**THE PRINCESS SERIES is part of the GOLDEN UNIVERSE, and considered a sequel to THE GOLDEN QUEEN/A BRAZEN LOVE**
♦YOU MUST HAVE READ THE GOLDEN UNIVERSE NOVELS AND THE BRAZEN NOVELS TO READ THIS SERIES! AS WELL AS BOOK ONE, PRINCESS OF CANDOR, AND...
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♪ I haven't been sleepin' Just stare at the fan all night ♪ {Dove Cameron—Bloodshot}
Cordelia was so numb on the way back to her room that she didn't feel the soldier's grasp on her arm as she accidentally swerved down the wrong corridor. Her hearing was so muffled she didn't hear him scold her for attempting to escape—she hadn't attempted anything, but she'd been in a daze and had no clue where she was or where she was going. Her thoughts were so jumbled that when he said goodnight to her, she hadn't been able to reply. No words came through her mouth; nothing but a pronounced sigh.
She sighed again as she fell onto the bed and covered her face. The tears were there, rushing to her lash-line, threatening to gush down her cheeks; but she couldn't let them out. Crying would solidify the situation, would render every word uttered by Sir Richel real. Crying would anchor the truth in place, and Cordelia wasn't ready to admit it.
Her, marrying Sir Barnabé Richel, Marquess of Valeville? Under other circumstances, the match would make sense. He was a highly placed noble, overseeing an important city and region on the Totresian border, with powerful allies and many riches to behold. Princesses were expected to marry beneath their station, in Totresia, unless they somehow secured a match with a foreign royal. So a Marquess would have been a decent, if not very smart, match.
But not this Marquess, surely? This man who was decades older than Cordelia, with two adult children of the same age as her? This man who, though not wholly unpleasant to the eye, was her brother's father-in-law, a former friend of her own father, who'd seen her as an infant? And not to forget that he was a traitor; a man who lived to trick Antoine into giving up his wife, his throne, or both, and to rally to the causes King Edouard had supported—those that defied Giroma and all it stood for.
Sir Richel was of the conservative, ancient bloodlines that refused to acknowledge Giroma at all, considering them as rebellious farmers and low-born bastards who'd detached from the main immigrants coming from England, to settle on a new, unclaimed land between France and Switzerland. Giromians were frauds, according to him, and all of them needed to burn.
Not all Totresians felt this way, and least of all the Kings. Cordelia wasn't sure about her grandfather, or great-grandfather, but she knew Edouard had, occasionally, shared his thoughts on Giroma. But he'd never called them rebels, and he'd never hoped to put them to the torch, contrary to Sir Richel's desires. He'd loathed them, that much was true. But he'd also wanted to broker a peace, a neutrality between the two, and had failed and later employed dire tactics to get his way.
Well, he hadn't gotten his way, and now, his former allies rallied to destroy his legacy, to ruin his sons, to erase the efforts he'd made, no matter how dark and ill-viewed. Sir Richel was ready to break Edouard's bloodline; the bloodline of a man he'd admired, he'd worked hard for. No matter the price. Sir Richel wanted Antoine's head on a pike, regardless of his affiliations with Edouard.
