Cleo laughed. “You aren’t supposed to do that anymore, Ari. You’re a proper princess now.”
“Hardly.” Ari dropped the offending corset to the pantry floor, adjusted the straps of the regular undergarment she’d had the foresight to wear under it, and pulled her gown back into place. The silk was surprisingly comfortable now that she wasn’t fighting to breathe. She rubbed it between her fingers as Cleo quickly redid her buttons.
Ari wasn’t a proper princess. She was a girl who’d slept in the servants’ quarters with her mother, who’d been almost entirely ignored by her father, and who’d only been allowed to attend lessons with her brother when the king realized that Thad, his chosen heir despite the boy’s bastard status, was serious about refusing to perform to expectations unless his sister received an education too. She’d scrubbed floors, cooked feasts, bargained with merchants, translated ancient texts, and memorized the history of her kingdom—but nothing she’d done had prepared her to be acknowledged as Súndraille’s true princess and to have the eyes of the nobility watching her every move.
If the corset was any indication, she was going to be a disaster.
An ache blossomed in her chest, spreading through her veins with every heartbeat. Tears pricked her eyes, and she blinked rapidly.
“There.” Cleo turned Ari to face her, and her dark eyes filled with sympathy. “Don’t cry. You’ll ruin the mysterious golden-girl look you’ve achieved with this gown.”
Ari gave her a wobbly smile. “I’m the least mysterious girl anyone has ever met.”
Cleo smiled. “The nobility doesn’t know that. To them, you’re the princess the king kept mostly hidden from them all these years. And now you’re going out there in this gorgeous gown with your big brown eyes and your Ari attitude, and they’ll be enthralled.”
“I miss my old life.” Ari’s voice trembled, and a tear spilled down her cheek as she whispered, “I miss Mama.”
Cleo wrapped her in a tight hug. “I do too. She’d be so proud to see you like this. Now get out there before Thad starts looking for you and—”
The pantry door flew open, and Mama Eleni stood glaring at them with Thad peering over her shoulder. “What are you two doing in here?” she asked.
Ari aimed a swift kick at the corset and sent it sliding beneath the shelves of preserved cherries beside her. “Last-minute wardrobe consultation.”
“You have flour on your hands,” Thad said.
“That happens when you make pastry dough.” Ari quickly dusted her palms together and blinked the last of her tears away. Thad needed someone to stand with him tonight, and she was all he had left. It didn’t matter that she kept forgetting to behave like a real princess. It only mattered that when he faced his new subjects she was at his side.
“Princesses don’t make pastry dough,” Thad said, his dark eyes on hers.
Ari snorted. “This one does.”
“Princesses also don’t snort.” Thad’s voice was strained, but he didn’t sound angry. He hadn’t sounded angry since the night they’d fled from the bounty hunter who’d killed their mother and awakened to the news that the entire royal family had taken sick and died, leaving Thad, in the absence of any other blood relation to the king, with an uncontested claim to the throne. Instead, Thad sounded tense. Worried. And grieved in way that even Ari, with her shared heartbreak over their mother’s death, couldn’t seem to touch.
“I did not approve of her helping,” Mama Eleni declared as Ari straightened her shoulders and walked out of the pantry with Cleo at her heels.
“You specifically told me not to use so much butter,” Ari said.
“Lies! The king was very clear that you are only to do the things a true princess would do, and I would never disobey him. Even when I am understaffed, and he has yet to fill my requests for more help.” Mama Eleni reached out with her rough hands to tug Ari’s hair out of its knot and smooth it behind her ears. “Look at our princess in a gown. Ready to dance! Maybe you’ll find a nice young man tonight and be swept off your feet. Now, no kissing behind the ballroom pillars, and no—”
“Stop, Mama,” Cleo said as Thad tugged on his collar as if it were choking him, and the princess’s cheeks heated. This wasn’t a fairy tale. She was in more danger of losing her footing while dancing than of being swept away by a handsome nobleman’s kisses.
Ari’s stomach fluttered as Thad took her arm and turned toward the hallway that led to the ballroom. Casting a desperate look at Cleo, she asked, “You’ll be there?”
“Of course. I’ll be the girl with the tray of fizzy wine.” Lowering her voice, she cast a quick glance at Mama Eleni, who’d turned away to supervise the assembling of the fruit platters, and then gave Ari a reassuring smile. “If you need me to accidentally dump wine on anyone, just give me the signal. You’ll be fine. This will be over before you know it.”
“No dumping wine on anyone.” Thad pulled Ari out of the kitchen. “No sending signals of any kind.”
“Cleo was kidding.” Ari pushed her nervousness and her longing for her mother into a corner of her heart and tried to pretend she felt up to the task ahead as she matched Thad’s pace down the white stone hallway that connected the kitchen to the ballroom. Arched windows lined the passage, and long, sheer curtains fluttered in the sea breeze that swept in through the open windows and chased the lingering heat of the summer’s day out of the palace. Bells rang from the palace’s tower, sonorous and deep, announcing the beginning of the coronation ceremony.
The same bells had announced the royal family’s funeral three weeks earlier, and black bunting still fluttered from the tower in honor of their deaths.
“I know Cleo better than that,” Thad said. “She may be the accomplice instead of the instigator when it comes to the two of you, but dumping beverages on unsuspecting people is a habit of hers. Remember what happened when we were twelve?”
Ari snorted. “You deserved it.”
“Maybe I did.” He slowed his pace as the door to the ballroom came into view, spilling a cacophony of voices and music into the hallway. “Ari, I’m serious about you acting like a proper princess tonight. It’s important.”
“Why? You’re the king. You’re the one everyone is here to see.”
Thad glanced at the doorway and spoke rapidly. “We can’t hold a kingdom without alliances, both from within and without. Tonight there will be a host of potential allies in that room. Members of Súndraille’s Assembly, royalty and nobility from seven of the ten kingdoms—”
“Including Eldr?”