The Princess's Servant

103. Torture

Holden had not expected to be dragged from the lounge room only to be stuffed into a closet, but that's what seemed to have happened. Granted, it wasn't a closet per se (it was a little room to the side of the throne room entrance where the two of them could wait while guests streamed in) but it wasn't any larger than one. The hem of Sybil's skirt brushed his pant legs causing a shiver to go up his spine. They hadn't been this close together since... Well, since the picnic. And Holden didn't want to think about that.

Sybil, of course, was still acting like the good little Wardian wife that she wasn't. It worried him, to think about what embarrassing stunts she might pull in front of all these guests. Just when he thought there couldn't be any more arrivals, he heard another set of footsteps; another muffled conversation.

It was futile, he knew, to talk to Sybil about any of this. Still, he couldn't help himself. And any conversation would be better than being left alone with his thoughts. "We're about to go in front of an audience of hundreds," he told her.

"So it seems," she replied.

"Do you really want to act like that in front of all these people?"

Sybil turned her head a little away from him. "If my husband seeks to modify my behavior, he need only ask."

"I don't 'seek' to 'modify' anything. I just want you to cut it out."

"Oh? Does the Wardian prince m not desire a demure Wardian wife?"

"There's nothing 'demure' about you. You and I both know this is just another act to make me feel bad. Not unlike a certain other act designed to fuck with me?"

It was dark, in that closet of a room, but he could have sworn he saw her cheeks redden. "As... As I told my husband before, that wasn't an act—"

"Unbelievable. Even when you pretend to be someone who doesn't lie, you lie."

Holden anticipated a quippy comeback, but Sybil was only silent for a long moment. When he was sure she wouldn't reply, she spoke only to say, "Right. Of course, my husband."

A writhing in his stomach. He knew what she was doing. It was all a trick, of course. Cara had been a trap. This 'good wife' was a trap. So how? How could she make him doubt himself? How — even now — could she make him feel like maybe... Maybe there was truth to any of it?

"That's her trick." Holden's own words came back to him in the darkness of that room. "She shows you what she wants to see and then snatches it away from you."

He had to remember that. Had to. Even when he wanted nothing more than to forget.

Trumpets sounded. Their cue. A servant dressed in black and white opened the little side-room door and Holden made his way down the aisle. Sybil, once again, trailed behind him.

Hundreds of faces. All eyes on them. Two thrones at the end of the aisle, situated at the base of the emperor's throne, where Thomas sat. Holden had never been particularly nervous during affairs of state. He was nervous now.

But it wasn't just nerves, he marked. It was anger. Even now, on supposedly their last day together, she was getting under his skin; insisting to the end that Cara hadn't been the grand scheme that he knew it had been. It was enough to make his blood boil. This is what he couldn't stand about Sybil. She always knew exactly how to hurt him.

"How do you sleep at night?" Holden hadn't realized he'd said the words aloud until he'd said them.

He wasn't even sure Sybil had heard him. They took their seats on the smaller thrones as the officiator began his magniloquent speech.