Chapter 125

“Winter. Please rise and come sit with me,” Empress Katya urges.

She is in control of the scene. With one movement of her hand, a seat is set up beside her for me to sit. It seems like an honor, but it truly isn’t. When people discuss this in later days, rather than discuss how the empress is a bad host, I’d bet 100 gold coins that people will only ask why the table was never set up for me initially. It makes me seem like a greedy opportunist who intruded on this exclusive brunch despite the fact that I was invited from the start.

The corner of my mouth quirks up.

I’d done us both a courtesy by not attending the Spring Ball last year, so as to minimize the potential clashes that could occur before the nobility and yet Katya insists on bringing them forth here?

Well, two can play the game and the easiest way to strike back is fuming in a seat right beside her.

“Oh Mother, I would,” I say with innocent eyes. I turn to look at Julia. “But I already promised to sit next to Julia during our lessons. Would that be alright?”

“I did not!” Julia roars. She’s kind enough not to call me a slave girl as she used to when she was younger.

.....

“If you forgot, there’s no shame in admitting it. Although considering how we spoke on this matter just the other day, it’s strange you managed to forget it so quickly.” I pretend to hide my sadness and bite a quivering bottom lip that is seconds away from breaking out in laughter instead of sobs and ruining my performance. My eye unwillingly strays to the empress, as if to place invisible blame on her, before it falls back onto the ground.

The people here can do the math themselves. Was I truly invited to the brunch or is the empress purposefully trying to exclude me?

Julia sputters silently, but she knows better than to retort as the servants quickly move the new seating beside her. She’s not entirely stupid, a fact I’m not sure I should be grateful for or irritated about. But at least she isn’t carved out of the same hyperintelligent mettle as the rest of House Duvernay.

I finally take a seat between Julia and Lady Bryce. The hostility in the air is thick enough to choke on. But now I have a front-row seat to the impending competition, which is just minutes away from starting as young men loosen their joints and check their gear for the thousandth time. It will be rather difficult to enjoy within the nest of vipers I’m stuck in.

A server brings a warm cloth to wipe my hands. I’ve scarcely finished that before Lady Bryce delicately clears her throat. Lady Bryce is the lowest-ranked of all of the empress’ ladies-in-waiting. But the purpose in her being chosen becomes abundantly clear every time she speaks. She has a wide mouth well suited for spreading gossip and beady eyes that seem to catch everything that occurs around her. The wife of a baron, an older man who was only recently appointed to become a minister in court, has learned to channel her inferiority complex into becoming a useful weapon in the hands of Empress Katya.

“Your highness,” she begins, ready to jump into damage control. I give her a thin smile, “Although you and Julia may study together, your mother only sought to spend time with you. It’s rare that your presence graces Sunrise Palace. I can hardly even remember the last time I saw you at the Ladies’ Court.”

“Yes, I recall my time there... fondly. As for the relationship between Mother and I, it has always been good so I’m not quite sure why you’d suggest otherwise.” I murmur, acting confused.

I turn to look at Empress Katya, who is seated on the other side of Julia and drinks her tea as if she were not the subject of the conversation. “Mother, I carry the birthday gift you gave me close to my heart every day.” I pull the watch out of my pocket, the golden metal eager reflecting the few rays of light that slipped through the half-open tent. “Isn’t it lovely?” I say, addressing the entire table.

“Very much so. Such a sweet gesture.”

“Absolutely exquisite.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Empress Katya knows how to play along to my cue just as well as our audience, smiling brighter than the sun in my direction. It’s the same smile she used to give me as she applied salve onto the back of my stinging calves. “I thought it would be most suitable for you. We have known each other for a while ever since Helio saw fit to bring you into our family, no? It is a symbol of how grateful I am for the time we’ve spent together and the time we will spend together in the future.”

The corners of her eyes even bunch up as she speaks fondly of me. She’s good.

“As am I,” I tell her. She reaches across the table to take my hand, her ice-cold palms leeching the warmth from my much warmer ones. I think of how she’d stabbed needles into my fingers with those hands and clutch them even more tightly as if I’m overcome with affection.

Admiration shines in the eyes of the women present, along with disdain. Illegitimate children are a constant problem for those in the higher echelons who stand to lose much should a child who isn’t their own inherit their husband’s rank and fortune. It is natural that they would feel some type of way about me while admiring the empress for not paying mind to the physical manifestation of her husband’s infidelity. However, unlike the Ladies’ Court, I’ve come to a position where I am not someone they wish to offend so easily.

“It seems the competition will commence shortly.” The Duchess of Mulworth breaks apart the moment with a short, indifferent sentence. The empress retracts her hand and her face becomes pleasant once more, but I’ve passed enough time with my nominal mother to know the rage simmering under her flesh.

She and Duchess Taylor have irreconcilable differences between them, from the duchess assuming that Empress Katya had some involvement in her son’s poisoning to the empress losing her right to run the imperial palace for a few years in lieu of the duchess.

“Mother, you let her go to the Ladies’ Court, but I’ve yet to attend once!” Julia hisses to the empress as my father steps before the competitors a few feet away.

“In good time, Julia.” Empress Katya says in a tone too low to be heard by others save for me. “All in good time, you shall get what was yours.”

We exchange more barbs disguised as small talk as we snack on exquisite little snacks with names I can hardly pronounce before Duchess Taylor’s words come true and my father steps before the competitors for one last address.

In the dark-colored hunting uniform decorated with our family’s impressive phoenix livery and looking as foreboding as ever, the atmosphere created by Emperor Helio is inspiring, rather than terrifying. At least, it seems that way for everyone else.

“We are all born unequal. Some of us are higher ranked, some of us know the right people, and some of us don’t.” He’s just finishing up his final message to the young men, who seem to have stars shining in their eyes as they drink up every word. “This is your time to change that. Hunt well, prove yourself, earn glory from your own hands rather than from your family’s. Time waits for no man, least of all one all too happy to walk the path set before him rather than forge his own.”

Both my mother and father speak of time. Something I am running out of. The boys before me have the rest of their lives to change their fate, but I’ve only got a few more if what Julian said about Travelers dying at the age they were meant to is true.

“Oh dear, your highness you do not look well. Are you ill?” Lady Bryce asks in an overly concerned manner.

A rousing cry comes from the assembled noble boys running en masse into the woods. I can already see Sir Robbie, Emma’s secret trainer of swordsmanship, charging ahead of the rest with a loud battle cry. They disappear in seconds.

“No, I’m quite alright.” I look away and take another bite of pastry. The ones I make taste much better.

“Perhaps some fresh air is in order,” Lady Bryce adds, not taking the hint.

An alarm bell begins to ring in my head, although I’m adept at playing it cool and graciously passing Julia a plate of cookies that she snubs. But then Countess Janice rears her head, somehow managing to rip her gaze away from my father’s figure.

“Isn’t it a shame that only the boys get to go hunt?” my former maid half-muses, half-states. I can tell she is about to take this somewhere I won’t like. “I’ve always been of the mind that little girls must run around and play before they get married.”

Beautiful women have always drawn the ire of other women and as someone from a less esteemed background such as myself, the venomous glares fall her way. Janice fans herself delicately, as if fanning away their hidden fury although Empress Katya doesn’t react. I have yet to understand what she sought to gain by employing Janice, other than pissing me off of course.

Duchess Taylor graces us all with another rare comment, espousing the neutral stance of her duchy and herself.

“Indeed. A little exercise does wonders for a girl’s temperament,” she murmurs in agreement.

“Precisely!” Lady Bryce says. “Hence why I have put together a little fun for the young girls as well, lest they feel left out.”

She claps her hands together twice, summoning a row of servants to emerge from behind the tent. They carry on each tray a single item rather similar to those the young men who just disappeared into the trees were holding. There’s a short dagger, a bow and arrow, and a slingshot. They are paltry imitations of the real deal, toys in the eyes of the women beside me perhaps. But considering how two out of three of those weapons have been raised against me in the past, the hair on my body raises as goosebumps rise across my flesh.

Lady Bryce stands, looking extremely proud of herself as she gestures towards the assembled weapons. “I propose a hunt for the young girls who have yet to debut! With the permission of Her Majesty, I have cordoned off a small section of the forest and had it filled with small livestock. There will be prizes for the victor, of course.”

“Marvelous! Brilliant!” Countess Janice spouts, clapping emphatically and urging the other women to do the same.

“What a novel idea! How fun!” Julia exclaims. She suddenly turns to me, finally taking a cookie from the plate she’d snubbed seconds ago. “You will partner with me, won’t you, Winter?”

Before I can even answer, she’s already turned to Empress Katya for backup. “Mother, Winter will partner with me for a hunt in the woods, right?”

Empress Katya gives me an unreadable look. “It’s entirely up to Winter. She herself said that she was feeling fine, but I cannot make any decision for her.”

“Oh, I’d be happy to go,” I say scarcely before the empress has finished speaking. I smile brightly at Julia and she grins back. To walk into a trap with a smile on their face, how many can say they were able to do that?

I can see it is not out of sheer coincidence that there aren’t any other young girls here aside from Julia and myself. Typically, Lady Bryce would not miss the opportunity to bring her daughter Leana around to socialize with the cluster of young, eligible bachelors present. The third and most elusive lady-in-waiting, Viscountess Emerson, and her daughter are not even here today.

Three guards accompany Julia proceeds to choose the sharpest looking dagger from the pile. Protection, I’d wager. Whether they will protect me, however, is to be seen.

Because as Julia flits past me with her choice in hand, she says something that stops me in my tracks.

“I am going to hunt you down like the dog you are and kill you. Sister.” Julia smiles oh so sweetly as I dispassionately choose the only weapon that could serve me well in close quarters combat, a weapon that also happens to be rather useless with only one functioning hand.

The slingshot.