I blink, and her voice goes numb in my ears, like my head’s been dunked under water.

The same sensation settles over my heart.

“You’re a mother now. You have to learn to put your child’s needs above your own. The baby is safe, well-fed. It will grow up in riches, with a name and title you never could have given it. It will have both a mother and a father. It will have a life.”

“WHERE IS MY BABY?”

The cry is so shrill, it feels as though it sends a crack down my throat. A crack that spreads like a hairline fracture that runs the distance between my words and my chest and my soul.

Clarissa places her hands upon mine. “It is not your baby anymore. You would do well to remember that.”

I lunge, pain engulfing me, ripping me to shreds just as I’ll rip her to shreds, just as I’ll claw out her eyes and…

Clarissa screams and in rush the servants, but she doesn’t need them for protection, because I haven’t stood in days and the blood rushes to my legs all at once and I fall.

I don’t fight them when they haul me back to bed.

I don’t fight at all.

A week later, Clarissa sends word to my room that the king has offered me a position in the palace as a maid. The servant tells me this is good news, but the words have the feel of Clarissa all over them, and I roll back over in my bed and shut my eyes without saying a word.

It takes three servants unable to get a response out of me for Clarissa to visit, though this time she stands at the door rather than sitting at my bedside.

I think she’s afraid of me.

She shouldn’t be.

She is the monster and I am the sheep and my baby is the lamb she stole out from under me.

“Consider this an opportunity, Blaise. To turn your life around.”

I don’t have the energy to open my mouth in response.

Clarissa sighs, then lets out a long breath. “There’s a deal to be made here. I see now that I underestimated how much being separated from your child would affect you. I thought you would be happy for the child. For the life I’ve offered it. But I see now that your motherly instincts were more deeply rooted than I assumed. So I’m willing to offer you this: work in service for the king, help me pay off your father’s debts, and I will tell you which family took the child in.”

“You sold my baby.”

“Pardon me.”

“You. Sold. My. Baby.” I’ve been working through it in my head, churning it over and over, and it occurred to me exactly why Clarissa did it. Why she does everything. “You saw an opportunity to buy another fancy dress, so you sold my baby to a wealthy family.”

Clarissa scoffs. “Believe me, if I could have fetched a good sum for your child, I wouldn’t be in this predicament now.”

“You already spent it. You already spent my baby’s money.”

“It’s not your baby any longer,” Clarissa snaps. “As I said before, you’d be better off remembering that. Now, you can lay there and sulk, wasting away the rest of your life, or you can make something of yourself. You can see this as the freedom it is. I saved you, child. You may not recognize it now, but one day, when you’re grown and married off to a wealthy nobleman who wouldn’t have looked twice at a girl with an illegitimate child, you’ll thank me.”

I say nothing, and she waits for a response, but it doesn’t come.

“If you want to see your baby so badly, do as I say. Prove to me you can help get me and the girls out from under the debt your father left us. Consider it your repayment, and I’ll reward you with the knowledge of where the child lives.”

Footsteps shuffle and there’s a click of the door shutting.

Only then do I allow myself to burst into tears.

Evander’s letter comes later that day.

Dearest no-good little Blaise,

Won’t you do me and Jerad a favor and come back to the castle? Life’s utterly dull without you here getting into trouble and making us laugh. For all the good you’ve done to loosen our dear Jerad’s stoicism, I’m afraid he’s slipping back into his old ways in your absence.

Seriously, Blaise. I know it’s not ideal. It’s not exactly what Jerad and I fought our father for, but it’s the best we could get him to agree to. We miss having you around. Olwen’s back from her schooling abroad for the mooncycle, and I fear Jerad and I cannot bear her insolence without you.

Love,

Andy

I hug the tear-stained letter to my chest and cry until I fall asleep. When I wake, my hands are empty, and the letters are gone.

On my bedside table is a note that says:

Silly servant girl, only princesses get happy endings.

It’s only then that I notice the pile of ashes left on my floor.

CHAPTER 25

BLAISE

By the time Nox comes to fetch me that night, I’ve bathed as much as is feasible in my little dungeon cell.

And by bathed, I mean I’ve wiped myself down with a terrycloth rag and water from the basin I’m supposed to be drinking from.

All right, so I might have sniffed at a few of Nox’s vials, too, trying to find a scent that would mask the fact that I haven’t had a proper bath in weeks.

Most would have considered the sniffing a mistake after I accidentally inhaled a substance that had me waking on the floor minutes later with my head throbbing, but eventually I found something that smelled rather citrusy, so it was worth it in the end.

Unlike most of the time, I hear him before he arrives, and I wonder if he’s making noise on purpose to alert me of his presence. I hop up on the dais and finagle my feet and hands around to look as though I’m comfortable, not that I’ve been jittering incessantly all day. Before I can stop them, my hands creep up to the tips of my long braid, which I’ve swept over my shoulder, and start playing with the fraying ends of my hair.

I can’t imagine the braid is all that pleasant to look at, especially after Nox snipped a lock of my hair for that disastrous potion. In fact, if I run my fingers up the plait, I can feel where the tips of my hair splay outward where one lock is shorter than the rest and refuses to be contained.

No matter. I know it’s silly. Nox has seen me in much less alluring states. Like when I first arrived at the castle unconscious and my britches were soaked all the way through. Or the time I was frothing at the mouth. Or how I must look every day without a mirror to judge my appearance. He’s seen me at my worst and doesn’t seem at all deterred.

Still.

I’m not exactly the prettiest petal on the rose, and the attention I’ve gained from farmhands in the past has more to do with acting like I’m pretty than actually being pretty.

Some boys can be easily misled, I’ve found.