The Axe and the Throne by M. D. Ireman

and began cascading over her bottom lids, but she did not sob or turn away.
    â€œYour name is Lady Amalee. You have no other name. You have no common house name.”
    Cassen embraced the girl, and after a moment the sobbing began. It was a soft and practiced embrace, like that of a mother to her daughter—for that was his role to play in this charade.
    â€œYour name has not changed much, but I would rather you not consider it changed at all. Know that you have always been a lady. You will forever act as a lady should. It is true, you will be a servant to whatever master I can find for you, but you must erase from your mind the notion that you were ever less than what you now are, a lady .” Cassen paused and raised the girl’s chin with his hand. “Remember that, my lady daughter, and I will keep you safe and well cared for.”
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CRELLA
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    Crella felt her pulse throbbing in her temples as her eyes went to the near perfect bosom of the woman at her doorstep. The suckling infant did little to cover the flesh of her single bared breast, a specimen tauntingly more ample than Crella’s own.
    â€œI assure you, you are mistaken.” Crella showed the young woman a wan smile and spoke calmly. “My husband has no need for the services of whores.”
    As she closed the door behind her, Crella was forced to confront the falsity of her words. There may not have been a married man in the kingdom more in need of such services than Alther—but that would be no excuse, had he made use of them. Crella strode with a mask of feigned serenity to her husband’s quarters. She knew she would find no evidence of impropriety there, but still her mind was full of images of harlot’s clothing strewn about.
    The room was in utter disarray. That was, in her opinion at least, for there was a pillow askew on a chair, the drapes lacked a certain amount of symmetry in the way they were drawn, and worst of all, a thin layer of dust had started to gather on the armoire. Hard to detect by the untrained eye perhaps, but Crella could see undeniably that dust was beginning to take.
    With the aid of a purposefully deep breath, Crella felt herself calming. Had her husband truly been responsible for the multitude of pregnant and nursing women that visited their door, he would not have committed the act here. Nonetheless, the predictable sight before her somehow assured her of what she had already concluded: that the whores were sent by another, most likely Lyell. It was not enough that the king had stolen her kingdom, killed her aunt, and forced Crella to marry his son; he sought to demoralize and degrade her without end. But after sixteen years of provocation, Crella was not so easily brought to anger.
    She looked again at the room. Aunt Adella would have had her servants impaled for this disgrace. Perhaps her husband as well, should she have had one. But Crella was not her aunt, nor was Crella the queen.
    Alther was like to have recently sat in the chair to finish lacing his boots, peered out the drapes to check the weather, and not allowed a servant entrance for a dusting in well over a day—and it was just this lack of concern for decorum that infuriated Crella, nearly more than his father’s persecution of her. As if it were not enough that Alther had left to do the one thing she detested most, having begged him to stop on countless occasions, but hunting was in the blood of the men of House Redrivers. It is a vile Northman tradition, the killing of wild animals for sport. Indeed, when he came home from a hunt, he knew by now to keep well and good away from Crella, lest he know her wrath.
    Alther was no Northman in truth; the temperate climate of Rivervale could scarcely be considered northerly. Adeltian nobility, still bitter after having surrendered their kingdom, enjoyed labeling Rivervalians as such as a means of reproach.