Exhaustion accompanied Kit to the morning meal and promised to stay with her for the rest of the day. By the time she’d finally fallen asleep, the sun was coming up, the first rays of light spilling in beneath and between her curtains, and it seemed like only moments later Avinia was urging her to climb from under her blankets and start the day.
Any idea of protesting had morphed into something else when Kit remembered what she had witnessed the night before. A rush of panic and repugnance overtook her, and Kit had sprung from her bed so rapidly, Avinia had asked if she was well.
“No, I’m not,” Kit had replied, though she wasn’t sure how much she should disclose. Somehow, she’d managed to put off her cousins’ questions as they prepared her, but now, sitting next to the queen, every ounce of flesh on Kit’s entire body seemed to be crawling with tiny insects, and all she wanted to do was throw her plate at her mother and scream in her face.
