The Princess and the Guard (Book 1)

Forty-Eight

Odette couldn't turn her mind off. She had hardly slept last night and this morning she felt no better. She had sent Natasha to collect Juliette and bring her to the infirmary for her next round of injections, but even the prospect of making some genuine advancements to Sagitta was doing little to lighten her mood. She couldn't take her thoughts from her little girl down in the sublevels of the palace. Her little Sapphire—who should have been just as awake and alive as Juliette, except she wasn't.

Juliette, who had taken more of Odette's attention than she should have. Who had taken more of her parents' attention than she should have.

Odette worked her jaw until it ached. She'd never forget the morning her mother was alerted that an abandoned baby had been discovered at the palace kitchens.

With it being less than a month since her own granddaughter had been born and then immediately hospitalized, Odette would have thought her parents would understand. They didn't need another baby. The royal family was fine as it was.

"It's not about us being 'fine,' Odette," her mother, always so flighty and self-centered, said softly after one of the maids had brought the abandoned baby into her mother's bed chamber.

Odette couldn't believe it when she'd been told so she had to drag herself out of her own bed to see for herself.

"No, it's about you still not being happy with just me as your daughter," Odette spat, shooting a glare at the squirming baby her mother was bathing in a basin of warm water. Which was ridiculous given that she looked clean and healthy. It was evident she had been fed and taken care of.

Pain had flickered across her mother's face, an image Odette had seared into her brain to this day, but she didn't care. Her mother was cold and heartless to even think of letting a street orphan into the palace and parading her around as a princess.

"My Sapphire is lying downstairs with tubes stuck in her! She's struggling to stay alive and you're wanting to adopt another baby?! This one is not a newborn, she's at least six months old. They'll be the same age! You think I can't see what you're doing? You're trying to make me forget my baby!"

"No one is trying to make you forget Sapphire," her mother murmured softly, picking the baby up and wrapping her in a blanket. She bundled her so perfectly, and then set her gently down in a cradle. She walked around toward Odette. "We can have two new babies. They don't have to compete with each other."

Odette yanked away from her mother. "And they won't! Sapphire is a royal born princess, while that thing is nothing and a no one!"

"Odette, she's someone's daughter. Maybe a young girl who was in your position, only because she wasn't born into the privilege of having a palace, couldn't keep her baby and had to give her away."

"People who can't afford to make mistakes should be more careful." Odette raked her fingers through her hair, her anger growing. She wished her mother would leave, just for a minute, so she could hurl the baby out the window. End her life so there wasn't an issue to be had. It would be quick and painless—seas, wasn't completely heartless—so then her mother's attention would be given solely to Sapphire.

"Perhaps."

Odette scoffed.

"Why don't we go down and sit with Sapphire for a while? Just the two of us? I have a new blanket, and a headband I bought for her." Her mother opened one of the dresser drawers and pulled out a few neatly folded baby garments.

Odette grabbed them and hurled them into the fire. "Oh you'd part with your street spawn long enough to visit your granddaughter?"

Her mother's face changed, turning from sympathetic to disappointed. Disappointed! As if Odette was in the wrong, not the other way around.

"You're just as bad as he is," Odette hissed.

"Odette—"

"It's not enough that I have to endure being abandoned—" She caught herself. She never told her mother of her secret love, or how quickly things had escalated. How quickly she'd been cast aside the moment she'd found to be with child.

The look of sympathy on her mother's face only angered Odette further.

She banned both her parents from setting foot in Sapphire's room, ordering any palace staff to refuse entry to them. Which, she realized now looking back on it, she didn't really have the authority to do. But they listened. Her parents never saw Sapphire.

Never got to hold her or play with her or see her run.

Now, just sixteen years later, Juliette was still here. Still taking attention away from where it should have been, still mocking Odette with her very existence.

It was a pain no one should have to bear, yet Odette bore it. And she bore it well. She would take her suffering and turn it around for the good of the kingdom. She would make use of Juliette.

"Your Majesty?"

Odette jumped, turning as Natasha walked in. She looked uncomfortable.

"Her Highness is being prepped and is almost ready for the first trial."

Odette straightened. Stood up from her vanity. "Good. I want to watch."

Natasha nodded once, waiting until Odette had walked through the door before following after herself.

"How is she doing?" Odette asked. She hoped Juliette was just as miserable as she always was.

"She's doing fine."

Odette scoffed. "No thanks to that guard, I'm sure."

Natasha smiled sympathetically but she said nothing.

The entire walk to the infirmary, Odette thought of Sapphire, hoping she was close to opening her eyes for the first time in her life.