I leaned into the hall and found Haemon keeping watch. “Oh, good. You’re here,” I said to the guard. He turned to me, surprised by my sudden appearance and state of undress. “I have an intruder.”
“You what?” He all but shouted. He stepped into the doorway, his sword already halfway drawn, and then stepped back when he saw Taelon waiting for him on the other side. “Y-y-your Highness?”
“Don’t trouble yourself, my man,” Taelon grinned. “I was just leaving.” He straightened his tunic and walked slowly by me. He was just about out the door, my fingers were itching to slam it directly behind him, when he spun around to say, “This is going to be fun, Stranger. Hope you’re up for the challenge.”
“The challenge?”
He left my room and didn’t turn back.
“What challenge, Taelon?”
He waved without looking at me again.
I let out a growl and finally slammed the bedroom door shut.
19
The next morning, I was up before the sun. The bed was too soft. The room was too quiet.
When maids descended on my room with breakfast and fingers nimble and strong enough to suck all of the oxygen out of my lungs in an attempt to tie my corset, I was trying to figure out how Taelon had broken into my room the night before.
“The king has requested your presence in the war room this morning, Your Highness,” one of the maids said quietly while she pinned my hair into a more elaborate style of braid than I usually wore, pulled over my shoulder with elegant twists to it.
I stared at myself in the mirror above the vanity. I was forced to sit up straight because my corset had been banded around me so tightly I wouldn’t be surprised if my head popped off.
They had dressed me in a pale pink day dress more expensive than all of my clothes from the temple combined.
And they had performed some kind of magic on my face because I was no longer the pale, plain girl I remembered from the temple. My cheeks were rosy, my lips a matching color. Flecks of gold in my eyes caught the light and brightened the usual hazel to unnatural shades of emerald and jade.
Mirrors were appropriately absent at the temple. I had grown up looking at my image after I’d shined the cookware. It hadn’t bothered me. Until now. Until I was to meet King Hugo in the war room and face his questions about my past and my future. The maid finished pinning dainty pink flowers in the tail of my braid and stepped back so she could survey me head to toe.
“Am I presentable, then?” I asked her. I tried to fight the nerves clawing at my belly, but I couldn’t manage to talk any sense into myself. I had just seen Hugo last night. There was nothing to be afraid of.
Yet the light of day put everything into an entirely new perspective. The crown lay on my bed. I’d taken it out earlier this morning to polish the travel-worn places. I’d found myself unable to do anything but stare at it for a while after I’d finished.
Could this really be happening?
After everything… Was I truly so close to home?
The maid hummed her approval. “I dare say you are the most beautiful princess I have ever seen, M’lady.”
I averted my eyes, embarrassed that she would call me beautiful and a princess. I hardly felt either. “No,” I said. “It’s your handiwork that’s responsible. Not me.” I found myself staring at myself in the mirror again. I placed a palm against my cheek just to make sure it was really me. “But I must ask what you’ve done with my face.” Realizing she might have thought I meant her insult, I added, “Only that I might replicate it every day forward.”
“Your face?” A little bubble of laughter spilled out of her. “Your Highness, I did nothing to your face except add a small amount of rouge. That is simply what you look like.”
“No,” I disagreed. I leaned forward and took in my appearance once more. “But I do look like my mother. I did not think that I did.”
The light in the maid’s eyes dimmed as she placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I hope you don’t mind me sayin’, but what happened to Her Highness was a tragedy. Your whole family… I just can’t even imagine. It seems only right that you would grow to be as lovely as she. It is the least the Light could do for you after enduring such hardship.”
I felt my eyes grow hot with emotion, but I forced the tears back. I couldn’t cry in front of a maid. What would she think of me? “You are very kind for saying that…?”
“Matilda,” she bounced into a short curtsy. “My name is Matilda.”
“Thank you, Matilda.” I let out a sigh and stood. My hands fell to my waist where the corset pinched and pressed. “You may tell his highness that I am ready now if he will receive me. Just as soon as I learn how to breathe in this thing.”
Matilda tried to hide her smile. “Shallow breaths, mum. That should be better.”
She left me to practice barely breathing and stepped into the hall. She returned a few seconds later to declare, “He’s already waiting for you. There is a footman and the Grandmaster of the guards to escort you.”
I took careful steps in the direction of the door. “Do you know about my traveling companion? He was sent across the hall. I’m wondering if he has awoken.”
She shook her head. “He hasn’t, M’lady. We tried earlier, but he threw his shoes at a squire and so we made the decision to let him sleep.”
It was my turn to hide my
