Minerva batted her eyelashes at me and pushed her shoulders back. "Do I look lonely?" she said.
She looked like someone I wanted to push onto her back right then and there. Like someone I wanted to kiss until we were both dizzy. But there were things you didn't say to a princess, not when your station was so far below hers.
***
On her first day working as a maid, Eve finds the king dead on his throne. His murder kicks off a cascade of intrigue, and as the plots of the nobility come crashing down around her, Eve is torn between hungry princes, the ever-watching eyes of the royal court, and a mad princess who seems to know far more than she lets on. Complicating everything further is the Imperative, a magical curse through which the Andan nobles have bent the world to their whims. If she is to survive, Eve must learn what it means to find strength in the face of overwhelming power.
The Maid and the Monarch is created by EOK Gifford-Smith, an EGlobal Creative Publishing signed author.

The Maid and the Monarch

I stared at Lord Brux, confusion and shock ruling my thoughts. The Court of Whispers? Me--a queen? I was a maid. A maid for the most powerful noble family in the world who had tangled herself hopelessly in their intrigue, but a maid nonetheless.


"Are you not Eve of Whispers?" he asked, "The girl who turned the underworld on its head at the age of 17? No, you must be. The similarity is uncanny. Perhaps you don't remember me? That would make sense, I was of little consequence then. I pleaded a case before you, a new smuggling route through the Irontop Mountains? Yours was the only voice in my favor."


I understood about half of the words coming out of his mouth. My head reeled. This other woman looked like me? A queen of some dark criminal underworld?


Chapter 24: Blood is Spilled