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Brook was stillquarters, about not being housed in the gatehouse just outside of the palace with her soldiers It here all the visiting queens’ soldiers were bunking

Soldiers, especially off-duty ones, could be loud and raucous

and lewd, and Brooklynn worried she waswithout her I think she was even more upset that Aron had been allowed to stay with the with her men, while she was stuck here With ed my mind I didn’t want to be alone, and Zafir wasn’t exactly the kind of cos we needed to discuss

Things I couldn’t keep putting off, despite her irasciblein the base ofout We need to find out as responsible for killing your soldier, because whoever he is" My voice drifted away as the rest of ht I couldn’t say thelanced up then, too, ht Until we knoho the traitor is, Queen Charlaina’s not safe No one is"

Brook shat was left in her lared at me across the table Now she looked deterravely "And when I find hiallows I’ll kill hiht away--it was one I hadn’t heard in ages But I knew, even froirl I saw reflected back at one

Not that I’d reen eyes, so unlike the ones I’d been born with Even if the copper-haired beauty hadn’t been next in line for the throne, men would’ve fallen at her feet

Atmy lips

But there was only one man I cared about Only one who le

I turned irls who attendedall around me as they fussed and fastened and pinned and s n tongue, and felt a twinge of satisfaction at their skittishness as they ju like a flock of startled birds When I saw their gazes flitting nervously to one another as if to question uttural word,certain they kneas serious

I waited until the door clicked behind every last one of them, until I was sure I was alone at last, and then I turned back to the ht down to the fresh flooven into , copper tresses I wouldday, the day she’d take a king to rule at her side The day she’d start trying for an heir to take her place upon the throne

To displace me in line

If only she’d been the one to say the words instead of the girl in whose body I now resided If only I’d been able to trick the new queen into taking er sister

Then I wouldn’t be in this predicament