Green-Eyed Vipers

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Eight years before the events of Promise of Blood...

The Baroness Petara loved a good party. She loved the color, the wine, the music; the giddy blur of faces and the gaudy splendor of gilded furniture. The halls of Skyline Palace were lit this evening by hundreds of candelabras and all the nobility of Adro were in attendance, dressed to the nines and preening like haughty birds. At an event like this, Petara loved to assume an air of distracted boredom and watch the flock of vain young men fall over themselves to entertain her.

Petara loved that the rest of the women in the hall knew what she was about and were helpless to stop her, even when their own husbands threw themselves gallantly at her, requesting the honor of a dance or offering her a drink.

Some of the men enjoyed her sporadic flirting. Some of them were there to gain favor – she was a cousin of the king, after all – and even more of them hovered around hoping to spend a night in her arms. She didn’t blame them. Even in her late thirties, Petara was one of the most beautiful women in the room, and a wealthy widow.

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