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 glanced over. She was standing before her mirror, trying to adjust the two enormous gemstone earrings hanging on either side of her face. Her dress today was a stormy grey with embroidered swirls of black. The line of her collar was deliberately uneven, shifting from a strap over one shoulder to a tantalizingly low-hanging cut on the other. Even distracted as she was, Minerva looked like a queen--determined and impressive.


"You're definitely sending the right message," I told her.


"That felt like a tactful dodge of my question," Minerva frowned and squinted distrustfully at my reflection. 


I was behind her, lounging on a couch with my feet up. Over the last few days, I had taken an immense liking to the style Claire had suggested, and the castle tailors had been happy to run with my designs. Now everything fit: the trousers to show off the length of my legs, the shorter corset to show off everything else.


Chapter 42: Family Matters