All's Fair in Revenge

Chapter 29: A Game of Cards

The Dorsi loved to surround themselves with food. Not to eat, per se, but for the drinking, gossiping, and revelry, to be sure. Like most cultures in the realm, Dorsi festivities centered around meals with tables heaving under the weight of sumptuous roasted bird and spiked beverage. However, in Dorsette, women eating in public was a sport everyone played but no one won, perhaps except for the men. The youngest and oldest of girls placed tiny portions on tiny plates and took tiny nibbles when they thought no one watched. Eat too much and people gawked with disgust. Eat too little and they called you vain. Eat nothing at all and your habits became gossip. Is she pregnant? Is she ill? Is she too good for our food?

In Kelvia, no such obstacles prevented us from indulging when we wanted. There were other expectations upon us, but they extended to all genders, not just mine. For instance, those who cooked were served first. Those who hunted were next. Children came before parents and then everyone else. If a Kelvian judged you for your plate, it was because you were greedy, not hungry.

Yet not a one appeared skeletal, so I suspected the women ate in the comfort of their rooms. Which left me feeling worse. The wealthy had all they could possibly want or need at the ring of a bell or a snap of their fingers, yet they pretended as though they survived on gulps of air and propriety. Meanwhile, their people truly starved, many of which stood alongside them in uniform. For every noble, three or more servants called Moer home. Their bed might have been stiffer. Their sheets not as clean. But they lived there all the same. Died there, too. And yet, no matter how outnumbered the nobles were, they continued to pass laws and enact policies on the very same people who, with very little notice and a whole lot of anger, could change their entire world, if they wanted to. What was to stop the lower-born from slipping a little too much tonic into their drinks? Fear, I supposed. Not much else.

"They're known for chopping our heads off like chickens for less," Brix had informed me when I had the audacity to offer her a single chocolate dipped strawberry during a pre-engagement engagement put forth by the queen. The same one who had supposedly forgotten to invite me to said engagement despite our numerous shared meals and encounters in the halls over the last three days.

A few hours after the incident with Thorne, Liv and I heard a rap at the door to our shared living quarters. Brix, who had just sat down with us after much coercing, shot up and answered it with a haste I'd bet deer envy. At the threshold, a child delivered an embellished note with the queen's seal inviting us to a luncheon. I had little incentive to go with such short notice for who did I have to impress? To which Liv answered, "The entire court, Hana. You have the entire court to impress." And so, we went.

Soon after, Liv and I stood at the brink of one of the many tea rooms within Castle Moer. Stuffed to the ceiling with bright bouquets of non-native flora, I wondered, Impromptu for whom?

I plucked a rose petal from a bouquet at the door and placed it on my tongue at the exact time the footman announced us. Suddenly twenty-four sets of eyes pinned us to the doorframe. Disheveled from the rush, I wished I had been brazened and bold, that I didn't mind what a bunch of foolish Dorsi girls thought of me or my wrinkled attire, except I did. Before a small sea of women in flowing lace and silk, jewels and crowns, curls and ribbons, I felt like an urchin.

Inferior to humans?

"Liv," I said from the corner of my mouth, "maybe we should go? I don't think I want to be here."

The same humans who dehumanize their most vulnerable? The same who have sold one another off for coin? The ones who treat their women, many of whom are amongst you now, like objects to be traded? You may be underdressed, but they are underfed, unsafe, and incredibly uncomfortable.