The Dragon King's Rejected Mate

Seraphine

They dressed me for the banquet the way you dress a lamb for s*******r: with care, and no intention of asking its opinion.

The gown was peacock blue, some lady's cast-off, taken in at the seams with hasty stitches that pulled every time I breathed. The shoes pinched my toes into submission. My hair — nineteen years a kitchen braid — got twisted into a knot at my nape with pins that bit my scalp, and a maid dusted powder across my nose until I sneezed.

Pippa slipped in while they went to fetch rouge. She stopped in the doorway and pressed her knuckles to her mouth.

"Don't laugh," I said.

"I'm not laughing." Her eyes were bright. "You look like a lady, Wren."

"I look like a pie in a borrowed tin."

She squeezed my hand, quick and hard. "Did you drink your tea this morning?"

"Every morning. Thirteen years. I'm not stopping now." The ash-tea had tasted worse than usual today — or maybe that was just my mood, bitter at the back of my throat.

"Eat before the toasts start," Pippa whispered. "And if anyone's cruel — be crueler. Nicely."

The great hall smelled of beeswax and roast boar and a hundred perfumes at war with each other. Three long tables ran its length. At the high table: the Dowager Queen in silver, the King in black — and Lady Seraphine Vayne in gold, at his right hand.

The seat at his left stood empty. Mine, by every law of the Choosing. Nobody mentioned it. Nobody had to.

I got a stool at the far end of the second table, between a widowed baroness who smelled of mothballs and a young lord who couldn't take his eyes off Seraphine. Six years I'd eaten standing up in a kitchen; a stool was luxury. I told myself that firmly, and almost believed it.

A platter went past that I'd basted myself a week ago — boar with honey and thyme. Now I ate it with a borrowed fork, off a borrowed plate, in a borrowed dress. The thyme was mine, though. Nobody could take that away.

The whispers started before the soup was cleared.

"—the Unscented girl—"

"—his Majesty was hasty, they say—"

"—a kitchen maid, can you imagine—"

A lady with a painted mole leaned across two seats and asked, loudly, what dishes I'd personally served at the King's table. "You must know his tastes so well."

"His Majesty favors his meat rare," I said. "And his patience rarer."

The baroness choked on her wine. The painted lady's smile thinned to a line, and she turned away.

Small victory. It didn't warm me. At the high table, Kael laughed at something Seraphine murmured in his ear — a real laugh, low and unguarded, the kind I'd never heard from him — and something low in my chest pulled taut, then went slack and aching. The bond, reminding me it existed. Reminding me he could laugh like that. Just never at me. Never where anyone could see.

The Choosing was hasty. His words to the Council. I'd repeated them until they lost meaning. They hadn't lost their sting.

Then the Dowager rose, silver and smiling with a sharpness that could cut, and lifted her cup "to the King's wisdom in all his choices." The hall drank. Half the courtiers coughed into their wine.

Then Seraphine stood.

She was beautiful the way a drawn bow is beautiful — all tension and intent. She smiled at me down the length of the hall, and every head turned to follow her gaze.

"Our little guest of honor," she said sweetly. "It would be a shame for her to feel out of place among us. So I brought her a gift — something to remind her of home."

A servant stepped forward with a folded bundle. Seraphine shook it out with a flourish.

A kitchen apron. Plain linen. Embroidered on the bib in careful stitches: a tiny wren.

The hall erupted. Lords barked laughter. Ladies hid smiles behind their fans. At the high table, the Dowager's mouth curved, feline and pleased. The King didn't laugh. He didn't look at me, either. He studied his wine like it owed him money.

Heat climbed my neck. Under the table, my nails bit my palms — and then, deliberately, I flattened my hands.

Pippa, pouring wine two tables over, caught my eye. Crueler. Nicely.

I stood.

The laughter thinned as I walked the hall's length — shoes pinching, stitches pulling — and took the apron from the servant's hands. I tied it over the peacock gown with neat, practiced knots. Kitchen knots. The kind that hold through a dinner rush.

"Thank you, my lady," I said, and my voice carried farther than I'd expected. "In the kitchens we have a saying."

Seraphine's smile stayed fixed. "Oh?"

"The loudest pot is always the emptiest."

Silence — one heartbeat, two. Then someone snorted. Then the hall laughed again, but differently now, and half the lords weren't bothering to hide their grins.

Seraphine's smile froze at the edges.

I smoothed the apron over borrowed silk. "I'll wear it at the next Choosing," I said. "So the next frightened girl knows — even a cook can be claimed."

That one landed. A cheer went up from the lower tables — servants, lesser gentry — and the mothball baroness clapped like she meant it.

And the King looked at me.

He'd ignored me all evening: through the soup, through the toasts, through his own mother's barbed courtesy. Now his gold eyes were on me, and the cold distance in them had cracked. Surprise first. Then something slower, something that lit them from within — something that looked, impossibly, like respect.

The Dowager caught it. Her cup came down a fraction too hard, wine sloshing over silver fingers.

Kael raised his own cup then — and turned, with exquisite deliberation, to Seraphine's father. "To House Vayne," he said coolly. "Loyal as ever."

The slight was surgical, and every spine in the hall straightened. My wine turned to vinegar on my tongue, and I sat down to applause that suddenly sounded very far away.

Dain, at the far end of the high table, lifted his cup a fraction in my direction. The smallest salute. I held onto it.

The baroness leaned in, mothballs and all, and patted my hand under the table. "Eat, child," she murmured. "The pretty ones always aim first at what frightens them."

The corridor afterward was a crush of silk and perfume. Seraphine found me in it with a hawk's precision.

Up close, her perfume was too sweet. Fruit left in the sun.

"A clever tongue," she murmured, smiling for anyone watching. Her fingers brushed my apron string — almost fond. "Pity about everything else." She leaned in, gold skirts whispering against peacock blue. "Do be careful walking back to your little west wing tonight, little cook. The palace is so very dark."

Her smile never moved. Her voice dropped one notch.

"And accidents do happen."

She swept past, silk hissing over marble. Across the corridor, half-hidden by a pillar, a man in servant's livery studied me a moment too long — thin face, still hands. Then he turned and melted into the shadows of the servants' passage.

Gooseflesh rose under the borrowed gown. The shoes on my feet were borrowed, like everything else I wore — and suddenly I wanted my kitchen, my tea, my own worn boots, with a fierceness that scared me.

I kept the apron on over the silk all the way back to the west wing, and let the corridors stare.