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

Minerva paced back and forth across her sitting room. I leaned against the back of the couch, biting my lip and watching her wrestle with what I had just told her.


"It was good of you to tell me first," she said at last. "Thank you for that."


"It never crossed my mind to reveal it any other way," I said, honestly.


"And Simon knows where she is?" Minerva asked.


I nodded. "He says they write to each other infrequently. He doesn't know anything about Leon's brother, but she left to live in North Tayla without warning and has been there ever since."


I was shaking my head before Minerva finished the question. "Not to me," I said. "And I never let on exactly what it was I needed to know."


"Then it is only a matter of what we do with this information." Minerva furrowed her brow. "We could tell Leon, but he's more likely to try and solve the problem with bloodshed than anything else."


Chapter 44: Sleeping on It