Chapter 2

Marianne stared at the page in horror.

Linked verse demanded quick thinking. She couldn't manage a decent nursery rhyme without me, let alone trade lines with the Crown Prince.

She covered one hand at once.

"Your Highness, I injured my hand a few days ago.

"I still can't hold a pen steady."

Adrian didn't criticize her. If anything, he looked apologetic.

"My mistake."

He added several more lines himself. Then, without warning, he turned toward me.

"You're Lady Vale's maid. You must have heard a great deal of verse while serving her.

"Do you understand any of it?"

Marianne's stare sharpened.

I bowed.

"I wouldn't dare claim that, Your Highness.

"I've only heard my lady recite now and then. I know a little."

"Then tell me what you think of these lines."

For a moment, even I was surprised.

I stepped closer and read what he'd written. Then I pointed to the third line.

"This one is the best of them, Your Highness.

"And when the rain comes down, the hills turn strange. It says almost nothing, and it opens the whole valley in the mind."

Adrian's eyes brightened.

"Well said."

He set the pen down and studied me more carefully.

"You've a good ear. I suppose serving a gifted mistress teaches a person something."

"Everything I know comes from my lady."

I lowered my head and made myself small.

Beside me, Marianne's color came and went. Soon she claimed she felt unwell and dragged me away.

The moment we returned to the estate, she dropped the act.

She ordered me to kneel in the courtyard. Her chest rose and fell.

"What do you think you are?

"A bastard born to a brothel girl. And you dared show off in front of the Crown Prince?"

I dug my nails into my palm.

Without my mother, there'd have been no Chancellor Silas Vale.

When Father was still a poor scholar, my mother paid for his books and saw him through his schooling. Once he had rank, he decided her background embarrassed him. He married Rosalind instead.

By then, my mother was already carrying me. She raised me alone.

When I was thirteen and she learned she was dying, she asked for only one thing. That Father take me in.

Lady Rosalind refused.

I watched my mother die outside the gates of this estate after being humiliated and driven away.

Father eventually allowed me inside. Not as his daughter. As Marianne's maid.

A flash of metal brought me back to the present.

Marianne stood in front of me holding a pair of scissors. She traced the closed blades along my cheek.

"If I put a few marks on this face, do you think His Highness would still notice you?"

I knew she still needed me. That was the only reason she hadn't truly hurt me yet.

"His Highness has already seen me today.

"If my face suddenly changes, people may wonder what happens in your household."

Her hand stopped.

She stared at me for a long time. Then she shoved me away.

"Go kneel outside."

I spent the entire night on the courtyard stones.

Afterward, I was sick for days. Fever pulled me in and out of nightmares. My mother's figure beneath the moon. Marianne's triumphant smile from my first life. The burning pain of the wine that killed me.

No physician came. I knew this illness was part of my punishment.

Even while I was sick, Marianne kept ordering me to produce new poems. She was desperate to repair her reputation.

So I wrote them.

And quietly began changing the game.