Chapter 2
A second after Queen Damascena’s departure, all the rage and helplessness welling in my chest breaks through my tough exterior, and tears roll down my cheeks.
The last thing I want to do is cry in front of Lady Circi. I don’t trust her not to say something cutting and report me to the queen. The maid wheels the makeup trunk over to my stool and wipes my tears, but they won’t stop flowing.
“You’re thinking of running to Prince Kevon,” Lady Circi says from her armchair.
I shake my head.
“Good.” She rises and stalks across the van’s hard floor. “He won’t be able to mobilize help quickly enough to counter the guards watching over your family.”
My throat thickens. “How could you let her threaten innocent people?”
Lady Circi raises a brow and makes an incredulous snort through her nostrils. As the Queen’s Lady at Arms, she’s not the one who makes the heartless decisions, she just implements them. She places a hand on the shoulder that got shot and squeezes. I try not to wince with the remembered pain from the searing bullet.
“In this game, the Nobles always win.” She leans close enough for her breath to puff against my ear. “Your role is to identify the key players and secure yourself a position of power.”
My gaze slides toward the dark-skinned woman, and I meet her green eyes. I used to think they were as green as malachite, but up close, they’re ringed with a blue as deep as Prince Kevon’s that bleed into a turquoise with golden flecks. The color is startling against her flawless, mahogany skin with sienna-red undertones. When she’s not pointing a gun at me, twisting my arm, or doing the bidding of Queen Damascena, she is exceptionally stunning.
“Secure yourself a position of power,” I whisper. “Like you did?”
Resentment crosses her features. I don’t know if it’s because I brought up the subject that she was the favorite of King Arias during the last Trials. Or maybe because Lady Circi lost out on the chance to rule because she made a deal to help Queen Damascena win in exchange for becoming the Lady at Arms.
Without a word, Lady Circi draws back, opens the door, and walks out of the van. My gaze turns to the maid, who presses her lips together in a thin line. She probably knows Queen Damascena’s secrets, but there’s absolutely no way I will compromise this girl’s safety for personal benefit.
I push my anguish into a tight ball and stuff it deep in the back of my mind. The lives of Mom, Dad, Flint, and Yoseph depend on my ability to mollify this mad queen. One day, it will be her begging for mercy while I decide her fate, but for now, I will play along.
The maid places a cooling gel on my skin, which removes the puffiness and red blotches, and I practice a mask of calm in the trunk’s mirror. After applying a layer of makeup, she ushers me out of the van and into a courtyard somewhere around the back of the palace. Guards march the perimeter, holding automatic machine guns with thick magazines that could kill an entire group of rebels within minutes.
Lady Circi stands next to the bus’s back door. She flicks her head for me to enter and doesn’t reprimand me for speaking out of line. When I board, every face on that bus twists around to watch me take my seat, but nobody speaks. The journey around the palace is mercifully fast, and I keep my stoic mask in place when we step out into a crowd of baying reporters.
It’s the same as when we entered the ball: a line of guards forming a tight barrier on both sides of the red carpet that leads to the palace’s marble front steps.
The white building doesn’t look as magical as it did during the day, but it’s larger than I remember from last night. As instructed by a production assistant, we walk up the steps past the reporters and line up at the top for the cameras. I try not to squint at the lightning storm of flashes and instead cast my gaze to the long driveway, where fountains stand like sentinels on both sides, each spouting their arcs of water.
This time, my breath doesn’t catch. I feel no disapproval, awe, or overwhelm. Everything pales into insignificance with the lives of my family at stake.
The palace doors open, and guards in purple let us into the marble-and-gold entrance hall. I didn’t notice the staircase yesterday, but it’s nearly identical to the one we saw in the concert hall, down to the Gaia statues. Instead of the Phangloria Tree, a marble Gaia statue holds a cornucopia that overflows with fruit, and baskets of pink damascena roses line the stairwell.
Since the last Princess Trials, Rosa damascena grows like weeds in the fields and around Dad’s micro-gardens. Their petals are smaller than the average rose, edible, and make a tea that smells as sharp as the queen. If Ingrid won the Princess Trials, would we see more of the dark-petalled Rosa Ingrid Bergman?
Six of Ambassador Pascale’s girls are already waiting for us at the foot of the stairs. I recognize Sabre, the red-haired Amstraadi with the freckles who tried to goad me into saying words of sedition in front of Prince Kevon.
Ingrid grumbles out loud that these were probably our hijackers. I can’t help but agree, even though being close to her makes my hackles rise. I’d like to tackle her to the ground and pound her into the marble. She murdered Firkin because he was a Foundling and looked different. Then, she tried to get me killed.
The doors behind us slam shut, muffling the shouts and scuffling of the reporters.
Production assistants usher us to gather around the Amstraadi girls at the foot of the stairs. About twenty steps up, there’s a half landing, where the staircase splits. Bright lights shine down from two statues of a man who looks
