Maybe I should just put a tent warning anytime the mad queen appears in a chapter. Welp, here's your warning! She appears in the middle of this one, and shocker, she's going to win any #1 Best Mom coffee mugs. Child abuse tag applies here.

  Skip if you don't want to see that, and I'll check you in the one!e

  “The queen requires blood and flesh for the princess’s training,” King Hazerial told cio that m at supper.

  “Has Your Majesty sidered using some of the nobles he saw fit t with him?” the lord suggested ily before cutting into the fowl on his pte.

  Hazerial went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “House Mattius will supply the queen with the number of bodies the yearly tribute has been g since your instatement.”

  It felt as if a quail bone lodged in cio’s throat. Like the eous taxes he paid to the each year, the number of men he sent to the body tax were always correct. His father had beeiculous in his dealings with Hazerial; out of y, cio erfect beyond reproach. At times, when the exact calcution for the yearly levy came out to a fra, he had beeed to send body parts. He always reigned in the impulse, knowing mockery from the son of a traitor would not be well received.

  Hazerial’s mention of insuffit levies was obvious nonsense. An apparently petty show of power. The question was how this bullying fit into the Eketra-blessed king’s overall pn.

  cio took a sip of wine before responding. “If Your Majesty would be gracious enough to remind his subjeany that es out to…”

  “Deliver fifty men of your holding to the queen by dusk.”

  House Mattius didn’t owe the one ma alone fifty, but there was no way to skirt the king’s direct order. Like his father before him, cio sent only voluo fulfill the yearly body tax—there were no she of bored miner’s sons and farm boys desperately dreaming of adventure and fortu that was with twelve months to prepare for the colle date.

  Horror stories of the mad queen’s bloody rituals had circuted even as far out as the ternds, but if the bodies his staff had ed out of the royal suite that evening were any indication, those gory fis were nothing pared to what Jadarah could do whe her mind to it.

  It certainly made one wonder what she might be teag his future wife to do.

  The only certainty was that the fifty men he handed over to her wouldn’t leave Bzing Prairie in one piece. He couldn’t ask ao give themselves up to that.

  “sider it done, Your Majesty.”

  cio beed to his elderly steward. Jarik would have to send riders to turn the ned men out of every gaol in his holdings and hope that was enough.

  As the steward left to carry out his orders, cio looked down at his unfinished meal. He could another bite with all that idealism and means to ends he’d spouted to the priig in his craw.

  ***

  Kelena stood as still as a pressed flower in the middle of the bedchamber, while the autumn sun slowly shifted the shadows on the floor. Her feet and back ached. The fire in the hearth burned low, her breaths getting easier to see as the air became chillier.

  Bzing Prairie wasn’t as ornately appointed as the Zinote mansion had been, but her chamber here was rger, and the beautiful bedstead had been id with furs just for her. There was a lump at the foot where a thoughtful servant had shoved a firepan uhe bo warm it for her arrival.

  She shouldn’t even be looking at the bed. Mother always ko do something unfiveable like wish for luxury she didn’t deserve would only make things worse—and there were already sequences ing. On days when Mother fot to lock Kelena away, there were always sequences.

  The narrow wardrobe in her chamber stood open against the north wall. She should climb in, cram herself against the frosted-covered wooden pahat butted up against the cold north wall, and pull the door shut. If she ya hard enough, it might even have locked on its own. Would that be the right thing to do?

  No! Imbecile! Her mother would know she had stood in the middle of the floor wishing for the bed befetting into the wardrobe. If Kelena were going to get into the wardrobe on her own, she should have do immediately. Whatever she did now, there would be sequences.

  Sometimes there were sequences even after she was locked away for the day in some cramped, close, suffog hole. As ugly and stupid as Kelena was, all sequences, no matter how awful, were deserved.

  So she was stu the ter of the chamber, rigidly still, waiting for her mother to punish her for once again failing at the simplest of possible tests. She was so stupid that she couldn’t even uand what these tests were for.

  At least she would be able to move again when Mother came. She wouldn’t be paralyzed with indecision and fear anymore. That burning pain in her shoulders would ease with movement, and the pain in her legs would lessen if they ged positions. Anything but more waiting would be a relief.

  Before Izakiel had left, it had been easier for Kelena to pretend that she wasn’t as awful as she knew she was. He never believed anything Mother said. Sometimes he could even make it sound as if the queen were wrong. Mother hated him, but he was Kelena’s hero. Izakiel wasn’t afraid of anything. Just thinking about his ce almost made her feel brave enough to take a step.

  The chamber door opened.

  Kelena flinched. Mother.

  The sun outside those tall windows barely touched the western horizon. Mother must have been summoned by Kelena’s traitorous thoughts of her older brother—without sensing those, Jadarah would still be soundly asleep until midnight.

  The quee into the room, bringing a cold draft and the smell of death and gore that evidenced her zealous dedication to the strong gods. An outsider would have pegged the mother and daughter at close to the same height, but in Kelena’s estimation the queen towered over her, a monstrous thunderhead crag with power.

  Kelena trembled from head to foot, unsure whether to colpse with fright or burst into tears.

  “What are you doing in the middle of the floor?” Mother snapped. “Idiot child, were you there all night? Are you too stupid to get into your own bed? Do you need an attendant to do everything for you, like some sort of invalid? Wipe that disgusting snivel off your face before I tear it off! I don’t know why I expe empty little nothing to have a brain when she has nothing else. e with me.”

  Mother stopped in the doorway. “Well, Nobody, do you have enough seo follow me yourself or do I you by the hair?”

  Kelena shook her head and hurried to follow. On her first step, her leg, stiffened from a night id motionlessness, buckled. She colpsed.

  She looked up in horror at her mother.

  “Roll y, ugly, cow eyes around all you want, you empty little duno one’s going to step in now and up your mess. Who do you think would help you, anyway? Tell me, what fool would care about something that’s not even human?”

  Silehe queen was waiting.

  Kelena tried a few times to stammer out an apology, but she could hardly force a sound through her throat.

  “Shut up!” Mother shrieked and spped her mouth. “Not everong gods care about you. You do to them. You do to anybody! No one cares about an inhuman little nothing. Are you thinking Izak will e to your rescue? That backbiting crotch louse? What did he tell you? That if you pleased him often enough, he would kill me? Or was it your test lover boy, the blind prihey’re lying to you, telling you whatever you want to hear, because they know all you are is a shell, ay shell, only good for ohing.”

  Desperately, Kelena shook her head. Her fists formed white-knuckled balls against the fgstones. She wished she could cover her ears and scream that her mother was wrong—wrong about Izakiel, wrong about Etian—wrong, wrong, wrong!

  Mrinned.

  The blood felt as if it were draining from Kelena’s heart when she realized she had shaken her head at Mother. How could she dare? A stupid nothing like her telling Mother that she was wrong?

  Shuddering, Kelena squeezed her eyes shut tight, brag for another sp or worse.

  Warm, stinking arms ed arourembling body.

  “My empty little baby.” The queen’s breath was hot against Kelena’s hair. “No one—absolutely no one—cares about you but me. Not the strong gods. Not Izak or Etian or Hazerial. If they cared, they would be here. But who is here, little stupid one, little hated one, little nothing? Who is here with you?” Venomous red lips kissed Kelena on the forehead, and the arms squeezed gently. “I am.”

  Kelena was so bewildered at the sudden switch to affe that she burst into tears. Mother patted her back, shushing sweetly, until the outburst was under trol.

  “e, my nothing child.” The queen pulled Kelena to her feet. “e with Mother, e now.”

  She led the bewildered prihrough the sprawlie, down, down, down, into underground rooms that smelled of damp disuse. They passed wiockpiles and aging wihe queen still being downward, to caverns that had once served as storerooms but had been repced when the residence overhead had been expanded.

  Someone was standing up ahead with a torch.

  Mother chuckled and broke into a skip.

  The waiting person was the Lord of the ternds, leaning on his walking stick. He gred at their approach, his dark, handsome features pulled into a scowl. He looked as if he could barely tain his hatred for the empty little nobody ing his way.

  The queen prao a halt and Kelena stopped just behind her, safely shielded from the angry lord. The echo of their footsteps carried on without them. It sounded like murmuring.

  “Where are they?” Mother demanded.

  Lord cio stepped aside. The torch illuminated a grating in the sloped floor. Inside, Kelena saw the source of the movement and murmuring.

  “Fifty men,” the lrowled.

  Kelena’s throat ached with a silent scream. She hadn’t thought they would tiraining here, so far from any high pce host city. She would take all the sequences she deserved and more if only she could avoid this.

  The queen’s smile said that she khat, too.

  Mother pulled open the grating.

  “Get in.”

  ***

  Under normal circumstances, Hazerial preferred to keep the early part of his night to himself, tending to his toilette, breakfasting alohen reading uniques which had made it past his cellor. When the request for an urgent audience came from the lord of House Mattius, however, Hazerial felt the attention of his favored strong goddess turning his way.

  Eketra was sending him opportunity.

  “Show him in.” Hazerial set aside the test report on the war with the pirates. It was the same as always—requests for more men, more bloodsves, more provisions, more funding for the war that should have been filling the royal treasury to bursting.

  The tap of the man’s walking sti the stone announced his arrival before he appeared in the doorway. His expression was dark, eyes burning, posture tehe aura of suffering hung about him like a cloud, though it was too faint to be his.

  Hazerial smiled. Somebody was in a high temper.

  The traitor’s whelp remembered to bow at least. “Your Majesty, may I make a request of the regarding the marriage tract?”

  “Our secretary is drafting it now,” Hazerial said.

  “If it pleases the king, I would like to request that the wedding take pce immediately.”

  Hazerial leaned ba the chair and studied the lord. Flecks of gore g to the younger man’s carefully shined boots and blood spshed the left leg of his trousers. Evidence of the fifty men he had delivered, no doubt. Jadarah had capered off to collect them when word of their arrival came. Perhaps that was at the root of this sudden attitude shift.

  “We ot possibly take our beloved daughter from her mother yet. She is barely out of the nursery. To say nothing of her apprenticeship to the queen. Kelena is an instrument of the strong gods and must be traio reach her full potential. She will least ten more years under her mother’s wing.”

  The grip on the walking stick tightened. “Five my misuanding, Your Majesty, but st night it seemed as if the wedding was settled for year.”

  The web was taking shape, somewhere just beyond what Hazerial could see. Grisly puppet strings twisted into the shape of a noose.

  “And you agreed to be present with the court during your betrothal period,” Hazerial said. “Where we are, there our daughter is also. You need not fear her extended absence.”

  It was a delicious thing to wate of the Josean-blessed struggling to force himself to give up the source of his weakness.

  “Your Majesty, your daughter finds her training…distasteful.”

  So the son of the traitor had an even worse bleedi than his father. The disease got more severe by the geion, it seemed.

  “Wheraining is pleted, she will no longer feel that way,” Hazerial said.

  “Is there no way to release her from it? Surely the strong gods have enough instruments.”

  “Which do you question—their will or the will of your sn?”

  “her, Your Majesty. I apologize that my ignorance makes it seem so. Without a prh pce, my family’s e to the strong gods has always been limited. And, I admit, I’ve never seen a child treated in such a way.”

  With a gracious nod, Hazerial preteo uand isgivings.

  “We will not rip our daughter from her mother’s loving arms so soon. However,” he let the bloody tle around the young lord’s neck, “we may make certain cessions for our future son-in-w. Especially in the Hall of Law, where we believe your family’s is have frequently in in the past.”

  The tip of the walking stick dug into the stone as the young lord wrestled with one principle versus another. How would a Josean-blessed man weigh otle girl he had no trol ainst all the people his father had always gone on about, whose lot in life it appeared he might be able to affect?

  et Hazerial’s stare. “I live to serve Your Majesty, but I am thirty-one years old, and my line is proo siess. It would be folly of me to wait ten years before attempting to produce a legitimate heir.”

  “Perhaps if your presence bes the suffitly, the betrothal period might be shortened. One might presume that for each act of assistance you provide, months—or even years—may be subtracted.”

  “And my future wife’s training?”

  Hazerial smiled at the sight of a man pulling his own ight. “There is every ce the strong gods will decide they have enough instruments by then.”