Page 13 of A War of Crowns

Since then, it had been nearly impossible keeping Alyx away. The little usuru had simply…taken to her, rather instantly.

There was something nice about it, being chosen.

Wantedfor once in her life.

“Besides, I have read that in the time before the Sundering, people revered the usuri,” Seraphina informed her godparents as she and her entourage passed through the West Wing, heading for the courtyard beyond. “They believed they brought good luck, you know, and were messengers of the Lord Himself.”

“Only an Oracle canpossiblycarry messages from the Lord, Your Majesty,” Duke Percival countered, his tone dry. “But if we wish to use Alyx for a messenger, perhaps we should send her to find Mistress Olivia, hmm?Thatwould be a spot of good luck, actually receiving the latest reports out of Drakmor and Mysai that were supposed to be on my desk this morning before the meeting.”

Chapter two

Olivia

“How much longer do you want me shadowing that insufferable peacock?” Sir Tristan Dacre asked while Olivia hunched over her mortar and pestle, grinding the medley of dried herbs within.

She was in no mood for the complaints of nobility this morning. She had bigger problems.

But the knight had wandered into her "workshop" positioned in the bowels of the palace of his own accord. No doubt he thought that just becausehewas friends with the queen andshewas friends with the queen, that meant they were now friends. Which gave him leave to bother her in her private quarters.

But that was an incredibly false assumption.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Olivia drawled. “Which peacock?”

Pain laced its way through almost the entirety of Olivia’s left side—a familiar spiderweb of agonizing flames, which burned all the way up her withered left leg, through her hip, and along to the small of her back.

The day was already shaping up to be one of her bad ones. She could tell it was going to rain on the morrow because her constant companion, Pain,was doing its utmost to lay her low. She had missed a meeting of the War Council.

And now she was having to deal with…Dacre. Again.

“The Baron of Crestley, of course.”

Olivia made a face. “I dunno.” A shrug rolled off her shoulders. She continued grinding her herbs. “Until he dies, probably?”

“And, um…is that going to be…soon?” Sir Dacre asked, his voice soft, as though they were childhood friends sharing secrets.

Olivia’s pestle scraped to a pause.

“Eh?” She squinted at the man through the dim stillness of that underground space. The single lantern illuminating her workshop cast odd shadows upon the knight, hollowing his cheeks into a skeletal display that Olivia thought rather improved his entirely too pretty appearance.

She would not fault him for his lovely eyes, though. They were soft. And a curious shade of sea-green.

“…What?” Olivia asked. She glanced into the depths of her mortar and twisted her lips to the side. “This?” Anyone with half a mind and a passing knowledge of herbs would have recognized the bitter root and dream petal mixture she was busily working on—the perfect blend for swift pain relief andnottoxic in the slightest except in absurdly large doses.

But Sir Dacre had neither half a mind nor a passing knowledge of herbs, clearly.

“No. I just—” Again, Olivia shrugged, as if trying to shake off a fly. “I have a bit of a stomachache is all,” she lied without missing a beat.

She had kept the truth of her weakness a secret from almost all the palace’s inhabitants all these years, and she wasn’t about to reveal it now.

Especially not to Tristan Dacre.

“Oh.”

In the wake of that single word, an excruciatingly uncomfortable silence fell between the two of them. At least, she imagined it was excruciating for Sir Dacre.

But not for her. Never for her. She basked in the discomfort of the rest of the queen’s court on a daily basis.

It was one of her many hobbies.

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