Chapter 11: A Dram Most Dangerous

The butterflies threatened to creep up her throat as Saffron stared at herself in the mirror. She barely recognized the woman staring back at her. Her face had been scrubbed clean, rouge rubbed into her cheeks and lips and her eyes lined with a thin stripe of black soot. She liked the look but found it unsettling.

Even though it was not yet her wedding day she felt as if it were. The castle had been decorated a bit more festively than usual and the kitchen was churning out platters of food that could feed their entire army twice over.

Mary was plaiting and twisting Saffron’s long blonde locks into a complicated knot atop her head. All of the pulling was giving her a headache. She had already decided on the day of the actual wedding, she would be wearing her hair down. She did not fancy having to balance a large pile of hair, a veil, and a tiara.