“I’m tired of this. Get her out of here.”
He did not look around as the guards took hold of her and began to drag her away. The silk dress, a gift only two weeks ago, tore as she struggled.
“Richard! My prince! Sweetdove!” Gracia wailed, tears plastering her hair to her face. “You said you loved me. You said I was everything. Sweetdove, I love you. You can’t mean this, you can’t.”
With a snarling sigh, Richard snapped shut his book and turned to her at last, a cold shadow in the lamplight. “I can and I do. I appear to have been mistaken for the past few months. It seems that I was struck by some mere infatuation when I saw you in your filthy tavern. Thankfully it has lifted. I can see you for the odd, stubborn, graceless trollop that you are. Be glad I’m not having you whipped for deluding me. Throw her out.”
In a broken whisper she pleaded, “But you are my first, my only…”
He smirked, “And probably your last.”
She howled as they dragged her to the palace gates, curled up where they dumped her and wept.