The Golden Princess (#4 in the GOLDEN series) ✔

•T W E N T Y - F I V E•

Prudence had expected some grogginess the next day, but she'd also hoped for her illness to subside.

It didn't. She woke with bile in her mouth and bitter thoughts swirling in her mind. The sickness was strong, clutching to her like a leech, heating her skin to the point of boiling.

She threw her covers off, but before she could try to set a foot to the ground, a horde of ladies—sans Sarah—appeared at the end of her bed. A chorus of "are you unwell, still?" and "let us aid you, Highness!" filled the otherwise silent room.

Their shrill voices caused Prudence's nostrils to wrinkle in displeasure. Annoyed—and further sickened by their breakfast breaths and their overwhelming desires to please her—she assured them she was fine and dismissed them.

But as she took a big puff of oxygen and got up, she regretted sending them away, because she couldn't keep upright. Dizziness enveloped her senses, and she was desperate for air.

She somehow hobbled to the window and opened it, basking in the instant wave of freshness. "Much better."

With difficulty, she crawled back to her sweat drenched sheets and settled onto her side. Her insides jiggled with the remnants of her mother's tea and soup, and she clenched her teeth, praying none of it would swarm up her throat. She winced, flipping to her back with her legs bent and her hands atop her stomach. There, she found enough comfort to fall into a nightmarish sleep loaded with images of Cornelius cackling, Romain yelling, and Antoine running after her, begging for forgiveness.

***

She woke again at noon, and her gut groaned for nourishment. Yet when she craned her neck to her nightstand and discovered a tray of soup and biscuits, she nearly hurled. The smell—more like a stench, slithering into her nose without warning—intensified her aches, so she dug herself deeper into her covers. Whoever had delivered the meal had also closed the window, and she moaned, wishing they hadn't.

She hesitated to get up and summon someone to take the tray away, but she worried her ladies would see right through her lies of being fine. They'd then spread rumors—Pauline warned how gossip catapulted in Giroma, and how quickly it blew out of proportion. The nobles would discuss her as she lay in bed, sick, trying and failing to recover from whatever had poisoned her—

With a gasp, she lurched up into a seated position. "Poison?" The word bubbled like acid in her mouth. She put her hand over her belly, and her nightgown was stuck to her sticky, sweat-ridden skin. "Could someone have..."

She wracked her brain; who would want her bedridden, if not dead?

Cornelius!

Had Cornelius ever had access to her food, her drink? He'd never eaten in her presence, but who was to say he didn't have means to sneak into the kitchens, pour some illicit substance into her coffee, flake peppers onto her meat, drizzle a spicy sauce onto her potatoes? The list was endless.