Page 161 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

“Just at the end,” Jasper said, a little pleading, as he gave me a firm nudge.

As if he could blame me for wanting to eavesdrop on my future husband. But just as I was about to heed his plea, I noticed what was hanging beside us in the hall—a painting, and a portrait at that.

A rare treat for my time in Grimmoria so far.

And as I took it in, I realized just how precious the sight really was.

An Umbrite woman was depicted in masterful strokes with glossy black and pin-straight hair that brushed her waist. She was turned just slightly, allowing whoever had captured her visage to highlight the sweeping angles of her cheeks and the delicate tip of her nose. Even in paint, her amber-black eyes seemed to blaze, and her pale-gray skin was radiant. A modest circlet sat delicately on her head, and a single aquamarine ring decorated the hand she rested proudly atop her swollen belly.

I had no words. So, I looked at Jasper with my lips parted in shock, hoping I didn’t need to ask, and he simply nodded.

Maksym’s mother.

The last Queen of Grimmoria, glowing with the radiance of the life she was growing in her womb. The life that would, even seventy years after her tragic death, still palpably grieve for her. I could tell how unhealed that wound was when I’d wielded the little information I knew about her at the ill-fated dinner with Maksym.

And the longer I stood there in silence, staring at the image of one sovereign lost too soon, I couldn’t help how my thoughts circled to my father, someone I’d thought remarkably little of as of late and was suddenly feeling an immense amount of guilt about.

“Come on,” Jasper said quietly.

He steered me the rest of the way down the hall, half-supporting me as we passed through another set of doors and the short distance to my quarters. Maybe I’d overdone it, leaving the study, but I was struggling to contend with a wave of fatigue and a tightness in my chest already.

From the way Jasper would not take his eye off me, he could tell. “What can I get for you?”

“I just want to get all this blood and dirt off me.” We were already moving toward my bathroom before I’d even finished that thought. “Then bed. Sleep seems⁠—”

My room was spotless.

It had taken that entire distance to realize my room was not in the ransacked, tar-covered condition it was that morning. All the furniture righted, the linens changed, even stacks of clean clothing on the bench at the foot of my bed.

A bit of the lived-in charm I’d brought it was gone, sure, but I couldn’t believe it. “You cleaned?”

“Of course I did.” Jasper stopped us just before the bathroom and set his hands on my shoulders. “I told you I would, didn’t I?”

“You did. Thank you.”

The corner of his mouth kicked up, but it quickly fell. “Just to warn you, the mirror needs replacing. I couldn’t…well—” He sighed and pushed open the door, letting me in ahead of him.

He couldn’t remove etching from glass, clearly.

The tar was gone, but the words were scratched in so deep, there wasn’t a single angle they weren’t visible from.

I struggled to look away, and a rush of unwelcome emotions banged at a fragile door in my mind. They had little to do with how fucking tired and sore I was and everything to do with my life in recent weeks, with my life when I was nineteen and learned how little I could trust a man in power.

The brush of Jasper’s lips against my temple barely disturbed my transfixed state. “Ignore it, if you can.” Goddess, how heartbreakingly naïve he was, standing beside the half-breed, bastard, Odessan whore. “I’ll run you a bath.”

He left my side, and my feet carried me to the sink. I turned on the tap and set my filthy hands under the running water, but the words were right there.

ODESSAN WHORE.

HALF-BREED BASTARD.

Goddess, they sliced into me, sank their claws agonizingly deep and locked me in place. I could hear the words in a dozen different voices—mostly men, but a handful of women too. Jeering, vicious words, threatening to eat me alive and spit out my bones as my stomach knotted, sending acid burning up my throat.

Fuck. It was happening all over again.

The last time had nearly killed me, even after spending my entire youth as a smudge on a good king’s ledger, building calluses to the names and stares.

I’d thought I had thicker skin than most after all that, but I’d been proven so wrong time and time again.