Chapter 8

By the end of the week, Jade had learned three things about being a princess: it hurts, it was exhausting, and apparently none of it counted unless she made it look effortless.

The tutor arrived before Jade had even finished getting ready, walking in like she owned the place.

"Madame Vosk," Farrow introduced her, "will oversee your etiquette, history, and comportment until she deems you presentable in public."

Madame Vosk was a small, birdlike woman with so much powder on her face that she looked like she'd been dusted with flour. Her wig was piled so high it looked like it might fall over. She looked at Jade like a butcher inspecting meat. She took Jade's hands and lifted them, turning them over as if checking something she wasn't quite satisfied with.

"Stand," she said, without wasting time.

Jade stood, biting back a smile at the woman's huge wig. It swayed a little whenever she moved her head, like it had a life of its own.

"No." Vosk circled her once, slow, assessing, entirely unaware of the amusement she was inspiring.

"Shoulders back. Chin level, not raised — you're not spoiling for a fight, you're greeting a room that already adores you. Weight even on both feet. Hands—" she flicked two fingers toward Jade's fists, "—unclench those. A princess doesn't look like she's about to hit someone."

"Sometimes she should," Jade muttered.

"Sometimes," Vosk agreed, unbothered, "but never where anyone can see her want to."

They began with walking, which turned out to be its own particular hell. Every instinct that had kept Jade alive in the Low Market was, according to Vosk, precisely wrong here.

"Slower," Vosk said, perhaps for the tenth time. She then crossed the room to demonstrate, moving with such dramatic grace that she nearly walked into a side table. Jade had to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing.

"Like that?" Jade asked, entirely too innocently.

"Precisely like that," Vosk said, oblivious, resettling her wig with a small, dignified sniff after it had tilted dangerously to one side.

Jade tried again, and again, a small twitch at the corner of her mouth the whole time. It wasn't the walking that made her want to laugh. It was how seriously this tiny, heavily powdered woman treated the whole thing, as though the fate of the kingdom depended on Jade getting her hips to move properly.

"Something amusing, Your Highness?" Vosk asked sharply, catching the look.

"Just admiring your—technique," Jade said, and had to look away when Vosk nodded, gravely satisfied, completely unaware she was being laughed at.

"Tea," Vosk announced next, as if that settled everything.

A servant appeared, setting down a fine china cup so delicate Jade was half-afraid to breathe near it. She lifted it and drank normally — quick, practical.

Vosk winced so hard, that made her wig shift again. "You look like you're finishing a chore. Small sip. Lower the cup slowly. Never let it clink against the saucer. Pinky in, not out, that went out of fashion two decades ago. Only fools and foreigners still do it."

She demonstrated, curling her pinky just so, with the seriousness of a woman defusing a bomb.

Jade watched the whole performance, biting the inside of her cheek, and tried the sip again. The cup clinked anyway, and Vosk closed her eyes like she'd personally been wounded.

"Laugh," she said next, without warning, recovering.

"Excuse me?"

"Laugh. As you would at something genuinely amusing."

Vosk demonstrated—a light, controlled sound, more breath than voice. Her eyes were shut as she did it, more refined and proper.

Jade tried, but it came out strangled, somewhere between a laugh and a cough, mostly because she was still fighting the real laugh clawing its way out at the sight of Vosk's performance. The woman looked so painfully serious, eyes half-closed and lips barely parted, her tiny wig trembling as if even laughing required great discipline.

"We'll work on it," Vosk said placing her hand on her temples, with the tired patience of a woman who had no idea she was the funniest person Jade had met since arriving at the palace.

They moved on to history next; family lines, alliances, which noble families hated each other and why. There were so many old grudges and marriages to remember that Jade's head was already throbbing within the hour.

"Why does any of this matter?" she finally asked, rubbing her temples. "I'm meant to smile and nod. I don't need to know that Baron Ashworth's grandfather insulted someone's horse forty years ago."

"You need to know it," Vosk said sharply. "Baron Ashworth will casually mention that horse just to see if you react. Everything here is a test, Your Highness, even when it doesn't look like one. The nobles have nothing better to do than watch each other for weakness. And right now, you're the most interesting weakness in the palace."

That sobered Jade. She sat a little straighter, suddenly aware of how easily one wrong answer could expose her. Names, feuds, and old scandals blurred together as she tried to force every one of them into her head. Any one of these people could catch her out just from a simple mistake. She couldn't afford to forget a thing.

*

By midafternoon, Jade's legs were starting to ache, her cheeks hurt so bad from smiling so much, and her throat felt dry from all the forced laughter.

She didn't notice the window at first.

It was the brief pause in Vosk's voice that made Jade look up. Vosk had stopped mid-sentence, her eyes fixed on the tall window at the far end of the room. Jade followed her gaze, her stomach tightening.

The Queen stood there.

 Not inside the room, but in the corridor beyond the glass. She stood perfectly still, like a painting, observing.

Something in Margaret's face had changed since the last time. There was no hostility now, only something softer, caught between memory and pain. She watched Jade struggle through the same small, careful laugh Vosk kept correcting.

Lady Agnes, telling that ridiculous story again—the fat grey rabbit Aurelia had loved, and how she'd tripped over the garden fence in front of half the visiting court. Aurelia's laugh had been loud and carefree, carrying across the lawn before she could stop it, her hand flying to her mouth a few seconds too late.

"Mother, did you SEE him," she'd gasped, "he looked so personally betrayed by that fence—" and that made Margaret laughed too, helplessly, both of them undone by a rabbit's wounded dignity while the whole garden pretended not to notice.

Margaret blinked, and the memory faded. All that remained was a stranger standing there, trying to copy a laugh that would never quite be hers.

Vosk cleared her throat and continued the lesson. Jade tried again, forcing her hands to stay still even when she wanted to throw the cup across the room. She swallowed every sigh, kept the smile on her face, and nodded whenever Vosk corrected her.

"Again," Vosk said.

Jade pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek and started over, pretending she wasn't getting more frustrated with every mistake.

She stayed like that until the lesson was over. Only when Vosk finally left did Jade let her aching shoulders drop.

Only then did she look toward the window again.

It was empty. But there was still a faint mark on the glass where a hand had rested.

Jade stared at it, wondering for the first time if the Queen had ever truly hated her—or if she simply hated what Jade's face reminded her of.

*

Elsewhere in the palace, in a room far less gentle than Jade's, King Adrian sat at the head of a long table, listening to men in fine robes argue over money that no longer existed.

"The treasury cannot sustain another season of this," one advisor said, tapping the ledger sharply. "The eastern campaign alone has—"

"I am aware of the campaign's cost," Adrian said, his voice low and even, it was the voice of a man who had heard the same complaint too many times. "Tell me something I don't know, or don't speak at all."

Silence answered him first. Then, carefully: "The southern trade routes have slowed. If we raise the tariffs to cover the shortfall—"

"They'll riot in the streets before the season's out."

Adrian's eyes swept across the table, sharp and cold.

"This kingdom cannot afford to look weak right now. Not for any reason."

He let the words hang in the silence, heavy and absolute, giving nothing else away.

A round of murmur and agreement moved quickly around the table.

Adrian said nothing further. But the tightness in his jaw suggested a man watching several different collapses race towards the same finish line, quietly calculating which one he could least afford to lose first.

*Thank you for reading! If you're enjoying the story so far, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. 💛*