Before she could gather a response, Meriam appeared at the top of the staircase landing. “Mademoiselle,” she snapped impatiently.
Without another glance his way, Lilac bent her head to hide her relief and crossed the narrow foyer. Like Meriam’s nervous shadow, she trailed the witch up the stone staircase..
Her room, as Meriam had vehemently specified, was the second on the left. After the door slammed behind her, Lilac dropped her knapsack and rushed across the room to the crackling fireplace, kicking off her mud-soaked flats. She undid her leather belt and let it fall to the floor, where she left it. Too cold and tired to do much else, she undressed and hung her dripping clothes on the laundry rope suspended in front of the hearth.
With her bare backside warming near the flames, she crossed her arms and soaked in her temporary sleeping quarters. The red sheets on the bed in the middle of the room were still askew from the last visitor, Merle. Certainly, Meriam wouldn’t bother with fixing up the room for someone like her.
If they only knew.
A straw mattress topped with a stained coverlet sat to the left of the door, and on the other side of the bed near the window was a bedside table with a rusting candelabra on it. Beside the pile of logs stacked beside her, a large wooden tub rested beneath two taps protruding from the wall. Lilac rubbed her eyes. These were illegally bewitched—they had to be. Her parents had acquired plumbing in the castle only a year or two ago. Most bourgeoisie homes still lacked primitive plumbing systems.
A towel and half-used bar of Marseille soap were placed on the floor beside the tub. It was far from what she was used to, but it would do for the night, and that was all that mattered.
She reached out and hesitantly turned the left tap, half expecting some sort of concotion—maybe blood—to start flowing. Lilac jerked her hand back and held her breath.
Just water, so far as she could tell. Marveling at the sight, she held one hand beneath the faucet and used the other to fiddle with the taps until the water was just right. She drew herself a steaming bath and added three drops from her lavender oil pipet, just how she’d liked it at home. As her muscles tensed then relaxed in the near-scalding water, she savored the feeling of the caked grime disintegrating off her legs. Soon, she allowed her mind to drift, floating idly to the barkeep downstairs.
The public news of her Darkling Tongue at age ten had left any outlook for her future completely dismal. Her love life, sadly, was no exception. She hadn’t had much experience with boys her age after her ability was discovered, and she’d been much too young to show interest in them before. It was safe to assume that her potential suitors and wayward admirers were as disgruntled as the rest of the kingdom, due to the sudden ceasing of random gifts after the fact.
There once was a handsome servant boy who’d caught her eye when she was fourteen, but his mother, a destitute seamstress from Paris, forbade him from speaking to her. Being turned down by a servant’s family had upset Lilac as much as it’d traumatized her. She supposed she should be grateful that she also didn’t hear from Sinclair Le Tallec and his parents often after her tenth birthday; funnily enough, it was her affliction that encouraged this, as opposed to her shoving the tart in his face. From her birthday on, the most interaction she’d had with the young marquis were a greeting letters on Christmases and Easters, and bouquets on her birthday, to which she never replied.
But the stranger downstairs had made her feel something different. A sickening, nervous outward attraction she should never, ever feel for a commoner—according to the rules. The same rules that had convinced everyone she’d one day take Sinclair’s hand in marriage.
The kingdom—her parents included—remained under the impression she’d wed Sinclair upon or at some point following her coronation. With her Darkling Tongue and everything else at the forefront of her concern, she’d allowed them to believe whatever they’d wanted—even if he was the last man on earth she wanted to touch, let alone marry. Fortunately for her, there were no official stipulations regarding this ludicrous expectation; it was merely unheard of in the centuries of Breton tradition for a woman to take the throne without a king jure uxoris or king consort to rule beside her. Unfortunately for her, Sinclair was son to the second most powerful man in the kingdom, meaning their matrimony would grant him a jure uxoris reign: to rule and govern with matched power as she, the rightful heiress by blood.
No thank you.
With the way society regarded women property of their husbands, Sinclair would then, in a way, wield even more jurisdiction over her land and people. Lilac shuddered at the notion.
She could give her first time to Garin, she thought wickedly. How tempting. She smirked, trickling the warm water over her décolletage. That’d show them, and their ridiculous rules.
After ensuring the suds were rinsed from her hair, she crawled out and towel dried by the fire. A moment later, a knock came at the door. Lilac paused, hesitant.
They found her.
She gritted her teeth, stopping herself from replying. Had it been her father’s men, her voice would give her away immediately.
Then again, if it were the king’s guard, they wouldn’t bother with knocking.
“Yes?” she called, pinching the skin between her thumb and forefinger to keep her voice from wavering.
“Oh, why do I even bother?” Meriam’s piercing tone floated through the wooden door.
Lilac hastily wrapped the towel around her body, tying it at her bosom. As she peeked the door open just a hair, the innkeeper stood there with a neatly folded pile of tan bedsheets resting in her arms. Relieved, Lilac swung the door all the way open and accepted the bundle. Before she could say thank you, the witch turned heel back down the hallway without another word. The sounds of clinking glasses and incessant chatter drifted up from downstairs.
“Thanks,” Lilac whispered after her. At least the witch didn’t entirely hate her.
Grinning to herself, she shut her bedroom door and stripped the old sheet and coverlet off the cot. She wasn’t too sure of the proper way to make a bed, since her servants had always fixed hers while she was downstairs at breakfast. She tried her best. In the end, she did away with both fitted sheets, laying the clean coverlet over the mattress and cocooning herself in Merle’s thicker and softer one.
She tucked her knees to her chest at the edge of the mattress and scooted back until she hit the pair of pillows, hard as rocks. There, she curled up. Her body was tired, but her mind raced as she considered the journey ahead. Twenty-four hours ago, she didn’t know how she’d face the entire kingdom at her coronation ceremony. She might have lost against the stupid bedsheets, but her enchanted forest survival skills surely surpassed that.
A soft sputtering alerted her that the fire left over from Merle’s recent stay had begun to die out. The charred firewood had imploded onto itself in tiny piles of ember and ash. She shivered as she stared into the fireplace, knowing the feeling of warm comfort would soon disappear with morning. Lilac imagined embodying the flames—becoming untameable, feral light. Chasing the darkness away, she could become something even the most sinister shadows feared.
Isn’t that what everyone in the kingdom wanted? A queen strong enough to fend off the dark?
Lilac exhaled sharply in attempt to dislodge the anxiety. She considered the barkeep downstairs. The only person she could trust was herself, she learned that when the entire kingdom, including her own parents, had all but shunned her after that night. After discovering something of hers she couldn’t help, especially as a mere child. She’d been alienated by the very people who were supposed to protect her. Make her feel at home. Overnight, her sanctuary had turned into a cage, and it took a witch’s bribery to give her the courage—or recklessness—to leave, she thought bitterly, fury building in her chest.