*Fiona*
The women’s parlor is smaller than the banquet hall back home. It’s warm, perfumed with pine oil. Heavy tapestries hang on the walls. They look ancient, like they have been there for ages and never retouched by another weaver. The colors are dulled, but I can make out the depictions of hunts and battles. They might have once looked grand.
I walk across the room with Liora and sweep my gaze across the women inside. None of them looks over or greets us. They chatter over each other in high, false voices, laughing at things that aren’t funny, and one of them looks like she’s presiding over the whole spectacle.
The woman with pale blonde hair and blue eyes like Lucian glances up at me and then at Liora with something mean gleaming in her eyes. When she turns that gaze on me, I
