Page 76 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

L ilac stared down the length of her table at the Grand Hall doors, sweat beading on her forehead, fingers gripping the corners of the table too tightly. Her slumber had been peaceful, finally void of nightmares of Garin, yet she’d woken with a growling belly and enough anxiety to power a horse.

“Has your food gone cold?” Isabel said from behind her.

When Lilac didn’t answer, she tried once more, but a deep toll drowned her voice.

The bells had begun to ring, marking the liturgical hour.

Yanna was already removing her plate to the nearby cart.

She was careful to sidestep Piper, sitting at Lilac’s right, with a wide enough berth as she silently refilled a second plate for the queen.

Not even Hedwig’s impressive spread laid upon their finest dishware could pull Lilac from the shock of the morning—of waking to the bells, discovering Piper with half the blankets kicked off, doused in morning sunlight from the balcony door they’d forgotten to close. Snoring. Her skin perfectly intact.

Piper had just opened her eyes when Lilac screamed. They’d leapt out of bed shouting, Piper batting at imaginary flames and Lilac falling over herself to shut the curtains, the ruckus masked by the deep tolling that rang throughout the keep .

Without another word, Piper had staggered to the door and opened it to a shocked Yanna and Isabel, mid-knock.

The vampire slipped out between them before Lilac could stop her, Piper’s quiet sobs echoing throughout the stairwell.

With no time to dress herself in anything ornate, Lilac ordered the two to go after her.

Reluctantly, they’d obliged, and she tugged her comb through her hair, slid her shoes on, and dashed after them.

The four descended the steps to the second floor in order to avoid the bustling kitchen, Lilac snatching Piper’s hand and urging her to breathe.

To her chagrin, there were several maids putting up ribbon and flowers in the foyer anyway; Lilac swore and urged the group along, but her staff still stopped working to acknowledge the queen and her entourage, if only to stare.

In the Grand Hall, they’d found Hedwig and her staff weaving the final touches—bouquets of roses and elderflowers from her mother’s garden—around the breakfast spread.

“Her food’s obviously gone cold,” Yanna said, eyeing Piper when the last of the bells echoed off. “Neither of them have touched their breakfast after the commotion this morning.”

“It’s very nearly lunchtime.” Marguerite lounged on Lilac’s throne at the top of the steps behind them, fanning herself in the sunlight.

She squinted down her nose at Piper, who had also barely touched her breakfast, distracted with turning her palms this way and that under the table, checking her exposed wrists peeking out from her canary pink sleeves.

Unsatisfied that none of the girls had acknowledged her comment, Marguerite sighed. “I assumed my daughter’s impressive record with punctuality and appearance might actually be remedied by having a lady-in-waiting.” She examined her nails. “I suppose I was wrong.”

Piper only frowned, turning her head toward the doors.

“Yes, because yours have remained so dutiful,” Lilac commented. She hadn’t yet seen Gertrude and Helena, but was momentarily grateful for their absence given the morning’s events.

Marguerite had never cared for Piper, and there was no way Henri hadn’t told her mother whom he suspected Phoebe might be.

It was still Piper after all, despite her redder hair, eyes the color of spring, and her glowing, healthy appearance.

It didn’t matter what they thought. Piper was her charge now.

Marguerite stared in disapproval at the both of them, tucking a lock of her hair into the blonde wig balanced precariously upon her head.

“The last thing you need is a bad influence. Or, whoever gave you both the idea that wearing your nightgowns to this meeting would be acceptable.” She waved a finger at Yanna and Isabel.

“Is there no way we can dress them? We’ve waited long enough.

They both could have donned three gowns by now. ”

“No,” Lilac said, immediately shooting the idea down. She’d been riding her nerves so high, if they went to her tower, it would be a challenge convincing her to leave again. “He could arrive at any time.”

A proxy wedding was risky business as it was; hopefully her future husband and those in his circle would not fuss over trite matters such as a woman’s appearance in relation to her worth.

As Garin had said, this was transactional; she was a ruler making a deal, a contract with another—although, she’d barely gotten her feet wet in terms of doing any real ruling since Henri’s abdication. She’d inherited a kingdom who did not want her in the first place.

This was her fate, the fate of many women before her.

She was a willing pawn for the good of her people.

A stalemate, and the thought probably unsettled her more than it should have.

She washed down her nerves with a swig of cider, which she’d recently requested to be served at the castle, and was reminded of Sable and Jeanare.

She thought of their grandchildren—wherever the boys were.

The thought of Freya still made her uncomfortable, but it no longer brought her to her knees, because she could do something about the systems that had harmed them.

She would do something. This role was much bigger than her.

“If this emissary was sent all this way to propose for Maximilian without either of them ever meeting me, then I doubt he nor the emperor will care about me spending the day in a nightgown,” Lilac said.

“We don’t know for certain that’s why he’s coming.” Everyone—including Lilac—turned to Piper, who shifted in her seat. Her lady-in-waiting nudged the fruit around her plate with her fork. “We won’t know until he’s here.”

What was she doing? Lilac glared warningly, deciding this was the time to bite into her salmon baguette in order to hold her tongue .

“Where did we find her again?” asked Marguerite, staring down upon Piper in disdain.

“She is the second daughter of some baron.” Lilac waved a dismissive hand, intentionally choosing a junior rank, already put off by the morning.

Marguerite straightened, almost falling out of Lilac’s throne. “A baron, you say? Which baron?”

“One from the coastal towns,” Piper answered. “Our village is small. Insignificant.” She took a sudden interest in the wedge of Camembert on her plate and happily bit straight into it, eliciting an eye roll from Marguerite.

“Perhaps it is better I don’t know this baron. No matter. The emissary is late.” Marguerite grabbed the bowl of grapes Yanna had brought her. “We were told to expect him in the morning, just past the first bells.”

“Anything could have happened to slow him,” Lilac replied. “Weather. Busy roads. Animals. Thieves.”

Marguerite let out a disgruntled snort. “If we’re launched into war and our kingdom is not tightly aligned with Maximilian or anyone else, I will strangle you and place you at the front of the army myself.”

“That is where I would march, regardless.” There was no doubt she should have shared the same concerns her mother had—and she did, all things considered—but Lilac could not help being distracted by the fear that Piper would burst into flames at any second.

Why was she not affected by the sun? How?

Was it because Garin could now daywalk, as he’d called it at the brothel?

This didn’t seem likely, considering he’d turned Piper into a vampire days before Adelaide’s magic allowed him to exist in the sun.

Made apparent by Piper’s reaction, it was something she was shocked by as well.

Her newly immortal friend had picked her way through a plate and a half for the last three hours, and didn’t seem to show any signs of sickness the way Garin would have by now.

“It is a possibility,” John said from the seat opposite Piper, “that he ran into some sort of obstacle. Anything is possible.” He fidgeted with the quill hovering over the scroll before him, refocusing upon the law she’d spent the earlier part of the morning drafting—not the full set of Accords, to avoid breaking the seemingly vague rules of Kestrel’s deal preemptively, but a single law ensuring the basic safety of Daemons to begin with.

By royal decree of Queen Eleanor Trécesson, no person within the Kingdom of Brittany may inflict unjust injury, assault, or murder upon a Daemon.

Each case will be elevated to the King’s Bench.

Those found guilty will face charges most serious and potential consequences most fatal, John’s notes read.

They’d stopped their decree drafting when Marguerite had earlier returned from overseeing preparations for the elaborate display in the garden ahead of Lilac’s coronation, wondering where the emissary might be.

It was nowhere near done enough to go to the town criers, but with Garin’s sobering opinion on Daemon alliances and Artus’s visit, it was crucial she start somewhere—beginning with the very right to protection against targeted violence from those like Artus’s family.

Sinclair’s grandfather was no madman. They’d played it that way, but he was a mastermind.

She’d relieved her glamor before him last night, in partial hysterics, in hopes he would react in a way to get him and his men jailed.

He knew she couldn’t imprison him for running the hunting troupe out of the Jaunty Hog, because revealing so would let everyone know she’d been involved in the near-altercation that took place there.