by Kiera Cass
She kissed my hands, still clutched tightly to hers. “That’s why we need you, Hollis. That’s your part. When you decided you wanted to marry a king, you made it happen. When you changed your mind and wanted a boy from Isolte, you made that happen. When we told you to stay put and you didn’t like it, you made us take you. You tend to work impossible things together. Don’t overlook that,” she said.
I closed the gap between us, embracing her. “How lucky was I to get you?” I said. “Stay here tonight, please. After hearing that and with all that’s on my mind, I don’t think I could manage without you.”
She nodded, and I moved back, making space for us to comfortably rest. I held on to Scarlet’s hand, thinking of everything she’d just told me, of what she’d seen. If she kept remembering things, I wondered what the story would sound like if she told me again in a year. It was hard to imagine a memory like that growing, and it was even harder to imagine that she was the only one carrying it.
I wasn’t sure if she was right, if I tended to make things happen, but if Scarlet thought I could, then I was certainly willing to try.
Eleven
UNCLE REID HAD BEEN VERY serious when he’d said Etan would be my escort for the entirety of the trip. As I went to board the coach, he led me to the one behind it.
“They both only seat four, and you and Etan need to make your peace before we get there,” he instructed.
“But we have!”
He smiled. “Well, you need to make it better.”
I held his arm to climb in and sighed, thinking I could go a lifetime without a trip like the one I was about to face. Not a minute later, Etan lumbered in, shaking the entire carriage and forcing me to grip the windowsill as he settled beside me.
I gawked at him. “You are aware the seat across from me is vacant, and you can have it all to yourself, yes?”
He ticked his head up slightly, not looking at me as he spoke. “Riding backward makes me feel sick. Of course, you are free to move anytime you like.”
I sighed. “Actually, it makes me sick, too.”
He looked over at me, and it was strange to find we had something in common.
“My mother thought I was lying, making myself ill to get out of going back and forth to Keresken. Took her years to figure out I was telling the truth,” I admitted.
He smirked, almost unwillingly. “I liked to sit on my mother’s lap during rides as a child, and she loves facing backward. Likes knowing where she’s been. Seeing as Isoltens are constantly dabbling in new medicines, she tried so many different capsules made for traveling sicknesses, and even some sleeping solutions, but nothing worked. Eventually, I got big enough that I had to sit on my own, and everything was fine after that.”
With those stories shared, we lapsed into silence. It wasn’t necessarily a comfortable silence. I was aware of Etan’s breaths and his movements, aware of when he was watching me, as if he was still trying to piece me together. I thought maybe I’d earned his trust . . . perhaps I was wrong.
The first hour of our trip consisted of exactly four words. The carriage hit a rock and threw me sideways into him. Instinctively, he reached out to grab my arm and keep me from falling. I said, “Thank you” and he said, “You’re welcome.”
But somewhere in the second hour of our trip, Etan cleared his throat.
“What were your parents’ names again?”
“What?”
“Well, you are supposedly part of the family now. Oughtn’t I know? Besides, I’m sure at least one person will need proof you are in fact a lady.”
I shook my head. “My mother was Lady Claudia Cart Brite, and my father was Lord Noor Brite. They were both descendants of long lines in Coroan aristocracy, and had they had sons, the line would be . . . going still.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, bending to look me in the eye.
“Nothing. It’s . . . I only just realized the Brite line is dead. My parents are gone, and I’m an Eastoffe. When I was going to marry Jameson, I didn’t think about it so much. What son could give them such a gift? What son could have made them royalty? But there are no sons, and I am not queen, and it’s ended . . . because of me.”
It was one of the many deaths I couldn’t reconcile myself to. I now understood that the Darkest Knights were going to come for the Eastoffes one day whether I was with them or not. That was not the case for the rest of our company.
My parents, for instance, had been adamantly against my marrying Silas. It seemed to go even deeper than the fact he was both common and foreign, though I could never quite understand their reasoning. Whatever it was, it was enough to keep them from wanting to come to the ceremony, and had I not pleaded with them to, they might have been spared.
I felt such guilt over their deaths, guilt I couldn’t quite express because all my grief got tied up in Silas. But it was there, sharp and deep, and I had no way to make it right.
“How did all your plans to be queen come undone? It looked so painfully tied up when we came to visit,” Etan commented offhandedly.
“It did, didn’t it?” I replied in wonder. The crown had been so close. “It seems a pair of blue eyes knocked me off course.” I smiled, lost in my memories. “Jameson . . . he was an adventure. It was like a game to master or a challenge to be met. But Silas felt like destiny. He felt like the world properly centering itself. I don’t know if I have the right words for it.”
Etan shook his head. “And now that he’s gone? Would you call that destiny still?”
His tone wasn’t teasing or even unkind, but genuinely curious: What did I make of a love story that barely had a first page?
“I would. Maybe our story is bigger than us.”
He considered this. “Maybe it is.”
My voice dropped. “It doesn’t mean I don’t ache for him, though. I keep fearing I’ll forget what his eyes looked like. Or the sound of his laugh. I worry that everything will go away . . . and then I wonder whether something is wrong with me if I force myself to hold on.”
I hadn’t meant to share so much, but it was true. And it hurt. For a minute, there was nothing but the sound of the wheels spinning, spinning, spinning. Just when I thought Etan was letting me in, he decided to ignore my pain.
Finally, he coughed.
“That, madam, is a fear I understand.”
I dared to look over at him, but his face was squarely focused outside the window, so I couldn’t read it.
“Four years ago, I lost Tenen. Last year, Micha. Two weeks before we were forced to visit Coroa, I lost Vincent and Giles.”
“Family?”
“Friends,” he corrected me gently, turning to look at me. “Friends so close I called them family. And now I am the last of us to live . . . I can’t imagine why. I feel like I should have died a long time ago.” He shook his head. “Everyone I care about dies. It’s one of the reasons I still can’t understand Silas. I was almost angry at him when I heard about your wedding.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He shook his head. “It’s not because he sank so low as to marry a Coroan,” he said mockingly, though I could tell that, for once, there was no venom behind the word. “After everything our family has been through, I can’t think of anything more reckless than to drag someone else into it. I couldn’t believe he married anyone. You will never catch me as a groom.”
“Then I will say a prayer of thanks that you are sparing some girl such a fate.”
He chuckled, amused.
“Not everyone you love dies,” I countered softly. “Your parents are still here.”
He gave me a sad smile. “But they’re the last ones left. You’re new to this; you have no idea how many people we’ve lost. And if you think I’m not worried that my parents are walking straight into their coffins today, you are sadly mistaken.”
I swallowed. “Surely he wouldn’t murder us at a wedding.”
Etan shrugged. “I think the king wants us to witness his greatest triumph first, but that do
esn’t make me comfortable. If we can leave immediately after the ceremony, that’s what I’d prefer. Of course, I am at my father’s command.”
“Perhaps I could say I’m under the weather and need to retreat home, and, seeing as you are my escort for everything . . .”
He perked up. “That may be the best idea you’ve had to date.”
“I have plenty of good ideas.” I sat up, crossing my arms.
“Ah, yes. Jilting a king, running off in the middle of the night. You’re brilliant,” he teased.
“You willingly run into border disputes and alienate your family . . . I hardly think you have the room to criticize my judgment.”
“And yet I will.” He smiled, quite pleased with himself.
I shook my head, looking back out the window. Always so sure of himself, always so quick with his words. Etan was positively insufferable.
The Isolten countryside gave way to small houses and then larger ones, and I let out an audible gasp when we hit the road paved with stones and our carriage was bolted up onto the strange and rocky pathway.
“The stones are common here,” Etan said. “The coast is teeming with them, so you’ll see the same ones everywhere, especially here in the capital.”
“Are we already there?” I asked, poking my head out to see.
“Almost. And I’d come back in if I were you. Just because we’re nearing the castle doesn’t mean there aren’t dangerous people out there. In fact, I’d wager we’re getting closer to more.”
“Oh.” I pulled myself into my seat, trying to see what I could without being too obvious about it. There were wide two-story houses set close together with only enough gardening space before them to grow very small patches of flowers. They shortly gave way to crammed-together homes that seemed to go up and up. There were shops on the bottom level, many with glass and lead windows, showing off the wares inside.
A woman beat out a rug; a man pulled an unwilling cow down an alley. Some very dirty children ran around in naked feet, while I saw at least one tidy daughter, gripping her mother’s hand as they moved up the road.
“Do the poor live here?”
“Some. Lots of people live in the city in general. Some prefer the labor of the tanner or the seamstress to a field. But it’s cramped and, as you can see, not very clean. Still, with the various industries popping up, it’s good work.”
“It smells.”
He sighed. “Yes, Miss High and Mighty, it does. But it gets better closer to the castle.”
A few minutes passed, and Etan pointed out his window, motioning for me to come over and see. “Chetwin Palace. Just there.”
I looked out to take in the most foreboding building I’d ever seen. The roofs were pitched at a very steep angle, perhaps to withstand the frequent snows, and they were covered in some dark, shiny material. The stones used to build the palace were the same ones used on the roads: woven through with veins of white, which were somehow unsettling when I compared them to the warmer-toned stones used in Coroa.
It was intimidating, to be sure. And yet, somehow, I couldn’t help but be moved by its strange beauty as we approached. As if reading my mind, Etan spoke as we turned onto the palace drive.
“I used to be completely awestruck when we came up to the palace as children. The soaring towers, the flags whipping in the wind. No wonder people think that kings are gods. Look at their homes.”
He gestured a hand across all of it, as if there wasn’t a word big enough to encompass the grandeur. He was right, of course, and it was both wondrous and, somehow, terrifying.
“You know how you feel about marriage? That’s how I feel about crowns. You couldn’t pay me any sum of money that would draw me close to one again . . . but, all that said, I loved Keresken Castle. I was always finding a new corner that held some beauty I’d never seen. And the way the light falls through the stained glass in the throne room . . . it left me breathless. Still does.”
He smiled. “If you could build your own castle . . .”
“Stained glass everywhere,” I sighed. “Obviously.”
“A huge garden.”
“Yes!” I agreed. “With a maze.”
“A maze?” he asked skeptically.
“They’re quite amusing. And sweet-smelling flowers.”
“A circular throne room.”
I squinted. “Circular?”
“Yes,” he insisted, his voice implying this was an obvious necessity. “If a room is rectangular, there’s a head and a foot. Clear ranking. If it’s round, everyone looks to the center. Everyone is equally welcome.”
I smiled. “Then it must have a circular throne room.”
The carriage came to a stop, and Etan gave me an encouraging but sober look. “Are you ready?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“Very well.” He hopped out quickly, kicking up gravel in his wake.
And I took his hand with what, I was surprised to find, felt like a very genuine smile.
Twelve
ETAN ESCORTED ME TO THE rest of the family as they, too, were exiting their coach. Mother was rubbing her back, and the tension in Scarlet’s shoulders was unmistakable.
“They look like different people,” I whispered to Etan.
“We all are at the castle,” he replied. “You try not to change. They’ll need you.”
I nodded as I came up to Scarlet and embraced her.
“Was it awful?” she asked quietly.
“Well, there was no bloodshed, so I’ll call it a victory.”
She chuckled, and we both turned to Mother. “What’s first?” I asked.
It was Uncle Reid who answered. “We present ourselves to the king.” He turned to offer Aunt Jovana his arm, and right behind them, Mother and Scarlet took one another’s hand.
“Right now?” I asked Etan under my breath.
He adjusted the dagger on his waist. I hadn’t noticed it in the carriage. “Better to get a sense of his mood and intentions straightaway. And it may even his temper when he sees Aunt Whitley and Scarlet alone. Best to do it right away.”
I smoothed down my dress, the motion about as difficult as I’d expected with the draping Isolten sleeves, and swallowed. It was always going to come to this. Eventually, I would have to look that man in the face. I had to be respectful and silent, all the while knowing I was staring into the eyes of the person who had ordered the death of my husband. I found myself drawing in short, staggered breaths as I realized how close I was to my enemy.
“What is it?” Etan asked, his eyes never actually coming down to me but instead surveying the crowd.
“Etan, I don’t think I can do this,” I whispered.
He held his arm out, so calm, used to doing this hundreds of times across the years. “You’re not doing this. We are.”
He offered a tentative smile, and I placed my trembling hand on his arm as we fell in line behind our family. The entryway to Chetwin Palace was marked by large, circular stone posts driven into the ground, making an edge for the stone path. Unlike the wide gravel area to leave horses and carriages at Keresken, there was a semicircle drive, and we were expected to disembark while the drivers moved the coaches to another area. It left room for a wide lawn, and, while it was a pretty piece of land, it was simply empty. I turned away from it, my eyes drifting up the pale stone walls.
Perhaps it was because I’d run from Keresken, from Jameson, but walking into another castle felt like trading bracelets for chains. All I could see were the strings attached to favors, the invisible restraints of expectation. Beneath any dances or feast, there was the weight of the throne. Even those nearby had to shoulder it.
So help me, after this, I would put eons and oceans between me and any crown on the continent. Never again.
I watched as the inevitable happened. People saw Uncle Reid and greeted him warmly, happy to see him. They nodded at Mother and Scarlet, and then seemed to take in that they were several members short of their usual party. And then they saw me on E
tan’s arm. A stranger. There were squints and double takes, though most people were polite enough not to make a comment.
Every once in a while, I’d catch a murmur as we passed, always communicated in hushed tones.
“Who would the Northcotts invite from Coroa?” someone asked.
“Seems a dangerous alliance to make right now,” another commented.
It wasn’t as cruel as it could have been, or maybe even as vicious as I’d expected. Most people seemed more concerned than judgmental, but I still had the distinct feeling I wasn’t welcome.
“I suppose training to be queen made you acquainted with such talk?” Etan posed. He was trying to keep his voice light, and I appreciated the effort.
I grinned. “You should have heard what they said when I fell in the river.”
He looked down at me quickly in shock. “You fell in . . . Now is not the time, but I expect to hear about that later.”
I giggled. “I lost my shoes.”
“Your shoes,” he said, finally understanding Nora’s comment in her letter. He shook his head, smirking. “Unbelievable. Did Silas know about this?”
“Happened before he came, and he mentioned it the first time we spoke. Everyone knew about it.”
Etan properly laughed then. “Perfect.”
I was used to a crowded court, used to the noise and lack of space. It probably should have felt like stepping into a trusty pair of boots, but I couldn’t settle. I tried not to hold on to a single sideways glance as we made our way to the throne. The same gray-white stone was everywhere, and the windows were tall and thin, letting in light at long and tall angles. It was nice enough, but it wasn’t half so beautiful as the Great Room at Keresken. The tapestries were thick but plain, the chandeliers rudimentary compared to Coroa’s. It seemed there was no pride in the work, no pushing to see if it could be better.
I was so lost in the plainness of the hall that I didn’t see King Quinten until we were coming to bow before the throne.