Their Hidden Princess novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: Copper

I read the nurse's note four times.

Then I held it in the candle until it was gone.

"Bad news from your aunt?" Maudie asked from her bed.

"She's fine. My father's sick."

"The one who sold you."

"The same one."

Maudie was quiet a moment. "You can still love somebody who did that. It's allowed."

I lay awake listening to the lake hit the cliff.

My father drank from a gold cup at every supper.

A man stood behind his chair and drank from it first.

The taster had come to court eight months ago. A quiet, careful man from the border forts.

Varrick's forts.

At dawn I went looking for Lysander.

I found him in the stillroom under the chapel, where the healing cadets brewed.

It was warm down there and smelled of rosemary and scorched sugar. Bundles of herbs hung from every beam.

Lysander was alone at the long bench with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, grinding something green.

"Frog Knight," he said, delighted. "How's the face?"

"Purple."

"It suits you. Very regal."

I nearly flinched.

He didn't notice. He was scraping the green paste into a jar.

"I need to ask you something," I said. "About poison."

He stopped scraping.

"That's a sentence that makes a man nervous."

"It's for the hunt," I lied. "If the princess ran, someone may want her dead before she's found. I want to know what to look for."

He set the jar down and looked at me properly.

"All right," he said. "What do you want to know?"

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