Page 3 of A Dance of Lies

Commotion whistles past as I’m dragged through cobbled squares. Every step is a negotiation, pleading with my body to obey. Even so, dizziness sends me toppling more than once. The guards wait with impatient huffs, not wanting to touch me more than necessary. All the while, sounds crowd my ears in a disorienting rush.The trot of horses, the clatter of carriage wheels. I collect gossip, an endless trail of whispers.

Fates above, whoisthat?

More like,whatis it?

But it takes all my focus just to keep my feet moving.

I’m hefted up yet another set of steps. And though I can’t sense where I’m being led, recognition comes as my feet slip against cool marble, the ambience changing once more.

A frigid, echoing space. I have reached the palace after all, it seems. A few long corridors later and the sack is finally ripped from my head.

I blink, my eyes struggling to adjust to the light, even dim as it is. Familiar smooth beige stones make up the walls, floors, and vaulted ceilings. Sconces are set at intervals, light spangling across a pool for bathing on the far end. Rich incense laced with myrrh clouds my lungs, so different from the ever-present miasma of urine and sweat in the prison.

I clutch my abdomen, swaying with a wave of nausea.

A trio of women enter, encircling me as the guards step back, and all at once I’m being stripped, my shackles removed, and led into the pool—

Rags and sponges scrub soap across every inch of my bared flesh. Water is dumped over my head, over and over and over.

I feel as if I’m drowning. Or jerking awake from a long, terrible dream.

Flint razors and stones graze up and down my legs and under my arms, leaving my flesh smooth but red. When I’m led from the bath, perfumed oils are rubbed into my skin. Combs attack my hair, ripping their way through the tangles. And all I can think now is—

The king.

The king.

Theking.

I have been here before, in this very chamber.

I have worn these perfumes before.

I have been prepared before.

Before . . .

Before the day my life was upended. Fragmented as my memories may be, that night is the one recollection time has not stretched thin. Here and now, it comes into even sharper relief—the jab of fingers into the tender flesh of my upper arms as I was dragged sleepily from my room in the dead of night; the way the king watched me from the shadows, even as his diadem betrayed him, snagging a glimmer of torchlight.

The way he took his time stepping forward, even as I was thrown before him.

The prod of rough hands as his men searched for weapons—as if I could hide one in my whisper-thin negligee.

My arms bound tightly in ropes like they were chaining some untamed beast.

A body I hadn’t even known was there, pulled from my room.

The shouts. The accusations. Theinterrogations—

The slam of the guard’s fists when I tried to run.

A small cry slips through my teeth as the memory crowds in—a horror I’ve yet to understand no matter how many times I turn it over in my mind. HeknewI couldn’t have murdered his adviser. I had been in his company the very hour the man supposedly died.

He knew I was innocent, yet he did nothing.

It was the first time he had allowed anyone to touch me. He was a jealous man, and that jealousy spread across his soul like a wick doused in oil—especially where I was concerned. So much as an ember, and he would combust.

But his jealousy was my shield. He was my protector. No one—no matter how highborn—touched me, and those who tried to get close to me paid for it with their livelihoods, their titles, and sometimes even their heads. Yet he had allowed those guards to put theirhands on me—something he hadn’t even done himself. Not once. Not even when I felt his yearning the way a man craves an ale after a grueling day’s work.