“When you glare at people, it doesn’t look good. Don’t do it. Alaric won’t like it.”
Vivienne stood high above me, lecturing me as if my current position was all thanks to her.
I hated her.
And she likely didn’t know that anyone I despised would soon find their life very difficult.
I set down my goblet. A flick of my wrist, and Elara drove a boot between Vivienne’s shoulder blades, sending her sprawling on the rushes.
Alaric had placed Vivienne on a pedestal, and she probably thought no one would dare touch her.
“You’ve hurt me! If Alaric finds out…”
Before she could finish, Elara slapped her across the face.
“You’re not allowed to speak, and who do you think you are to talk back?”
I leaned back in my chair, watching Vivienne’s swollen face, feeling a bit of relief from the suffocating anger in my chest.
I had always been a bold, headstrong person. Even princesses had to step aside when they met me.
My father was a duke, and my brother a general.
Half of the kingdom’s lands were won by our ancestors.
I was the most “disappointing” child in my family, for I was only a mistress, never the queen.
When Alaric arrived, I was busy stitching a pouch, my fingers pricked with needles.
I pouted and presented it to him like a treasure.
Alaric didn’t even glance at it and casually tossed it aside.
He looked down on me from above, while several servants threw Elara to the floor at his feet.
He stepped on her hand, grinding it cruelly, causing her to gasp in pain.
“How dare a lowly maid touch Vivi?”
Alaric hadn’t come to see me he was there to defend Vivienne.
He punished Elara, but that was meant for me.
A coldness spread through my heart as I said, “Move your foot off her hand.”
Alaric touched my furrowed brow, his touch as soft as silk, but his expression was detached and indifferent.
“Seraphine Vivi is under my protection,” he hissed. “Touch her again, and I’ll have your handmaid’s head on a pike. When I was young, I missed my chance with her, but now that I’ve found her again, I will never let her suffer. I will give her everything good. If you want to challenge me, then go ahead.”
He didn’t care whether Vivienne had provoked me.
He simply couldn’t stand to see a single tear fall from her eyes.
Before he left, Alaric glanced at the pouch on the table, then at my fingers, covered in pricks and scars.
He mocked me, “Clumsy hands, stop stitching.”
It used to be that he would say, “Other men wear what their wives make for them. I want the same.”
I had grown up on horseback, skilled with the bow and arrow, but embroidery was never my forte.
Still, Alaric had persisted until I reluctantly agreed.
Now that I had barely finished half of the pouch, he said he didn’t want it anymore.
saw him wearing a new pouch at his waist–one identical to Vivienne’s.
I understood. He still wanted his woman to make things for him, to create for him with her own hands.
He simply didn’t want me anymore.
Chapter 2
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I picked up the pouch from the table, and in a burst of frustration, I jabbed the needle into the embroidered duck’s backside.
Elara tried to comfort me. “Please, Your Majesty, stop. You’ll hurt yourself staying up too late. Your headache will worsen.”
I swallowed my sobs and expressionlessly instructed her, “Apply medicine to your hand. No more words.”
I had never bowed to no one.
The pouch I embroidered–Alaric didn’t want it, but there were others who would.
