Read Wisdom's Kiss for Free Online Page B

populace, in a rare display of subversion, refused to comply, and after several years of escalating penalties and increasingly brazen acts of sabotage, Edwig relented. Today Phraugheloch refers only to the ducal palace, a neoclassical structure of singular dimension and finish even by the criteria of the city in which it stands.
A Missive from Tips
    THE BOOTED MAESTRO
Dear Trudy,
We are
coming home
returning to the Empire of Lax! Finally! The sultans wedding is over at last—I didnt know it took so many weeks + so many festivities just to get married—I am so tired! It will be nice to be back where there are clouds + rain + actual cold. I can barely remember what cold feels like.
I know you keep asking when you will see me + believe me I want to see you
just as
very much but Felis doesnt think its wise for me to return to Bacio given what Hans keeps
threatening
saying. Even though
he
Hans signed a contract with Felis, if I returned he could still make me stay + work at the mill. Felis gets so
furious
angry that Id be
wasted
like that—I dont know if Id be wasted but I surely wouldnt enjoy
working
milling the way I enjoy this. Felis got us new uniforms—I wish I could show you. I
know
think you would like them but I can just imagine what Hans would say!
I think about you every day + I hope you like these earrings they cost me
two months wages
a bit of money but dont worry, I dont have anyone to spend on but you. I have no one I
want
to spend on but you. I bet theyll be so
beuti
beautiful with your hair! Red + green
harmen
harmonize because theyre opposites—thats what Felis says + while I dont understand how colors can be opposites or how harmony works even in music let alone hair, I think hes right about this one. I wish I could see you wearing them. I will someday, I promise.
You are I will always
Affectionately—
—Tips
A Life Unforeseen
T HE S TORY OF F ORTITUDE OF B ACIO , C OMMONLY K NOWN AS T RUDY , AS T OLD TO H ER D AUGHTER
Privately Printed and Circulated

    TRUDY COULD HARDLY shut her eyes that night, she was so exhausted and worried and—for goodness' sake, they had a queen at the Duke's Arms! A
queen!
Sleeping in the second-best room!
    Which, Trudy could not help but note with a satisfied nod, was precisely how a queen should act, giving the best room to her suffering ladies-in-waiting. Truly, as Trudy pondered it, this old woman did everything as a queen should. She didn't even call herself queen! Her traveling companions—those fit enough to speak, anyway—called her Nonna Ben, an insolence that had stunned Trudy when first she heard it. To think that the queen of a country—or in this case the queen mother—enjoyed the same endearment as Bacio grannies, with that commonplace "Ben" tacked on the end ... remarkable. The queen had scurried for hours about the inn just like a grannie too, verifying that every member of her entourage was comfortable. Trudy hoped she herself would always be as solicitous, particularly (should such an anomaly ever come to pass) to those beneath her.
    Princess Wisdom, on the other hand, was ... different. The featherbrained farm girls had described her as graceful and lovely and the best princess they'd ever met—which wasn't saying much given their life experience. They found it astonishing that a young woman of royal blood would enjoy currying manes and polishing harnesses. Hurrying across the courtyard, Trudy at last caught a glimpse of this celebrity laughing with the grooms as though they'd been friends all their lives. Trudy's reaction, however, wasn't amusement or awe or even dismay: it was horror. Misery flooded her so violently that she clawed at her throat for breath. It was her own misery that she saw, looking at the princess. Her own future unhappiness.
    She fled the stable yard at once. However charming the princess might appear to others, Trudy wanted nothing to do with her.
    So that night, while preparing the second-best room for sleep, Trudy deflected the