Nicholina giggled. “Flibbertigibbet.”

“What an odd creature,” Madame Labelle murmured, staring after her with a frown. “Quite touched in the head. She called Louise a mouse earlier. Do you have any idea what that means?”

I ignored her, signaling for Beau to lead the way. He hesitated. “Should someone—fetch her? Lou? I thought she’d planned on joining us?”

And I thought she’d planned on loving me forever.

I stepped around him, around the counter, disregarding the barkeep’s objections. “Plans change.”

The King’s Court

Reid

I had a rock in my boot.

It’d lodged there immediately upon entering the tunnels. Small enough for me to endure. Large enough for me to fixate. With each step, it jostled against my foot. Curling my toes. Setting my teeth on edge.

Or perhaps that was Beau.

He’d thrown back his hood in the semidarkness, and he strolled through the earthen tunnels with hands in his pockets. Torchlight flickered over his smirk. “So many rendezvous down here. So many memories.”

The rock slid under my heel. I shook my foot irritably. “I don’t want to know.”

Apparently, however, Madame Labelle did. She arched a brow. Lifted her skirt to step over a divot in the earth. “Come now, Your Highness. I’ve heard rumors your exploits are grossly exaggerated.”

His eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“I owned a brothel.” She fixed him with a pointed look. “Word spread.”

“What word?”

“I don’t want to hear,” I repeated.

It was her turn to smirk. “You forget I knew you as a child, Beauregard. I remember the gap in your teeth and the spots on your chin. And then—when you developed that unfortunate stutter—”

Cheeks flushing, he thrust out his chest, nearly stumbling on another rock. I hoped it found quarter in his heel. “I didn’t develop a stutter,” he said, indignant. “That was a complete and utter misunderstanding—”

I kicked at the air surreptitiously, and the rock caught between my toes. “You had a stutter?”

“No—”

Madame Labelle cackled. “Tell him the story, dear. I’d quite like to hear it again.”

“How do you—?”

“I told you—brothels are hotbeds of information.” She winked at him. “And I do intend that pun.”

He looked mutinous. Though pink still tinged his cheeks, he expelled a breath, blowing a limp strand of hair from his eye. Madame Labelle’s smile broadened with expectation. “Fine,” he snapped. “As I’m sure you heard the incorrect story, I will set the matter straight. I lost my virginity to a psellismophiliac.”

I stared at him, the rock in my boot forgotten. “A what?”

“A psellismophiliac,” he repeated irritably. “Someone who is aroused by stuttering. Her name was Apollinia. She was a chambermaid in the castle and several years older than me, the beautiful hag.”

I blinked once. Twice. Madame Labelle cackled louder. Gleeful. “Go on,” she said.

He glared at her. “You can imagine how our encounter proceeded. I thought her fetish normal. I thought everyone enjoyed stuttering in the bedchamber.” Recognizing the horror in my eyes, he nodded fervently. “Yes. You see the problem, don’t you? When I found my next lover—a peer in my father’s court—I’m sure you can imagine how that encounter proceeded, as well.” He lifted a hand to his eyes. “God. I’ve never been so mortified in my entire life. I was forced to flee to these very tunnels to escape his laughter. I couldn’t look him in the eye for a year.” He snapped his hand to his side in agitation. “A year.”

An unfamiliar tickle built in my throat. I pursed my lips against it. Bit my cheek.

It escaped anyway, and I laughed, sharp and clear, for the first time in a long time.

“It’s not funny,” Beau snapped as Madame Labelle joined in. She bent double, clutching her ribs, her shoulders shaking. “Stop laughing! Stop it now!”

At long last, she wiped a tear from her eye. “Oh, Your Majesty. I shall never tire of that story—which is, in fact, the story my girls thought so amusing. If it soothes your wounded pride, I’ll confess I too have experienced my share of humiliating encounters. I often perused these tunnels myself as a younger woman. Why, there was a time your father spirited me down here—”

“No.” Beau shook his head swiftly, waving a hand. “No. Do not finish that sentence.”

“—but there was a feral cat.” She chuckled to herself, lost in memory. “We didn’t notice him until it was too late. He, ah, mistook part of your father’s anatomy—or rather, two parts of your father’s anatomy—”

The laughter died in my own throat. “Stop.”

“—for a plaything! Oh, you should’ve heard Auguste’s shrieks. One would’ve thought the cat had gutted his liver instead of scratched his—”

“Enough.” Horrified, wide-eyed with disbelief, Beau physically clapped a hand over her mouth. She snorted against his fingers. “Never, ever tell that story again. Do you understand me? Ever.” He shook his head sharply, clenching his eyes shut. “The psychological scars you’ve just inflicted, woman. I cannot unsee what my mind’s eye has conjured.”

She knocked his hand away, still laughing. “Don’t be such a prude, Beauregard. Surely you understand your father’s extracurricular activities, given the situation we’re all—” Her smile slipped, and the playful atmosphere between us vanished instantly. She cleared her throat. “What I mean to say is—”

“We shouldn’t talk anymore.” With a grim expression, mouth drawn, Beau pointed ahead to a northward tunnel. “We’re nearing the castle. Listen.”

Sure enough, in the quiet that followed, muffled footsteps could be heard overhead. Right. I knelt to wrench off my boot. Shook the damn rock free and replaced it. No more distractions. Though I appreciated Madame Labelle’s attempt to lift our spirits, this wasn’t the time or the place.

It hadn’t been the time or place in weeks.

We walked the rest of the way in silence. As the tunnel sloped gradually upward, the voices grew louder. As did my heartbeat. I shouldn’t have been nervous. I’d seen the king before. Seen him, talked to him, dined with him. But I’d been a huntsman then, esteemed, celebrated, and he’d been my king. Everything had changed.

Now I was a witch—reviled—and he was my father.

“Everything will be fine,” Madame Labelle whispered as if reading my thoughts. She nodded to me. To herself. “You are his child. He will not harm you. Even the Archbishop did not burn his child, and Auguste is twice the man the Archbishop was.”

I flinched at the words, but she’d already turned to the cavernous fissure in the wall. The warp and weft of a muted tapestry covered it. I recognized it from my brief time in the castle—a man and a woman in the Garden of Eden, naked, fallen before the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In their hands, each held a golden fruit. Above them, a giant serpent coiled.

I stared at the reverse of its black coils now, feeling sick.

“Watch through here,” Beau breathed, pointing to a thin gap between the wall and tapestry. Less than an inch. Bodies shifted beyond it. Aristocrats and clergymen from all over the kingdom—all over the world. An assemblage of black caps, veils, and lace. Their low voices reverberated in a steady hum. And there—raised on a stone dais, draped over a colossal throne—sat Auguste Lyon.

From the window directly behind, a shaft of sunlight traced his silhouette. His gilded crown and golden hair. His fur cape and broad shoulders. The placement of the window, the throne . . . they’d been arranged intentionally. An optical illusion to trick the eye into believing his very body emitted light.

Backlit, however, his face remained shadowed.

But I could still see his smile. He laughed with three young women, heedless of Queen Oliana beside him. She stared determinedly at nothing, expression as stony as the steps beneath her. In the corner of the room, a handful of aristocrats in foreign clothing shared her features. Shared her anger. Theirs were the only sober faces in the room.

Resentment prickled beneath my skin as I took in the bards, the wine, the food.

These people did not mourn the Archbishop. How dare they mock his death with their revelry? How dare they speak idly beneath black hoods? No mourning veil could hide their apathy. Their hedonism. These people—these animals—did not deserve to grieve him.

On the heels of that thought, however, came another. Shame burned away my righteousness.

Neither did I.

Beau beat the dust from his cloak, smoothed his hair as best he could. It did little to help his travel-worn appearance. “Right. I’ll enter the proper way and request an audience. If he’s amenable—”

“You’ll call us forward,” I finished, mouth dry.

“Right.” He nodded. Kept nodding. “Right. And if he’s not . . . ?” He waited expectantly, brows climbing upward each second I didn’t answer. “I need to hear a confirmation, Reid.”