The Queen's Price

FIFTY-TWO

Dinah tossed the latest letter from Cara on her desk and let out an angry sigh. At least one of her friends was still showing loyalty to her banished Queen.

It wasn’t fair. The girls at the Hall were doing this interesting exercise—although that dinner ruined by an obscene stink sounded very unpleasant—while she was stuck with two tutors teaching her at home because . . . Well, her parents said it was because girls in the important castes of the Blood might be targeted by another coven of malice, but the real reason was because the girls who were studying at the town’s private school—the aristo girls who should have been her friends—got bitchy when she disciplined one of them. It was just a light slap on the girl’s face—not even hard enough to bring up any color on her skin. The school had no right to expel a Queen for one little deserved slap.

She wasn’t a limp goody-goody like Zoey, but she wasn’t evil like Delora. She was a Queen, and she deserved obedience and adoration from those in the lower castes of Blood.

So here she was, stuck with two boring tutors while the Queens who hadn’t shown any spine were still at the Hall doing these interesting exercises and able to exert their rightful power over the other students.

Dinah let out another angry sigh.

“What did Lady Cara say to put you in a mood?” Ida asked as she tidied up the bedside tables.

Dinah studied her personal maid. Ida was supportive and never criticized. She was an adult, having made the Offering to the Darkness, but the difference in their years didn’t matter. The difference in their social positions? Ida always seemed to know when to be friendly and when to treat Dinah like a ruling Queen.

“You used to work at SaDiablo Hall,” Dinah said.

Ida nodded. “I did, back when . . . she . . . lived there.”

The Queen of Ebon Askavi. Witch. No one said her name, even in private. She’d always been strange and unnatural. Now she was that and more. But Dinah still resented that Zoey had been granted an audience and the rest of the Queens studying at the Hall had not. Like Zoey was more important than the rest of them.

“Did they ever do exercises with something called Lady Dumm?” she asked.

“Oh, that.” Ida made a sound that might have been a laugh with bitter undertones. “Yes, I remember Lady Dumm. A dressmaker’s dummy that everyone was supposed to pretend was a difficult guest so that the girls and boys living at the Hall could practice their social skills. Not that all of them were capable of learning social skills, since some were more animal than human. But that all ended when a suggestion that might have been a little bit naughty was slipped into the instructions. Such an uproar about something that hadn’t even happened.”

Ida continued to tidy up the room, but there was a stiffness in her shoulders, and in the maid’s psychic scent Dinah picked up a still-burning anger over something that must have happened years and years ago.

“Was that when you were dismissed?” Dinah guessed.

Ida sniffed. “Someone had to be blamed for a rumor, and the housekeeper had never liked me, never thought my work was good enough.”

Dinah looked out the window as an idea began to take shape. Her tutors had droned on and on yesterday about the responsibilities of a Queen, about how doing what was right was more important than following orders.

But what if someone gave you orders that were just a little bit naughty? Nothing terrible, but something that should be within a Queen’s rights? Like ordering someone in her court to slap a person’s hand? Or a person’s face? Who would show some spine and follow the orders, and who would prove she didn’t have the courage to rule?

And if the other Queens were expelled for breaking a rule or crossing a line?

Dinah turned away from the window and smiled. “I have an idea that could give both of us a little payback for being slighted at SaDiablo Hall.”