Maud refused to cry anymore. She was finished with crying. Now, she was angry. As she rolled the gold pelt over the pile of dresses with thrashes and wrangles, she was gnashing her teeth with rage. If she could, she would have ripped them apart first. Instead, she let them be wrinkled and crumpled together within that thick pelt so she could carry them in it like a sack.

  “What are you doing?” Aurie asked, hovering from somewhere on the other side of the room, near the front door. “Do you have any idea how valuable those are?”

  “Good,” Maud tore the hem from the dress she wore at his coronation with a hard yank. “He’ll be able to get his money’s worth out of it when he sends them BACK!” She tied the ends of the pelt together and hefted it onto her shoulder.

  “Stop,” Aurie stepped in front of her. “You’re overreacting. Draka is not the one to blame for this.”

  “Not the one to blame?” Maud dropped the sack to the floor. She growled, stepping into her mother’s face, “Not to blame? He made Karl choose between being a destitute criminal with me or being an honorable knight! Why? Because he showed interest in me? Because we kissed? Because his precious daughter is being swept off her feet by someone who should be considered worthy!”

  “You’re worth far more than Karl will ever be,” Aurie put her hands on her hips.

  “I get to decide who is worthy, not you,” Maud brought her nose to Aurie’s, “And not Draka. He’s not my father. And you had no right to encourage him to ask. You think I didn’t know? You want to cut Pa out even faster than he does, now that you’re one of them.”

  “That’s not true and you know it,” Aurie stood her ground. “I love your father and no one can take his place. I thought you would want to be officially a princess and not just seen as one. And with how close you and Draka are, it made sense to me and him for us to at least ask. If we had known…”

  Maud shook her head as she retrieved the pelt sack and lifted it back onto her shoulder, “This isn’t even about that. I gave my answer already. Now, I have another one. I. Don’t. Want. Anything from him. He can take his little protection, wardship, whatever, and shove it up his righteous stubborn ass!”

  Aurie stepped in her path for the door, “You will respect our King. And without his protection, we’d be homeless. Remember? Or have you forgotten what he’s done for us? Just because he brought what we both saw in Karl out where you could finally see it, doesn’t mean you get to take it out on us.”

  “Us?” Maud narrowed her eyes at her. “Us? What us? You’re nothing to him but the one who makes sure his pots are clean and his governing is done for him. Really, you wouldn’t be part of this if you weren’t my mother. In fact,” Maud was gritting her teeth, stepping into her mother with furious intent, “You mean nothing to him without me. There was never us. It was always for me. And now, I know it was really just for him. Now, get out of my way, Paladin Regent, so I can return what belongs to the King.”

  Aurie looked hurt far worse than she meant or expected. As she stepped aside with those pale eyes glowing in the hearth light, Maud saw her gaping mouth over a stiffening jaw and winced.

  “Go,” Aurie pointed, her gaping hidden by a scowl. “We’ll talk when you return. He deserves an explanation and a chance to explain before you—destroy him too. I didn’t deserve that.”

  Maud jerked the sack to a different part of her shoulder, “Ma, I didn’t deserve…”

  “Just go,” Aurie was barely able to say above a whisper, turning away from her.

  Maud went out the door and balanced the sack over Rosemary’s back. As she led her up the hill to Draka’s house, she found her anger nearly siphoned away by the haunted look on her mother’s face before she left. The pain written across it made her heart ache for the words she had spouted out in her fury. Lies. All of it. And she knew it. But she wanted to make her hurt as much as she did. They conspired against her, conspired against Karl and took him from her. All this time, she had been pushed and pushed to choose a husband and when she finally does, they snatched him away. And what’s worse is that the newcomer, Adrian, humiliated him in her name on top of it.

  As she reached Draka’s house, she led Rosemary as close to the porch as she could and flipped the pelt onto it with a loud thump. The door flew open. Adrian stared down at her with wide eyes from the opening.

  “I want to talk to Draka alone,” Maud stomped up the steps but stopped an arm’s reach from him. “So, plow off somewhere, ward.”

  “Truffles or chocolates?” Adrian pointed at her questioningly.

  Maud’s eyes bulged with fury.

  “Chocolates, then,” Adrian hopped past her and off the porch. He walked a quickened pace down the road toward the ferry.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Maud gritted her teeth and balled a fist after him. Had he not moved as fast he did, she’d have given him a good thumping.

  When she turned around, Draka was standing at the doorway, looking her over. Then his eyes hovered on the pelt-sack. Maud thinned her lips as she grabbed it and teetered it into a toss that landed in his gut.

  Draka caught the sack with a backwards stumble as Maud followed through the doorway, roaring, “There’s your precious pelt and all the dresses you’ve given me.”

  Draka flopped down on the floor as the pelt broke from the tie and fell open. Wrinkled dresses fell over his lap. He stared down at them, hanging his head.

  “Consider this my apt refusal of your protection. I no longer want to be your ward, your princess, your—whatever—in any sense,” Maud shook her head so hard as she threw her hands outward that the braids in her dark hair came undone. “I don’t want to be your daughter, your friend, nothing. I’m done. From here on out, you are nothing but my King and I, your subject.”

  Draka looked up to her, his face drooping. Her tongue stuck to the back of her throat at the sight. She thought he might fight back, or defend himself, something. Instead, he looked—defeated. Broken. His eyes weren’t filled with tears. His lips didn’t tremble. His nose and cheeks weren’t red. Instead, his skin had gone pale. She could see the lines at the edges of his eyes, the bags beneath them, the folds where his jowls were beginning to take form.

  He had expected this.

  “Why did you do it?” Maud growled down at him. “Why?”

  His eyes drifted from her to the dresses in his lap that he held up as if they were a wad of stickiness he couldn’t pull his hands from. She stomped to the table and grabbed a fistful of parchment and the quill. She dropped them onto his lap, staining the coronation dress that was on top.

  “WRITE IT!”

  He only stared. Stared at the quill staining the dress. Stared at the crumpled parchment beside it. Stared at the dress. He shook his head.

  Maud stomped her foot. “Damn you, Draka,” she said through gritted teeth, fighting to keep from spilling tears in front of him. “This is your only chance to explain yourself. You understand. I want nothing from you—EVER—after this. But you will explain why you took him from me.”

  Draka pointed to the table but never looked up from the dresses in his lap, draped over his arms. Maud shook, as if he had never taken those trembles from her, as if she still couldn’t hold a bowl without spilling stew, her hands rattled her fingers across the table as they fished through the parchments. It didn’t take long before she found what he had written to Karl.

  “Even I know,” Maud ran her fingernails across the table, refusing to turn to face him, “that a dishonorable discharge is as bad as branding him a criminal. He’d never be able to purchase even a mule. No one would hire him as a laborer! You made him choose between that with me or his knighthood! You bastard!”

  She turned and threw the papers over where Draka had been on the floor, but they landed at his feet in flutters.

  He was standing on the dresses, on the pelt. His face was grim. He slapped the crumpled parchment on the table with a reach around her that made her arch backwards over the table. She turned her head to read it.

  ‘You or his career. That was the choice. He never asked about anything else. He chose himself rather than you.’

  “He didn’t have to. With that kind of discharge, we’d be destitute.” Maud hissed.

  Draka slammed his fist on the table, moving away from her. He picked up the quill and frantically wrote on another parchment before spinning it across the table to her.

  ‘Whether my daughter or not, you will never be destitute. The Kelger farm is yours on your wedding day, along with your personal treasury of five platinum, on top of the dowry of a hundred gold for your husband. My oath is to Balor, not you or your mother.’

  Maud’s eyes widened. Another parchment was tossed over her hands. ‘And no one knows of the treasury because he should love you for you and not your connection to me or status. Karl didn’t. Not you, nor anyone else may remove my protection. It’s a death oath. But taking my name was for you to be presented to those whose wealth and status would be greater or equal to yours, alleviating that complication. Read the back, Maudeline Clevlan. You shall choose. But I will always make certain you know what and whom you’re choosing.’

  Maud turned the parchment over and saw, with flooded eyes, where he had written, ‘Maud is free to decide for herself, if you so desire to ask for her hand against our wishes. But know that her future will always be held higher than yours.’

  She was frozen, staring at those words as Draka scooped up the pelt and dresses into his arms in a heap. He made the pelt back into a sack with one hand and spun it with the other to tie the end into a knot. Then he opened the door and tossed it onto the porch. When he came back in front of her, he pointed at the tied pelt-sack and pointed to her, then waved dismissively to the door.

  They’re yours, take them and go, she understood that to mean.

  Maud took a step back from him at first, her hands shakily folding together over her churning stomach. She started to step towards him. She wanted to apologize, or maybe, if she could just cry in his arms the way she had before, when she was truly frightened and truly felt alone, but Draka jerked back from her the way a skittish horse would. Her heart felt like he had just driven a knife through it.

  He pointed once more. She was frozen. Words were stuck in her throat. She didn’t know what to do or say in that moment. All she wanted was to take back all of it.

  With a long sigh, he reached beside him and picked up the quill. On a parchment, he wrote and held it up for her to see, in big letters, ‘Please leave, Miss Clevlan.’

  “Yes, your Majesty.”