel. Daughter of shadows. Heir to a throne of bone and obsidian.
I did not break. I did not bow. And I would not let a golden king and his crimson-clad mistress make a fool of me.
"Tomorrow," I said, my voice steady now. "Tomorrow, we plan a wedding."
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I did not sleep that night.
The darkness that had been my sanctuary for three blissful days offered no comfort now. I lay in my massive bed, Ash curled at my feet, and stared at the canopy above me. It was embroidered with golden sunbursts. Of course it was. Even in the dark, this room found ways to remind me I didn't belong.
Lady Freya.
Lady Freya.
I turned the name over in my mind like a blade, testing its edges. She was beautiful, I would give her that. Elegant. Poised. The kind of woman who made men write poetry and start wars. The kind of woman a king might keep at his side for six years, six years of dinners and whispered conversations and whatever else happened behind closed doors.
Six years.
Ever since I found out about the oath and the chastity requirements, I learned to turn away the budding interest of young lords who didn't understand why the Princess of Hel wouldn't even let them hold her hand. Why I couldn't even have a simple dalliance with men.
It is your duty, my father had said. The Oath requires fidelity. You must remain untouched until the marriage is consummated. It is the only way to ensure the bloodlines remain pure.
I had believed him. I had followed the rules. I had kept myself chaste and untouched and faithful to a ghost who sent me poisonous flowers once a year.
And now I knew the truth.
The ghost had not been faithful at all.
\-————-
Dawn came, gray and unwelcome, seeping through the cracks in my curtains like an uninvited guest. I rose before my handmaidens arrived. I dressed myself, a simple gown of black silk, no ornamentation, no poison daggers. I didn't need weapons for what I was about to do.
I needed answers.
The guards outside Cardan's private study tried to stop me. I walked past them without breaking stride. The shadows that followed me everywhere curled around the door handles and wrenched them open before anyone could touch me.
Cardan was at his desk, surrounded by papers and maps and the detritus of kingship. He looked up when I entered. His expression shifted, surprise, then wariness, then something that might have been guilt.
"Princess. It's early."
"Did you think I wouldn't find out?"
He set down his pen. Slowly. Carefully. The way a man might set down a weapon when faced with a larger predator.
"Find out what?"
"Don't." My voice was ice. "Don't play games with me. Not after last night. Not after your sister paraded your mistress in front of me like a trophy."
Something flickered in his silver eyes. "Freya is not my mistress."
"Then what is she?"
He didn't answer.
"Six years," I said. "She has been at your side for six years. She looks at you like she owns you. Your sister introduced her to me as a cultural advisor and the entire table knew exactly what that meant." I stepped closer. The shadows in the room leaned with me. "So tell me, Cardan. What is she?"
"A friend."
"A friend."
"Yes."
"Does this friend warm your bed?"