Page 156 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

The Queen of Inys did not have the plague, but she would never bear a living child.

Another draft rushed into the room. Ead rose from bed and shut the window.

Stars dotted the midnight sky. Beneath them, Ascalon flickered with torchlight. Some of its people would be awake now, praying for protection from what the commons were calling the White Wyrm.

They did not carry the same knowledge that haunted the Dukes Spiritual and the Ladies of the Bedchamber. Aside from the Royal Physician, only they knew the most dangerous secret in the world.

The House of Berethnet would end with Sabran the Ninth.

Ead trimmed the wick on one of the candles and lit it again. Since the White Wyrm had come, Sabran had only grown more fearful of the dark.

Fragments of historical evidence from the world over agreed that there had been five High Westerns. There were likenesses of them in the caves of Mentendon and the bestiaries made after the Grief of Ages.

According to that evidence, none of those High Westerns had possessed green eyes.

“Ead.”

She glanced over her shoulder. Sabran was a silhouette behind the see-through drapes around her bed.

“Majesty,” Ead said.

“Open the window.”

Ead placed the candle on the mantelpiece. “You will catch a chill.”

“I may be barren,” Sabran bit out, “but until I breathe my last, I am your queen. Do as I say.”

“You are still healing. If you perish from cold, the Principal Secretary will have my head.”

“Damn you, obstinate bitch. I will have your headmyselfif you do not do as I command.”

“By all means. I doubt I will have much use for it once it has bid my neck farewell.”

Sabran twisted to face her.

“I will kill you.” The cords in her neck were straining. “I despise all of you, overweening crows. All any of you think about is what you can peck from me. A pension, estates, an heir—” Her voice broke. “Damn you all. I would sooner throw myself off the Alabastrine Tower than I would swallow another spoonful of your pity.”

“Enough,” Ead snapped. “You are not a child. Cease this wallowing.”

“Open the window.”

“Come and open it yourself.”

Sabran let out a small, dark laugh. “I could have you burned for this insolence.”

“If it rouses you from that bed, I would gladly dance upon the pyre.”

The clock tower chimed once. Shuddering, Sabran lapsed back into the pillows.

“I was meant to die in childbed,” she whispered. “I was meant to give Glorian life. And yield my own.”

Her breasts had leaked for days after her loss, and her belly was still round. Even as she tried to heal, her own body kept opening the wound.

Ead lit two more candles. She pitied Sabran, so much so that she thought her ribs would break apart with it, but could not pander to her fits of self-hatred. Berethnet sovereigns were prone to what the Inysh calledgrievoushead—periods of sadness, with or without a discernible root. Carnelian the Fifth had been known as the Mourning Dove, and it was rumored at court that she had taken her own life by walking into a river. Combe had charged the Ladies of the Bedchamber with ensuring Sabran did not wander down the same path.

To be a moth on the window of the Council Chamber tonight. Some of the Dukes Spiritual would be arguing that the truth should never come out. Padding under gowns. An orphan child with black hair and jade eyes. Some of the council might contemplate such notions, but most of them would not brook the idea of bowing to anyone but a Berethnet.

“I was certain—” Sabran clenched her fists in her hair. “I must be beloved of the Saint. I drove away Fýredel. Why am I abandoned now?”

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