Page 57 of Wingless Crow: Part 1

“Sure, Voron. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? All I have to do is breed with royalty and voila! I have a clear path to a secure future. But you…” I pressed my hands into his chest, pushing him away. “You have to go. Please leave me alone. Don’t say things you said to me at dinner tonight. Please, don’t look at me the way you do. You have no idea what it does to me. And I can’t… I just can’t deal with it in addition to everything else.”

“Sparrow…” His voice was soft, like a caress. He lifted his hand to my face, but I recoiled from him, jolted by panic.

“No. Please, don’t touch me. I can’t live the way the highborn in Elaros do. I can’t smash my feelings into a million tiny pieces and sprinkle them like confetti on everyone at once. If I’m meant to be with the king, so be it. I’ll try my best to do what’s expected of me. But I can only do it withoneman.” I swallowed around a painful lump forming in my throat. “There is simply not enough of me for more than one of you. And it looks like it has to be the king.”

That was what Voron wanted too, wasn’t it? He’d rejected me enough times to get that point across perfectly by now.

His hand fisted in the bedspread, the knuckles turning white and the veins bulging. But he said nothing. I feared to see his face, choosing to stare at his hand instead.

He had to go. Yet a part of me wished he’d fight me on that, with the passion I knew he had in him. Just like he’d fought me in the dining room earlier.

But back at dinner, we hadn’t been alone. I’d made fun of him in front of witnesses. He’d had to put me in my place to save face. That didn’t mean he’d felt what he’d said.

“Go, Voron.” It proved impossible to keep bitterness out of my voice. “Get out of my room and stay away from me.”

He inhaled deeply, got off my bed, and buttoned up his vest.

“You speak with the voice of reason, dear Sparrow.” He sounded calm. His usual frosty expression returned to his face. “Rest assured, I won’t bother you again.”

When the door closed behind him, I groaned, sinking back into the pillows. Grabbing one, I threw it at the door, wishing he still stood there to receive my wrath.

I’d told him to get out of my room and stay out of my life. Yet having him leave was the last thing I wanted.

ChapterFourteen

SPARROW

Aweek later, I sat on my bed, with my knees drawn up to my chest, and watched Alacine clean my room for the lack of anything better to do.

The weather had been miserable for days, forcing me to cut my walks in the gardens short. It had warmed up a bit, and the winds were down, but the clouds remained as thick as ever. Hanging low and churning dark along the horizon, they promised a storm. Only no storm ever came. The air was heavy with moisture. But instead of a proper shower, only miserable drizzle came now and then, making being outside depressing.

Alacine wore a pretty cornflower-blue blouse today. The end of her long tail was enclosed in a soft cotton cloth. As she moved around, sleek and graceful, the tail trailed behind her, sweeping dirt from the floor and sneaking into every nook and cranny with the cloth.

There was a contentment on her face, as she softly hummed a cheerful tune.

“Do you like cleaning, Alacine?”

“Do you like breathing, my lady?” she retorted. A smile appeared on her lips at my confusion. “That’s what it’s like for me,” she explained. “I like making dirt disappear, putting things in their place, and taking care of others. It’s mycalling, which makes the tasks easy for me. When work is easy, it doesn’t feel like work.”

As she spoke, she never stopped moving. The tip of her tail twirled around the legs of the chair, under the trunk, and around the fireplace, picking up dust on the cloth.

“Is ‘the calling’ something one is good at?” I asked. “Liketaureansare good at farming?”

She tilted her head, pondering my question.

“Taureansare good at reading the weather and picking up on the signs of plants’ wellbeing. They enjoy the peace and quiet that working on the land brings. They’re attuned to the slow cycle of a plant’s life and often prefer working in solitude. All of that makes them suitable for farming.” She expertly re-arranged the vials and hairbrushes on my vanity, somehow gaining a lot of extra space just by moving things around. “My people are calledsnakanas. We live in large communities and dislike being on our own. My entire extended family lives in Elaros. My mother is a maid here, too. My father takes care of the horses in the royal stables, and my grandmother used to be one of the royal nannies. She helped raise King Tiane,” she added proudly. “I pray to every mother goddess that Queen Pavline is blessed with a child one day. I’d love to work in a nursery when that happens.”

Anxiety scratched inside me at her mentioning a royal child.

In the past week, I’d seen King Tiane twice. Both times at dinner, like before. He’d feed me morsels of his food. We’d watch yet another breathtaking performance and listen to beautiful music. Then he’d leave to play a game with a selected group of the courtiers, and I’d be sent back to my room.

During dinner, his hands would stray into my neckline to play with my breasts or under my skirt to stroke my inner thighs. But he wouldn’t take it any further. I was no closer to getting into the royal bed than I was on the day of my arrival in Elaros.

Maybe there was my fault in that, too. I didn’t encourage him. I never touched him unless prompted, feeling rather awkward in his presence. He still liked bringing up the incident with the rotten fruit wine, laughing at me with the rest of the court. That didn’t make me any more comfortable or trusting around him, either.

Queen Pavline hadn’t spoken to me again. But she shot me urging, demanding stares across the dining table, as if expecting me to tackle her husband to the ground and force him to impregnate me right then and there.

All of it only increased my anxiety to the point that I actually enjoyed not having King Tiane in the palace for a while. He and most of his court left for the royal hunting lodge two days ago. They’d be gone all of next week, hunting wild animals in the woods, and it felt…lighter without them somehow.

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