Page 1 of Caroline the Cruel
Part One –
The Making of a Queen
Chapter 1
“Holdstill,Cara.”Emmygiggled, raising the stolen tailor’s shears awkwardly hooked around her adolescent fingers at Caroline’s temple making her tremble. “If I give you a jagged crop because you’re wiggling, it’s your own fault.”
Emmy’s bright blue eyes met Caroline’s silver in the large, gilded mirror they sat in front of. Mischief lit Emmy’s features, and a self-indulgent smile crept across her sun-speckled face. The all-too-familiar expression sent a flood of dread charging through Caroline’s limbs, which crashed into the walls of her stomach before settling there in a gurgling pool.
“Please, Emmy. I don’t want to cut my hair.” Fat tears dripped down Caroline’s pale face as chunks of her onyx locks floated down to the floor.
“Stop crying.” Emmy poked her in the shoulder with the point of her scissors, eliciting a cry. “This is your punishment. You chose. I’ll give you a cut, or I’ll tell father what you did to Cook.”
Hot shame burned on Caroline’s damp cheeks and her mind drifted.
Her and Emmy had made a game of forcing their cooks to eat the meals which dissatisfied them, heaping on seconds and thirds until the cooks were rubbing their protruding bellies and dripping with perspiration. The punishment, which had been Caroline’s idea, was an effective tactic to improve the quality of their food.
It wasn’t her fault the entire kitchen was preoccupied with feeding the envoy from Veetula here for the Peace Ball. Feeding her and Emmy should be a priority. The portly older man they called Cook, who had the unlucky task of feeding them on more days than not, served Caroline a rabbit stew with chewy bits and a flavor that made her insides roll.
Caroline suspected the soup was from the day before—and it hadn’tsmelledspoiled. Before Cook served them, an attendant came and fetched Emmy.Too convenient. Emmy’s mother, the Queen of Everstal, requested her only daughter’s presence, probably to gloat over the blonde-haired princess in front of their foreign guests.
The intuition in Caroline’s heart told her that Cook would have never served Princess Emmy day-old soup. She hadn’t meant to be vindictive, but when he’d set the bowl down in front of her, pin pricks crawled up her neck to her cheeks and her teeth ached like they might crack, she was clenching them so hard. Cook should have seen Caroline’s ire, and replaced the bowl immediately with something more palatable, but he had been too busy to notice.
After one bite, Caroline spit a slimy piece of rabbit on the cold stone tiles and pushed the dish across the table in protest. A passing castle cat called Red jumped down from his perch on a windowsill to inspect the food which had splatted into its domain. The castle cats were blue and orange, speckled and striped, but they were all called Red after Roskide, the red castle which was the crown of Everstal. Red took a sniff of the discarded meat and turned its nose to the ceiling, flicking its tail disappointedly as it sauntered from the room, which set Caroline seething.
“Cook, come over here right now and take your punishment.” Caroline stomped her foot twice and crossed her delicate arms across her still flat chest. She motioned with her chin to the steaming bowl and even Cook wrinkled his nose.
With a shaky hand, he picked up the spoon and brought it to his lips, blowing across the contents. Cook shot her a wary glance and slurped the rotten stew.
“All of it,” she insisted in the most terrifying monotone a fourteen-year-old girl could muster.
Emmy clicked her scissors open and closed, snapping Caroline out of her memory and back to the present. “Cook had to be taken to the infirmary,” Emmy said, prancing around the room, circling Caroline like a shark. “You know what that means, don’t you? You need to be punished.”
“The infirmary?” Caroline swallowed the knot in her throat. She didn’t mean to make him that sick, but hehadplanned to feed her the foul dish.
Cook had been retching whenever she gushed out of the little dining area where he served them their meals. The man hadn’t made it two steps past the table before he heaved the contents of his stomach onto the floor. The smell had been too much for her. A guilty little tingle crawled across the back of her shoulders.
Emmy brought the shears in front of Caroline’s face with a final clack, closing them a little too close to her nose. “I will give you a choice, Caroline,” the older girl said haughtily, pursing her lips into a prim pout. “You can either let me finish your haircut, or I will tell father.”
That’s how Caroline found herself sitting in front of her half-sister, and all her beautiful onyx locks littering the floor around her feet.
She wiped her clammy palms down her skirts. The motion soothed her rowdy gut, which was still churning from the stew or the debasement, possibly both.
Emmy picked up one of the longer strands and twirled it between her fingers. Then she let a crazed cackle escape. “What is Father going to think? You’re no longer his raven-haired love child.”
Caroline had favored her mother, the beauty who King Thom Dallimore had taken as a lover on his final campaign against Manula fifteen years ago. He took one look at the raven-haired woman and fell in love. Caroline resulted from their union and when Queen Cerise discovered the king’s lover, she sent her own spies to locate the woman, and then she sent an assassin.
King Thom never confirmed it was his own queen who was responsible for the death of his love, but he knew in the way a king knows those things. That unspoken suspicion was why Caroline, his illegitimate daughter, was allowed to live in the keep alongside his other child, Princess Emmaline, his heir. He was the king after all.
His two daughters were opposites in all things: coloring, beauty and in temperament. One girl had the love of her father, the other her mother. One was soft, the other all angles.
Caroline’s lovely sister, who was two years older, despised her for having the king’s heart. It was a rift she appeared to ignore on most days. And because Emmy was the heir, when it was notmost days, she was untouchable. She used that advantage against Caroline every chance she got.
Caroline ran her fingers through her shorn hair. It stuck up in little tufts, making her cheekbones poke out even more dramatically and her large silver eyes bug out of her face like an insect. She could only blink at her reflection as numbness eclipsed the searing of the fresh wound given to her by her half-sister.
“I don’t know, Emmy. Let’s go find out if Father still loves me.” Caroline shrugged and pulled her sagging body from the stool. She kicked the hair with the toe of a satin slipper, and put it out of her mind, stomping off in search of the king. Emmaline skipped eagerly behind her.
King Thom was in the training yard when Caroline and her sister found him. Sweat glistened off the brow of the brawny man as he removed a layer of steel plate which he always wore during his sparring sessions.
