♦YOU MUST HAVE READ THE PREQUEL, THE GOLDEN DUCHESS, TO READ THIS BOOK!♦
BEWARE--spoilers in this blurb, for those who have not read previous books! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
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The world is upside down, and those you thought you knew... you no longer...
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Never had Céleste been so unappealed by a steaming plate of breakfast foods. The fluffy eggs, the crunchy bacon, the thick gravy-like sauce dripping from the sausages, nearly overflowing the platter, made her gag.
She groaned as she pushed the porcelain plate away. "No."
"You must eat," said Sébastien, his voice so far, so foreign.
"It is not a crime to fast." She shoved her food farther, holding in the urge to throw it all in the hearth on the other side of the table. "I am not hungry."
His soothing touch brought her to jerk her head sideways to find his darkened eyes narrowing at her. "But you have not eaten since yesterday morning." He was so calm compared to the restlessness in her mind. "Even then, I urged you, and you refused. So you promised me, remember? You said today you would try."
She glared at the sleek strands curtaining his kind face, at his slightly hunched shoulders. He might have acted like nothing affected him, but she wouldn't play along. She wouldn't feign surviving another day at Torrinni court without her best friend.
"I will not."
"Eating will not change what happened yesterday, but—" he seized her fork and dipped it into the eggs, their bright yellow texture jiggling under her nose, "—do these not look scrumptious? Our cooks are the best."
Macarons are scrumptious. I would have eaten those.
Céleste's belly wasn't ready for solid foods. She couldn't swallow Marguerite's disappearance—
"Prudence," she said to herself. "Her name is Prudence."
Sébastien's eyebrows raised as he kept the fork lifted before her mouth. "It is. Now eat."
Reluctantly, and only so Sébastien would stop treating her like a child, she accepted the bite. She chewed as he waited, eyes wide, to make sure she swallowed the food.
Céleste loved him dearly, but since Prudence's departure, he'd watched her like a hawk. He'd had her followed, sent ladies and maids and pages to keep her company, to read her stories, to distract her while he served at Antoine's side.
But nothing had worked. It had only been a day, yet Céleste despised her new life as a future Princess.
It wasn't so much her predicament that bothered her, but that Prudence had rushed head-first into her own without a second thought. Had she been forced? Coaxed? Blackmailed into leaving with her brother, the despicable King Romain?
"Do you think they serve eggs in hell? I mean," she snickered, "in Giroma?"
Sébastien sat up straight, almost spitting out his tea. "Excuse me?"
"Or do they plan to lock her in some high tower and feed her gruel until she marries that foul-mouthed Duke?"
"Céleste." Sébastien set his drink down. "She is not their prisoner." He took her hand and squeezed it. "Of course they serve eggs in Westten."
