“Dress me?”
“You may have married King Eldas in those rags, but you will certainly not sit on the redwood throne in them.” Her words ooze disgust.
“Excuse me?” I look down at what I’m wearing. “My clothes are practical.”
“For a peasant, perhaps. But now you are a queen and you will dress like it, even if you do not act like it.”
* * *
After an hour of being poked,prodded, and pulled at, I’m something that Rinni deems “suitable.”
I stare in the mirror that leans against one of the corners of the bedroom. A strand of pearls—longer than I am tall—is wrapped around my neck. Rinni made an attempt to tame the knots and waves of my hair into submission and failed. My dress is cut from a fine silk the color of autumn leaves; the boning in its top keeps my back rail-straight. I don’t usually wear warm colors because of my hair. But seeing me now, I look fierce.
At least until I look at my eyes.
Beneath them are dark shadows that have never been there before. I lean toward the mirror to get a better look. They’re the same hazel color they’ve always been, but a hollowness has taken up residence where I imagine determination used to be.
“Who are you?” I murmur to the woman staring back at me. I don’t know this woman whose dress is more put together than her life. I’m accustomed to having things under control. I’ve always had a plan—from childhood to academy.
Now…I’ve gained a castle and a crown I never asked for and lost everything I ever wanted.
Be strong,I insist to myself as I stare into the streaks of green in my hazel eyes. I have to try and make the best of this. I’ll find something I can do here, some purpose. Even if I wanted to escape—no, don’t even think it, Luella.
“Here.” Rinni emerges from the closet after a long period of rummaging. I straighten away from the mirror. She holds a crown of gilded redwood leaves in her hands that she settles on my brow. “Now you at least look like a queen. You could even fool the court if you don’t open your mouth.”
“Excuse me?”
“I heard every last curse word as I tamed your mane. Half of them I didn’t even know, and I’ve been in the barracks since I was seven. Come along.”
“Is my entire existence going to be governed by you telling me where to go and when?” I ask, unmoving.
“I certainly hope not,” Rinni calls, already in the other room. “I have more important things to do than babysit you. So please grow quickly into your new station.”
“Babysit? Is that any way to speak to your queen?” I say, stealing one last look at myself in the mirror. The queen. I am the queen. If I tell myself it enough times, maybe I’ll believe it. Maybe it’ll sink in that this whole situation is my new reality.
“Start acting like a queen and I’ll start speaking to you like one.” Rinni’s voice is more distant. I hear the door to my apartments open. “Now, unless you know your way to the throne room, I suggest you hurry up.”
Hiking up my skirts to my shins, I do so.
We wind back down the stairs and through another endless series of rooms, up another set of stairs, through a library, across a hall, then up one final set of stairs into a small antechamber. Rinni presses her ear against the door.
“Eavesdropping is unbecoming for a general—or knight—what are you again?”
She shoots me a glare. “I’m making sure he’s not in the middle of something important.” Rinni opens the door and waves me in.
The throne room of the fortress is at its center, above the main atrium, so far as I can tell. The back wall is made of the same stained glass as the atrium below. But the careful latticework of lead branches out around wider panes here. I can see the hills and valleys beyond.
As far as the eye can see is brown and gray. The forests are as barren as the fields. The trees are just as withered as those I saw in the city. I lay eyes on a cold and cruel world.
The panorama is obscured by two large thrones. The throne to my right is made of redwood. It’s organically shaped, as if a tree rooted into the stone of the room and grew into the shape of a chair.
The redwood is in sharp contrast to the cold iron throne at its side. A man, as harsh and unfeeling as the chair in which he sits—as the crown on his brow—stares down at me. Eldas drags his eyes over every inch of my body in judgment.
“You did well, Rinni. Even the roughest stone can take to polish, it’d seem,” Eldas says finally. I rotate the labradorite ring around my finger. It’s as though I’m standing on trial.
“I’m glad I meet your standards,” I say dryly.
He purses his lips. Tension radiates from him in a tide that almost knocks me over. “I’d appreciate it if you begin to keep your remarks to yourself.”