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

Xander crumpled over onto his brother's body. For a single moment, silence reigned. Even the wind had stopped. Then everyone started screaming at once.


"What have you--why--Xander is--" Leon couldn't seem to finish a sentence, but each attempt he started at full volume and emotion.


The crowd was divided. Some nobles, especially those closest to the bodies of the princes, were panicking, trying their hardest to push away and escape. Those furthest from Minerva craned their necks and struggled to get a better view. People shouted, trying to understand what had just happened, what they had witnessed.


Some guards tried, ineffectively, to restore order; their frantic signing meant very little in the face of widescale commotion. Chava darted to me, clinging to the fabric of my dress.


I stared at Minerva, mouth agape. Killing Matthias in my defense had made sense. Assassinating the king had made sense. But opening declaring a coup, and publicly murdering her brother?


Chapter 35: The Consequences