Page 53 of A Throne of Blood and Ice

I’d scurried out of the dungeons and rushed to my room after that, but it occurred to me that the king might come looking for me there, so instead I crossed the hall and locked myself in Gunter’s room, perching myself on the seat of his spinning wheel, never taking my eyes off his door.

I was right; the king had knocked on my door across the hall. He’d even waited long enough for a servant to pass and asked them to fetch a key for him.

He’d found the room empty and given up.

The next day, the king was found dead. Poisoned.

Neighboring kingdoms blamed Abra for it; said her ascension to power had always been suspicious. It wasn’t difficult to believe she’d enchanted the king with her wiles, only to spike his wine with poison. After all, didn’t she wear a bracelet infused with the same poison that had killed her husband?

I knew it was Gunter, of course. The king’s symptoms had all pointed to wormwood—he’d vomited his guts up in a long and arduous death. For weeks, I skirted around the castle on my tiptoes, sure the queen would discover Gunter’s transgression, sure my mentor would die for having protected me.

But the queen shouldered the insults, the accusations from other royals, none of which could be proven. She mourned her husband as if she’d loved him, but she hadn’t searched for his killer. Not really. Not like one would expect from a widow of unlimited resources.

I’d wondered about it for years, and only when I reached maturity did I begin to suspect what kept the queen from pursuing the truth surrounding her husband’s death.

She’d made me come to dinner one evening, and all at once, she started talking about him. About how he wanted a child so badly. That he’d always been good with children—fancied and took special care of the servants’ children whenever he found them running about the castle.

I’d realized it then; the queen had known what her husband was, and had simply decidednotto know.

So when someone had hated him enough to poison him, she hadn’t pursued the murderer, too fearful was she of discovering the motive.

Gunter sighs, then crosses the room and sits at his spinning wheel, picking flax from the pile next to him and threading it through the machine.

My mentor doesn’t have to say a word; I know he’ll honor Blaise’s request.

CHAPTER17

BLAISE: AGE TWELVE

My father is dead.

It happened in the night while I slept. No one bothered to wake me, not even in the morning when the entire household knew of it.

They took his body away before sunrise because Clarissa told them to. I keep trying to come up with a reason she would do that, but I can’t think of any except that she meant to punish me.

Clarissa believes that the timing of my father’s death is for the best. After all, our neighbors won’t ask questions when I lock myself away in mourning. They won’t pry when I no longer walk in public.

There’s no need for them to consider the true reason Clarissa refuses to let me leave my room in the attic. They won’t notice the swell of my belly.

I layin the bed that has become my prison, ever since Clarissa thought she perceived a bulge in my abdomen.

I personally believe she was weeks early in locking me away, but it isn’t as if I had any say in the matter.

The days are long,but the nights are longer. With hardly anything to busy myself with in my little attic, I grow restless at night, and as there are no windows in my room, my body has forgotten what is day and what is night.

It has been months since I’ve tasted sunlight.

There’s a knot in the wood paneling of the wall that I often stare at. Sometimes it looks like a thirsty puppy with its tongue lolling out. Other times, it’s a fire-breathing dragon.

When the servants are kind enough to replenish candles, I sometimes warp my fingers to make puppets in the shadows of the flames.

The shadows are my only friends up here.

Clarissa bought me a clock fueled by faerie magic. Rather, she bought Elegance a clock and gave me Elegance’s old one in the hopes I would go to sleep at a proper hour, but my body can’t seem to tell time.

So now I lie awake, and it’s almost midnight, and I wonder if the moon is directly overhead.

My belly has swollen to the point that I don’t believe I’d be getting much sleep anyway, even if my body knew day from night. I would toss and turn, except I’ve long since realized it does me no good, so I lie on my side and run my fingers over my belly with one hand as I clutch a stack of letters to my chest with the other.

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