After what felt like days, we settled down for the evening’s first entertainment. A stage had been built at one side of the hall, and the crowd flowed toward it. A few chairs had been placed there, too—mostly for elderly nobles, but one, nearest the stage, for me. And it had no sides, no arms, which meant I might actually fit in it, skirts and all.
I sank onto it, grateful for the support. I couldn’t quite catch my breath, and the sounds around me were a little too loud, buzzing in my ears. But this would be time to recover. Then I could face whatever came next.
The performer was a storyteller, with a light box from across the sea. He told a story as the images shifted and changed, about a poor maiden whose younger brother had been caught stealing bread. She had dressed up as him to protect him, and had been sent into the army as punishment in his place. It had happened during Epria’s dark days, when all was war and pain, and the Forgotten had left this world to its corruption. But the Forgotten still watched Epria, still exerted power when they wished it, and they favored this girl’s bravery and intelligence. They protected her, gave her power, and helped her save the kingdom from ruin.
The Forgotten were represented by many shadows and shapes—the twist of the wind, the silhouette of a dragon’s wing, the elegant curl of a swan’s neck. I knew the story, like everyone in court, but the performer was an excellent storyteller, and he made even the most familiar parts thrilling, capturing the wonder of this one poor girl with so much bravery inside her.
I’d seen similar performances before, of course, seen the way artists manipulated light to animate shadow. The whirring picture boxes, the many distinct drawings transformed into one image by speed and flickering lights, the way parts could be added or taken away for greater effect. But I’d never seen a show like this. The light seemed to obey the storyteller’s will, bringing the story to life.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
I jumped. I hadn’t noticed Madeleine Wolff move beside me. She leaned close, one jewel-covered hand resting on my wrist. “The way they use the light—one has to be aware of it, of course, when one paints, but he seems to be able to control it here. So fascinating.”
I nodded. She leaned closer still, her painted fingernails digging into my skin. “I wanted to warn you. Be wary of my cousin.”
What? I forced myself to look forward, eyes on the show. “Your cousin?” I murmured. “Why?”
“He is a good man, and he means well, but . . . he is blinded by his grief for the old king. I think he suspects you had a hand in his death. He doesn’t have any proof yet, but—he is not your ally, Freya. Be careful with him.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You saved my life. And you deserve to know. You’re far better than he thinks you are.” She leaned back, the same sweet smile on her face. “Such talented work,” she said. “I must speak to the performer after it is done.”
She slipped away, leaving me to stare after her. My heart was pounding. I’d known Sten suspected me—certainly that he didn’t like me—but it was different hearing someone else saying it, confirming my suspicions. Her behavior was so strange . . . did she know more than she’d said? Was Sten plotting something?
The show ended, and I applauded with the others, before hurrying toward the performer. Madeleine’s parting comment could have been a hint that the performer knew something, that I should speak to him myself. But Holt rested a hand on my arm, steering me firmly away. “A good performance, was it not, Your Majesty?”
“Yes,” I said. “I wish to thank the performer. To discuss his work.”
“Oh, these men never want to reveal their secrets. Come. I think this story has given the court much to reflect on. It’s time for the feast.”
And he shepherded me away.
We were served peacock on golden plates, but no one seemed willing to eat the birds. People made a show of it, sticking their forks into the meat, even moving them near their mouths, but not swallowing a bite.
I had to eat, to reassure people, but I could barely taste it. I had to force every chew. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Madeleine had said during the performance, what I had said during the introductions. I really shouldn’t have told Lady Patricia that I liked her hair. I’d meant it politely, but it had sounded forced, hadn’t it? She probably thought I was mocking her. And that stupid smile I gave Sir Viktor—he probably thought I was an empty-headed idiot. And my speech . . . I couldn’t really remember much of it, but that was worrying, too. Maybe I’d mixed up the words, and not noticed. Or what if I’d skipped part of it? And it was probably a monotone, and if they all thought I was bored of them . . .
One of the visiting nobles stood. He held his golden goblet in the direction of the high table, smiling slightly. “A toast,” he said, his voice ringing through the hall. “To our rightful queen, who protects us from harm.” He raised the goblet higher and took a long drink. Everyone in the hall followed suit.
I froze. The words sounded respectful, but something more sinister lurked underneath. A hint that I was not the rightful queen. The possibility that someone else might deserve the throne more.
I had to do something. Say something, act somehow, to put him in his place and take control of the situation. But my mind was blank. I couldn’t make a mistake now. But what could I possibly do? I couldn’t acknowledge the hint of a threat. I’d have to use pretty words and a prettier smile in response, and I didn’t have either of those.
Beside me, my father and Holt raised their goblets. I needed to raise mine, too. Or just nod. Something. But my heart thudded faster and faster, and my hands tingled, and I couldn’t move, could barely remember how to breathe.
Smash. I jumped. Everyone stared at Fitzroy, who smiled and shrugged at a shattered ewer by his feet. Red wine spread across the stone floor. “My apologies, Your Majesty,” he said, his tone not apologetic in the slightest. “My hand slipped. Seems I’ll be playing the fool tonight.”
I forced myself to nod. He was a different person from the boy I’d spoken to in the dungeons, back into his courtier’s skin once again. But my breath was returning now, the world becoming clear.
“Typical Fitzroy,” a man near him said, his voice booming across the hall. “Can’t bear for the attention to be off him for a moment.”
Everyone laughed, and with that, the conversation started again, more lively than before.
I tried to catch Fitzroy’s eye, but he did not look at me again.
FOURTEEN
I STARED AT MY BED’S CANOPY THAT NIGHT, DAGNY curled up beside me. My room was almost completely dark, but I imagined I could see the patterns above me, the embroidery of fire-red birds and stalking panthers and glittering stars.
The funerals would take place at dawn. The funerals . . . I rolled onto my side. I’d only ever been to one funeral before, and it wasn’t one I wanted to remember.
I’d had to keep telling myself that my mother was dead, repeating it over and over, drilling the words into my head . . . I still hadn’t really believed them. Then the funeral came, and my final chance to say good-bye. The crowd had gathered around us, and I remember wondering what they were doing there, hating them for stealing this moment, as though any of them could possibly miss her as much as I would. And then it hit me, all at once, that my mother was gone, that she was never, never coming back. I didn’t remember much of what happened next, but people told me. I’d screamed, refused to let the priest near the body on the river, fighting and kicking and shrieking.
Tomorrow I’d be the one intruding on people’s grief, pretending it was my own. No one I loved was being remembered tomorrow. I hadn’t lost anything. And yet I was to stand in front of them all, as though my sadness mattered most.
I couldn’t bear it. I swung my legs out of bed and stood. I needed a distraction, something to do, and my laboratory waited downstairs. I would head down there, and work on my poison test. Make sure nothing like this ever happened again.
But when I reached t
he dungeons, the door to my laboratory was ajar. I pushed it slightly, letting it creak on its hinges.
Fitzroy sat inside, reading through my notes. His blond hair was rumpled, and his eyes bleary. He looked up when he heard the door, and nodded at me. Once again, the charismatic courtier I knew was gone, leaving a softer presence behind. I wanted to run up and snatch my notes from his hands, protect my thoughts from his judgment. I wanted to rest my hand on his arm, to soothe some of that rawness away.
“Fitzroy? What are you doing?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said.
“So you came here?” I shut the door. The thud echoed in the room, too loud.
“I don’t know. I mean, yes, obviously. I hoped you would be here.”
“Me?” I stepped closer, slowly. My heart pounded.
“I know you don’t like me,” he said. “But—maybe that’s what I need right now. I don’t know. We were honest with each other, last time. That was—I’m tired of being courteous. And I needed something to—I hoped maybe you were working. And that I could help.”
He looked so lost. William Fitzroy was in my laboratory, rambling to explain himself, and I should have been angry, I should have, but the feeling wouldn’t come. “All right,” I said. “You can help. Let me get some beakers.”
My next planned test was to try dissolving the arsenic in water. I had no hope it would help—if it had a detectable effect, it wouldn’t exactly be a useful poison—but I needed to explore every possibility, leave nothing to chance.
As I prepared two samples of water, Fitzroy continued to leaf through my notes. “These are very thorough.”
“Of course they are. Otherwise what’s the point?”
Fitzroy just nodded.
I carried the beakers back to the center table and set them down a few feet from Fitzroy. I didn’t let myself look at him. He was too distracting, the sheer presence of him, the way his feelings seemed to crackle in the air. I picked up a piece of pure arsenic with tongs and placed it in the water. Nothing happened. I poked it, as though that might encourage it, but it continued to sit, doing not much at all.
The powder was similarly useless. It dissolved in the water, as I expected it would, but nothing else happened to reveal its presence.
I scribbled down more notes as Fitzroy considered the liquid. I glanced at him, just once—twice. The lab felt too full with him here. Too full, and too quiet.
He thought I didn’t like him and I couldn’t leave that hanging, undisputed. I hadn’t liked him before, but I’d never spoken to him. And now . . . I didn’t know what I thought about him now. Nor did I understand this visceral something, a pull whenever he was near.
“I don’t dislike you.” I inspected the arsenic powder as I spoke, like I wasn’t even talking to him at all.
“What?” I could feel him staring at me. I didn’t look.
“Before. You said I don’t like you. But it’s not that. I just—” I didn’t know. I looked back at my notes, scrabbling for something to say. “We should test its acidity next. If you want to help—there’s paper, somewhere in one of those drawers. Pink-purple strips.”
I couldn’t see his reaction, but I heard his footsteps as he walked over to the drawers and began pulling them open, riffling through my supplies. I could probably have remembered where I’d stored them, if I focused hard enough, but I couldn’t think. I could barely make notes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and I jumped. “You probably don’t believe me, but—I am sorry.”
He was determinedly staring into a drawer, still searching for the paper. I had no idea what he meant. “For what?” I asked.
“For that first night, at your coronation. When I said you didn’t belong here. I—I was upset, about my father, about all of this. And you were there, standing in his place, not fitting at all, and I just—I wanted to tear you out of there. I wanted to rip everything back to the way it was before. But it wasn’t your fault.”
I didn’t know what to say. “Fitzroy—”
“Everyone calls me that, you know.” He pulled open another drawer. “Fitzroy. King’s son. They invented the name just for me, to make sure everyone knew I was different. Do you even know what my actual name is?”
“William,” I said softly. “William Fitzroy.” I stared at my notes again. I hadn’t thought—“I can call you William if you like. I didn’t know—”
“No,” he said. “Don’t. Everyone calls me Fitzroy. I call myself Fitzroy. But—I don’t know. I’ve never had an identity outside my father. And I never really counted.”
“You counted.”
He made a soft sound of disbelief.
“You counted more than me.”
He didn’t reply.
Earlier that night . . . he had helped me, when that noble mocked me. Why would he have done that, made himself look the fool in order to save me? Because he had saved me, in his way. I had been too trapped in my panic to react to the challenge, and he had reset the moment, distracted everyone, made things easy again.
I walked to the row of jars against the far wall. There was nothing I needed there, but I had to do something, to move. I shifted the jars about, looking at the labels, not really reading them at all.
“Why did you help me? At the banquet?”
The silence was a physical presence. It loomed behind me, growing, growing, as Fitzroy did not reply.
“I knocked over some wine,” he said eventually. “I didn’t help you.”
“You made yourself into a joke, to stop them laughing at me. I didn’t know what to do, and you—” I pressed my lips together. “I appreciated it.” The words were heavier than they should have been, too full of meaning. But I did appreciate it, more than I could express. “Thank you.”
“You should be careful. Don’t let people corner you like that.”
“I didn’t mean to. I wanted to respond. But I couldn’t think.”
“You could have done anything,” he said. “You could have nodded, or smiled. You could have said thank you!”
He made it sound so simple. I suppose it was, to him. “It’s not so easy. I know it should be, but . . .” I didn’t have an excuse. I’d tried to be confident, to be elegant, to transform into the queen they desired. For hours, I’d tried. I’d just run out of resolve. The pretense had lasted too long.
“You’re smart, Freya. I know you can outthink them.”
I paused, my hand hovering over a vial of mercury. “You don’t believe that.”
“How could I not believe that? Have you seen this place, Freya? Have you seen what you’re doing?”
“Court is different. It’s not—this isn’t about being smart. When I’m there . . . all the thoughts fly out of my head. It’s like I’m not even fully in the room any more. I can trust my instincts here, but there—I don’t know what to do. I can’t think what to do.”
“Then don’t think. Go with your instincts, like you said.”
But my instincts were wrong. They weren’t the instincts of a queen, and I had to act as they expected, or they’d never accept me. I chewed on my lip, that admission a truth too hard to say.
“I found the paper,” Fitzroy said. “Should we do the test?”
That meant moving closer to him. I felt every footstep as I crossed the room. He held out the papers, and I took them from him, careful that I didn’t touch him.
“What are we looking for?” he said.
“If it’s acidic, the paper will turn red.”
“And that’ll help us?”
“It’s useful to know.”
I dipped the paper in the poison solution. It turned light red.
“Acidic?” Fitzroy asked.
I nodded. “It’s not enough to prove arsenic is present, but—it’s useful. Perhaps the kitchens can use this to test drinks, at least. Make sure nothing is suspicious.”
“That would help.” He continued to stare at the solution. “So what’s next?”
“Acid,” I said. “We tr
y and dissolve it in different acids, and see how it reacts. If it has a smell, or a color, or releases a gas . . .”
“Acids.” He nodded. “What should I do?”
I glanced at his hands. “Nothing. I don’t have any gloves that’ll fit you. Acid is dangerous—”
“I’ll be careful.” He looked down at his hands as well, and then glanced back at me, with a slight look of desperation. “Please, Freya. I need to help.”
I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. But—“Collect some beakers,” I said. “And some pipettes. We’ll need to use a different one for each solution.”
He was too close. He was at least a foot away from me, but he was far too close. I carried my notes over to the far table, where the bottles of acid all waited in a line.
Science was supposed to be calming. It always helped me focus, no matter what was happening around me. But with Fitzroy here, I felt scattered, so aware of him that I couldn’t be aware of myself.
We worked in silence for a while, except for the occasional question about measurements. I labeled each beaker as we went.
“This is good,” Fitzroy said, “if you figure it out. Not just for the testers. You could sell it to other kingdoms, or paranoid nobles and merchants. The kingdom can always use more money.”
“This kingdom doesn’t need any more money. What would we do with it, make a fountain of liquid gold?”
“Freya.” He paused until I looked at him. “You really don’t know, do you? The court is rich, but where do you think all that money comes from? The treasury is broke. We need money.”
In all the years my father had worked for the treasury, he’d never told me that. “Are you sure?”
“I’m very sure.”
“So we sell some of the court’s riches. Some of those jewels, and the gold. We have lots of money, even if it isn’t coin.”
“You can’t do that, either. People won’t like it. They’ll think you’re not fit to be queen. People won’t trust you.” He watched me, unblinking, and I stared back, heat creeping across my face. “It’s a good idea,” he added, in a softer voice. “Selling the jewels. But it’s not realistic, not now. The poison test . . . that’s good. If you can do it.”
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