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“Vesper,” I offered, but didn’t bother reaching out my hand for her to shake. If she was giving me this information, she was likely not my competition.

“Cedar,” she replied, and slapped her hand on my shoulder so hard I fell off balance. Hot magic shot through my shoulder, and a pained groan slipped from my lips.

“What the fuck?—”

“Use those herbs you have stashed in your bag. My magic is more discreet to prying eyes,” she said. “Come see me in a few days for a recharge, though.”

I looked up at her narrowed eyes.

“Prying different from yours?” I asked. “Should I be worried about a band of witches here?”

She gave me a sidelong look and went back to her bed.

“If someone like yourself made it in here, what makes you think there aren’t more?”

Aurelia

“This is enough, you really don’t need to?—”

“Oh, hush now,” Henry said, his wrinkled hands pushing a fur-lined cape into my hands. “Julie worked on this with you in mind.”

He was kneeling at my feet like he always did, but as the quarter-human aged, I couldn’t help but feel pity for him. His aging knees were no match for the cold castle floor.

The vampires in the palace deserved my wrath. They were good-for-nothing heathens who only cared about a fresh blood bag and their ring-stacked fingers.

But not the humans. Not the people my mother had welcomed into this family with open arms.

They came here based on a promise. A promise that neither my father nor I could deliver.

I wished to kneel down and help him to his feet, but Father would see my inability to take this poor old man injuring himself to gift me with something I didn’t need as an insult.

If anything, taking things from a man like Henry should have been an insult. A real king would have showered his followers with presents instead of accepting them. He should have celebrated his only blood heir being married off.

But instead, he used it as yet another way to make money.

His eyes burrowed into my back, a reminder to keep my mouth shut. He might be more lenient with my attitude when we were alone, but if I so much as even looked at him the wrong way while in front of our people, there would be hell to pay.

I was tempted to refuse the gift again, feeling almost disgusted at adding another to the mountain behind me…until I felt something hard hidden inside the bunches of fabric. His deep brown eyes met mine with a silent message.

He was pleading with me to take it. And for me to be silent.

A dangerous lick of curiosity ran up my spine.And here I thought the only thing keeping me entertained would be the silver-haired guard.

The same guard who had yet to be assigned to me, even though I had already asked.

Per the head guard, they were letting the new arrivals get situated, so instead of having her by my side, I had Melia and one other random guard I had never seen in my life.

The need to open the cape was almost unbearable.

“There are others who wish to see the princess,” Father interrupted, his voice breaking the connection between us.Right.

My eyes wandered to the line of our people waiting to see me. It ran down the stairs and out into the hallway. All of them coming to wish the late queen’s daughter a happy marriage.

When will this stop?At this rate, I would be here for hours before we even reached the end of the line.

That was what happened when you never turned anyone away for years, then subsequently focused on trying to bring in as many people to our family as possible.

If I had half the power Mother did, I would have been able to put a stop to this. We had no need to accept these gifts. Mostcouldn’t afford them, not after the taxes my father forced on them.