Palace of Lies Read Online Free

I’d always associated with standing on the palace balcony hoping that the palace mathematicians had calculated correctly, and no archer’s arrow really could soar high enough to pierce my heart.
    One, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . . It was hard to keep track with all the whirling and spinning and leaping, but I thought I saw twelve tiara-style crowns gleaming out in the midst of the dancing. So all the other princesses were out there. All of them had already paired off.
    I should have warned them, I thought. Do they all understand that a dance with a princess is never just a dance? Do they know that they need to be on guard for entreaties and double-talk and deviousness even between dance steps? Do they know that their choice of dancepartners is never just a girl’s whim, but a decision the rest of the court will be discussing and dissecting and probably disdaining the rest of their lives?
    My gaze swept over the dance floor again, giving me a quick glimpse of Lydia’s freckled face, beaming; Porfinia’s lovely green eyes, glowing with excitement; and Adoriana’s exquisitely tiny hand, cupped over her mouth as she laughed and laughed and laughed.
    Even if I trusted all my sister-princesses enough to speak to them with complete honesty, how could I destroy all that joy? How could I ruin their innocence, their happiness like, like…
    Like Lord Throckmorton ruined yours? my brain offered.
    â€œDon’t tell me you of all people don’t know how to dance the galliard!” a voice exclaimed behind me.
    I spun around, the broad bell of my skirt twisting a little too vigorously before settling back into place.
    â€œCecilia!” I cried. “Never mind me—why aren’t you dancing at your own ball?”
    I tried to hide the panic I felt at finding out I’d miscounted the number of princesses dancing.
    Hardly a disastrous mistake, I counseled myself. Don’t look out and count again. Focus on Cecilia. It’s all right for the two of you to be seen speaking together.
    â€œWhat, you want me to start the trip to Fridesia with a broken leg?” Cecilia joked. “That’s how all that leaping would end for me.”
    â€œIt’s just the cinq pas —five steps—then a cadence, theleap, and then the posture, the landing,” I said, narrating as the dancers before us swept through each motion. I refrained from adding, It’s easy .
    â€œEasier said than done, I’m sure,” Cecilia said, almost as if she knew what I had been thinking. But Cecilia also flashed me a grin that wasn’t dignified enough to be fake. Or particularly regal. It was too wide, too open, too . . . happy.
    I was strangely tempted to blurt out, Why did you give me your proxy vote? Do you consider me a friend? Will you miss me in Fridesia? Whom should I trust while you’re gone?
    But of course I couldn’t say any of that. Fourteen years of palace life had taught me the importance of being circumspect.
    Like all the other princesses, Cecilia had also gotten fourteen years of royal training. But it was all at night, in secret—the rest of the time Cecilia had to pretend to be an ordinary peasant girl. I couldn’t figure out if Sir Stephen, Cecilia’s royal tutor, wasn’t a particularly effective teacher, or if Cecilia was just too good at pretending to be a peasant.
    If you didn’t count servants, I’d never actually met any peasants, so how would I know?
    Cecilia started giggling.
    â€œCan you imagine if Sir Stephen had tried to teach me court dancing, rather than just showing me pictures?” she asked, gesticulating so wildly that she hit me in the arm. Again—very nonroyal. And yet . . . endearing.
    â€œPerhaps he intended to,” I murmured diplomatically.
    â€œWith his arthritic gait?” Cecilia gave a very un-princess-likesnort. “And perhaps with Nanny Gratine helping?”