Page 65 of Bred

“I might know someone who would be interested in your… ambition.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded. “What do I have to do?”

The apothecary had given me what I’d asked for in the end; a packet of herbs to make into a foul-tasting tea that I was to drink twice a day. I regretted every sip, and hated the way it burned in my stomach, but if it would get me what I wanted?

Well, then I could bear anything.

Every morning before the sun came up, and each night when all the lights in the house were out, I read and re-read the royal proclamation. And twice a day I grimaced as I drank my tea. When all the herbs were gone, it was time to meet the goblin’s associate.

Dawn was pale and gray, and cold. Winter was on the edge of the wind, and I had no intention of spending the most brutal months of the year working my fingers to the bone.

Not this year. Not next year.

Never again.

“Midnight at the Monarch,” I whispered as I tossed the empty paper packet onto the coals that glowed in the remnants of my fire and gulped down the dregs of the last cup of tea.

It was difficult enough to perform my duties with any sense of urgency on a regular day. But now that my mind was fixed on the day I would meet whichever shadowy figure would change my life… it was so much harder to concentrate.

I did my best to keep out of sight, and keep out of everyone’s way as much as I could. It didn’t mean I escaped every abuse hurled my way, but I escaped the ones that could have meant I would miss my appointment.

The Monarch.

A brothel, of course, but one of the best establishments in the city. I’d seen the women who worked there—gloriously ethereal creatures with glowing skin, rippling cascades of thick hair, straight white teeth… graceful beauties from all corners of the kingdom.

A fortunate few.

And I wanted to be one of them.

More than anything.

Midnight.

I crept through the streets and hoped that I hadn’t been followed. If I was discovered now, everything would be ruined. This meeting was my chance to get my foot in the proverbial door, and I was willing to do anything to get through.

The goblin had said something about being examined… but I didn’t know what that meant. Would I be poked and prodded with medical precision, or was it something more… sinister?

The Monarch was well lit, and that made me even more nervous. Torches burned in niches in the stone wall that surrounded the building and expensive candles made from the perfumed wax of the silverbees that hummed in the wildflower fields beyond the city walls burned in every window.

I had only smelled those candles once in my life and I vowed to have them burning every hour of the day when I was made a royal surrogate.

I had spent every single gold coin already in my mind.

There was no sense in being frugal. I would have more money than I would ever know how to spend. Why not be extravagant?

I smiled as the thought of being in a room filled with soft candlelight that smelled like a summer field filled my mind. Anything was preferable to shivering under a thin blanket in a hut that let more snow in through the chinks in the wood than it kept out.

The street wasn’t empty, but I couldn’t wait any longer.

Drunken melodies and laughter floated on the chill autumn air, and I rushed across the street toward the elegant building. The carefully carved and painted wooden sign swung on golden chains over the wide doorway.

I hesitated for only a moment before I knocked on the door with a firm hand. There was no time to be shy.

The door opened almost instantly, and I jumped back as a broad figure filled the space. Dark eyes glared down at me, and then the man’s expression softened, but only a little.

“Servants go around the back, girl,” he growled.

My shoulders straightened. This was my last chance to run away. But I hadn’t drunk that foul tasting tea for nothing. “I’m not a servant,” I choked out. “I’m here to see Artin.”