Page 22 of The Starlit Ring (The Chronicles of Liridin #1)

“He always bought you the nicest things, gave you all the lessons you requested. He called tutors from South Handleton, for the goddess’s sake! Anything you wanted to learn, he found a way! Do you think Cranz would let just anyone into his forge?”

“No,” I mumbled. “But—I’m easier to get rid of if I’m educated.”

“No!” argued Ria, tossing the dress onto the bed. “That’s incorrect. An educated woman is a threat to a weak man. Father made you untamable and knew damn well it would be impossible to marry you off.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “Not impossible . ”

Ria rolled her eyes. “ Nearly impossible. Besides,” she gestured. “It’s this, or the monastery.”

I winced. I very much did not enjoy organized religion, tolerating long hours in the monastery on holidays only because it was expected of us.

King Amonrew firmly believed that if the peasants doubted our piety, they’d sack the castle.

(“Your great-grandfather’s fault,” he once grumbled, half-apologetic.

“Convinced them religion mattered more than anything else, now they’re ready to beat even the king to death over it. ”)

Long minutes passed, until I tentatively admitted, “Sometimes I want to go home.”

“Then go!” Ria cried. “Don’t stay here! It isn’t worth it.”

“You’d be alone,” I said, shaking my head. “Avens can only stay so long, and he’s our only real ally here.”

“Avens is terrible a gossip, and not an ally,” Ria said. At the expression on my face, she said, “Fine. He’s your friend. I’ll never forget when he told Fanton of Hemill that I thought he was attractive. I thought I’d never hear the end of it!”

“Well, you did.” After Father threatened to start chopping off heads, the rumors dulled surprisingly quickly.

“Yes, I suppose,” Ria admitted. “The point is, you don’t need to stay here. Not for my sake. I can send for you later if I need you.”

“But the pass is impossible to navigate in winter!”

“Then I shall have to languish until spring,” said Ria, as if that settled the matter. “You don’t need to suffer for my sake.”

I disagreed vehemently, but only nodded. One question burned at me, and I finally gave in. “And Prince Marius? How do you find him?”

“Annoying,” said Ria, shucking her nightgown. “He’s much too intense. Impossible to converse with. I feel like he’s always in a distant realm, and I’m yelling at him from across the mountains.” She shook her head. “It’s unbearable.”

“He’s been rather abrasive of late,” I said, thinking of the day he bumped into me in the hall. Insignificant , he’d called me. I cringed. “Not that I speak to him often.”

“He doesn’t want to marry me, I think,” said Ria, a sullen tilt to her lips. “Which is preposterous. He went to a lot of trouble to acquire me.”

“That seems far-fetched,” I said. “But I’d agree. There’s no other explanation. Do you think he has a lover?”

Ria shrugged. The movement accentuated her already prominent collarbones. She’d lost weight since we arrived, I realized with a guilty jolt. The stress of the move and my meddling couldn’t have been more obvious. “No. If he does, she doesn’t reside in the palace. And he hardly goes out.”

“Maybe she comes to him.”

“Seems impossible given the tight security,” mused Ria. In just her underclothes, she settled at her vanity and reached for her hairbrush. “I’m sure King Hergarv would have forbidden it.”

“For the time being.” I shrugged. “Maybe she sneaks inside.”

“Maybe.” Ria glanced to me, then away. “You could find out.”

“Me?”

“You’re a maid. You can go almost anywhere without being noticed. I can’t do that, but you can.”

I considered this as I readied Ria’s corset. “I’m still in training. I’m rarely alone.”

“Then say you got lost.”

Hmm. I did get lost a lot. It was plausible no one would even question it. “Maybe.”

“You could trail him. He wouldn’t even notice.”

I very much doubted this, but Ria knew him better than I did. Maybe the prince really did have his head in the clouds. “I’ll think about it.”

I thought about it for exactly one day, then decided that Ria deserved to know if Prince Marius was being unfaithful.

Not because I expected him to stop, or for Ria to care, but because it felt wrong to keep secrets without a prior arrangement.

According to Ria, they’d not yet discussed the possibility of lovers, whether or not they needed to be disclosed, or were allowed at all.

Plenty of royals had secret relationships, but some marriages were too high-profile, or too volatile, to allow for such risks.

If Prince Marius had a mistress, and it was discovered, the scandal would last for ages.

Would probably be written into song. A ballad, most likely.

But there was always the possibility that their shame would be immortalized in a bawdy drinking song—one that would linger over the course of a century or more.

It might even be Avens’s fault.

Talk about humiliation , I thought, imagining how Ria might react to such a betrayal.

So I began taking note of Prince Marius’s whereabouts during the day.

Each morning began with breakfast, then a sparring session, then meetings in the war room, then a light luncheon beside my sister (they astutely ignored one another), then an afternoon in the throne room.

This must have been boring, because he looked on the verge of sleep whenever I walked past. Then more sparring, a visit to the baths, and supper.

It would have been nearly impossible to steal moments with a secret lover during the day. So I trailed him quietly at night and discovered that he spent many of his evenings hidden in the library, which I had never had reason to enter.

“Are servants barred from the library?” I asked Zellia as we carried Queen Tarra’s discarded clothes to the laundry.

She chewed her lip as she considered the question. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Some of us even work in the library. But I’ve never asked. I can’t read, you know. Not much reason to go there.” She shrugged, a self-deprecating grin on her plump lips .

“Oh,” I said, startled. I’d forgotten that much of the general public had never held a real book in their hands, let alone learned to read. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think?—”

She laughed and patted my arm. “It’s alright. You were trained as a royal companion. I expected that you could read. I just don’t know the answer to your question. Ask Cook Tarion. He probably knows something about it.”

I slipped into the kitchens that afternoon, claiming hunger (which was no lie—I’ve always been notoriously fond of food), and pleaded with Cook Tarion for a slice of crusty bread and preserves, which I eventually got.

At the kitchen table, munching happily, I asked, “So I was told you might know the answer to this: can servants use the library?”

Cook Tarion was a tall, pale man with a dark, prominent mustache. It seemed to have absorbed all the hair from his head, which was round, bare, and shiny. He regarded me with some curiosity. “Did you come here for food, or for information?” he asked, stirring the pot over the fire.

“A little of both,” I admitted, slapping clotted cream on top of peach preserves with a little too much enthusiasm.

“Fine,” he sighed, gently turning the spit where a slab of pork roasted.

“I could use the company. Yes, you may use the library, but you must show the clerk that you have clean hands, and you cannot leave with any books. Certain sections are restricted, and of course, you cannot attend during work hours.”

“Thank you!” I cried, so flooded with relief that I could collapse. “I so miss the library in Olmstead! Everything is so different here.”

Flustered, Cook Tarion patted me on the shoulder, and said, “You’re welcome. I didn’t realize you could read.”

“Of course I can,” I chirped. “I was trained to follow the Princess wherever she went. King Amonrew would never allow anything else. ”

“That’s very generous of him,” said Cook Tarion.

“I suppose,” I said, standing. “Thank you!”

And I was gone, needed again in Ria’s rooms.