with luxuries your poor little backwoods principality can scarcely even imagine.
“I will send an experienced woman of my own to ensure that you have an appropriate gown for the evening,” the queen continued. “Our prince’s bride will be the jewel of the occasion, and we wouldn’t wish for all that attention to prove awkward due to any lack of knowledge of our customs and fashion.”
And now Evaraine was to be dressed up like a doll so she wouldn’t humiliate her popinjay of a future fiancé. This day was getting better and better. They’d evidently decided Evaraine was a clueless, wide-eyed, ignorant excuse for a princess, and now it was up to Leisa to decide whether to give them one. Play the fool, or let them know that Farhall was fully capable of standing up for herself?
“Until tonight, then?” the popinjay said, obviously eager to be anywhere but in the princess’s presence. Or perhaps it was his father he preferred to avoid. Not that it mattered—Leisa wasn’t exactly enamored of his company either.
“Until tonight,” she murmured, dipping into curtsy number forty-six, the polite farewell—slight bend in the knees, brief drop of the chin, eyes on the floor.
Perhaps she should have restrained herself, but when she straightened, she looked directly at the prince, some instinct demanding that she show him she wasn’t to be quite so easily dismissed. Sadly for her attempt at defiance, she promptly stumbled, because another man was now standing directly behind him.
A chill spread down her spine, while some nameless instinct raised the hairs on the back of her neck. For a moment, Leisa was forced to reconsider what she’d heard about King Melger’s hatred for magic—the man seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, without a sound or word to give warning of his approach.
And there was truly nowhere he could have been hiding in the brightly lit expanse of the entry hall, because this man was the opposite of brightness.
His tall, broad-shouldered form seemed to swallow the light and give back only shadows wrapped in deadly silence. He might have been carved from mountain stone, so complete was his stillness, but he didn’t need to make any threatening moves to make Leisa want to take a step back, or step anywhere really, as long as it was away from him.
She tried taking a breath and was irrationally relieved to find that she still could.
He was just a man, she reminded herself. A man not quite so bulky as he first appeared, but all the more menacing due to the perfectly fitted black armor that made it seem he was cloaked in night itself. That and his sheer force of presence were what troubled her, along with the fact that she couldn’t see his face, let alone his eyes, due to a hood that covered his entire head.
As if he felt her incredulous stare from where he stood—slightly to the left and perhaps three steps behind the prince—his head lifted enough that she should have been able to tell what he looked like… if only his face had been visible. Instead, he wore a mask composed of the same dark metal as his armor, with only two narrow slits that permitted him to see.
And if that weren’t terrifying enough, directly in front of him, the apparition’s gauntleted hands rested on the hilt of an enormous sword that balanced, point down, on the shining marble floor.
Leisa had never seen a sword like that before. It was far too big and too heavy to wield in battle, with a blade at least a hands-width at the base, and long enough it would probably be chest high on her. It was a weapon meant for only one thing—to remind those around it of the implacable, inescapable nature of death.
And it could belong to only one man—the King’s Raven. This was obviously the one she’d been warned about, a combination of faceless warrior and nameless assassin.
King Soren had spoken of his brutality and the impossible tasks he’d undertaken for his king. No one had ever beaten him, no quarry ever escaped. His legend, according to Soren, was the linchpin on which Garimore’s quest for power turned.
While comfortably ensconced in Princess Evaraine’s suites back in Farhall, Leisa had dismissed such stories as mere embellishment. This Raven was, after all, just a man. Perhaps no more than a large man in armor carrying a blunt weapon, wearing a mask to make himself appear more mysterious. Tell enough stories, and anyone could appear threatening.
But