Page 139 of Settle Down, Princess

“But we’re going to ensure the original plan succeeds.” Silas nodded. “An ‘accident’ that rids us of the damn king. It saves Desiree from the executioner’s axe.”

“And Jessalyn.” I gripped the pommel of my saddle and hauled myself upright, my horse shifting underneath me, ready to ride forth. “Save my bloody sister and the princess. Finally we have a mission worthy of executing.”

Chapter 80

We were going to kill a king. That knowledge had stayed with me the entire ride home in the cart, preventing me from seeing or enjoying the sights of the Kheanian capital. I’d been taught to be biddable, graceful and a model of femininity, but instead… We were going to kill a king.

“I must leave you for a while,” Selene said once we reached the safety of the temple. “There is much to do. I can have one of the postulants take you to the gardens, or the library if you wish?”

“Yes, please.”

I answered without thought, not even specifying which, but Selene merely nodded. I don’t think I moved from the spot in the temple foyer until a postulant took me by the arm and directed me to the gardens.

The perfectly formal beauty of the temple grounds was protected from the public eye by a high wall, but it didn’t make me feel any safer. When Selene had brought up the plan, it seemed too unrealistic to even consider seriously but then we met with Desiree. Roan and the others had come stumbling in to tell me what I could and couldn’t do, which hardened my resolve. Without them to provoke me, all that was left was a frozen sense of disbelief. I stared at a perfectly pruned topiary of red roses and then the sweeping branches of a willow, but didn’t really see them, not until she stepped forward.

“There you are.” Giselle, her name came to me eventually, the cruel expression of the king’s mistress making it easier to recall. “Been out doing good works, have you? Not that it will help. Never put much stock in the idea of an afterlife myself.” She made a show of regarding a statue of the goddess nestled in a flower bed. “Though I imagine such a thing would give you solace right now.”

I watched her hand rise, saw those perfectly shaped nails and elegant fingers, rings laden with gemstones adorning each one, only to come to rest on her neck. It was a movement I knew well, taught to me as a genteel form of flirting. It brought the eye to the elegant length of one’s neck, but what I saw there made me blanch. Purplish bruises ringed her perfect throat.

“The king gives me so many gifts.” She wiggled her fingers as if aware the gold and jewels shone in the sunlight. “But none more precious than these.” Her fingers tried to fit the marks around her neck, but she did not have the king’s reach. “He can’t always bring himself to give them to me, but when he does…” She let out a sigh as if she’d received a king’s ransom in jewels, not wretched bruises. “He’s always so worked up, riding the edge of pleasure and pain as he’s forced to bring me with him.” She dropped her hand with a flourish. “It’s a pleasure you’ll know soon enough.”

“No.” Giselle watched my throat work, as if trying to dislodge the feeling of icy fingers wrapped around it. “No, I won’t.”

“They all say that.” She sauntered closer, the train of her beautiful dress trailing behind her. “No, no…!” She imitated a pained cry. “Don’t, stop!” Her fingers flapped helplessly through the air. “My father will…” As her breath sucked in dramatically, mine stuttered in my chest, air not coming in or going out. “You think you’re special, just like each one of those princesses did. You think somehow the position you were born into makes you exempt from such things.”

She drew closer, looming over me as her keen eyes stabbed at my flesh.

“You think your title, your bloodline, your training or the people you think you have in your corner will prevent this from happening, but…” Giselle smiled slowly. “It won’t. It never will. Not you or the princesses that will no doubt come after you. I’ll make sure of it.”

Her hand wrapped around my wrist and that touch broke the shell of passivity I was locked within. I jerked it free, glancing down at the red marks on my wrist, then back at her.

“What has the likes of you to do with anything?” I stared at the woman much more closely now, summoning a critical voice I rarely used. It was my mother’s voice, my grandmother’s, all the powerful women at court as they surveyed the wives of ambassadors or visiting lords and dissected the way they dressed and carried themselves. “You’re not highborn.” That was confirmed in the way she wore all of her jewels, rather than allowing one signature piece to take centre stage and declare her wealth and taste to all. “You’re not even from money.”

The daughters of wealthy merchants observed my every choice of cloth, jewellery and hair styles, when we were in women only spaces and I was allowed to remove my veil. They hungrily took in all of the details and advised their dressmakers to adopt each one, using their father’s money to appear more refined than they were, but this Giselle didn’t even have the benefit of that. Her dress was beautiful, but it was also too much. Too much lace, too much beading, too many jewels sewn into the brocaded fabric, but she twitched those folds with a frown, as if sensing my analysis.

“No, I’m not.” She crossed her arms, straining the tight seams of her bodice. “Just a low born girl from the stews of Cheapside. One pretty enough to catch a duke’s eye, then a king’s, but whatever I lack in good breeding, I make up for in good sense. He never meant to kill the first princess he was supposed to take as wife.”

“What?” I studied her perfectly cruel face, searching for evidence of lies.

“I was to be one in a long line of disposable girls. Stripped, fucked, then my neck snapped with no more effort than one might a chicken’s, my body tossed on the dung heap along with all the other horse shit.”

She tilted her head sideways and then made an ugly sound.

“But as I said, they breed us smarter in the shitty end of town.” Giselle pulled away from me, scanning the garden. “If the king likes to ride a girl, hurt her and kill her, why should it be me to suffer that fate? My mother taught me tricks in the brothels to… get a man where he wants to go when his time runs out.”

She shoved her fingers upwards, then gave them a wiggle, but my stare of incomprehension just made her cackle.

“That murderous impulse leaves him when he blows his load, doesn’t it? But girls like you don’t know anything about that.” Her hands were clasped under her chin. “You’re all perfect and pure and ready to be bred like bloody sheep.” Her teeth glittered as she smiled viciously. “And if you’re all determined to act like ewes, why not die like one?”

It took everything in me not to step back as Giselle advanced.

“I teased His Majesty a little too much last night, pushed him right to the edge. He muttered your name over and over as he squeezed my throat. It makes me come so very hard, all of the blood seems to leave my head and rush to my nethers. My field of vision started to go black and I sucked what air I could in, right before I forced him to finish. He cursed me out, drew his hand back to smack me fair in the face, before he came back to himself, but I consoled him.”

She bared her teeth at me but they looked then like fangs.

“He’d be able to ride you to his satisfaction, not one person coming to your aid as you scream and scream…” She reached out to touch me with a fingertip. “Until you can’t scream anymore.”

I jerked out of her reach.

---