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There was just one important character missing from this beautiful fairy tale unfolding.

“Maybe Lope could join us?” I asked.

The look my mother gave me was tinged with something—fond exasperation, perhaps? I flushed.

“Yes, if she wants. She could help me keep watch over you.” She gave one of my curls a light little tug. “Gods know I’ll need it. You must promise to be diligent and obedient and virtuous, if you really mean to live in that place.”

Obedient and virtuous.I almost shuddered. Those words sounded terribly boring, but for the palace, and with Lope at my side, I could make such sacrifices. “I’ll do exactly as you say,” I told her.

She nodded, unsmiling. “Then I’ll leave in the morning.”

I took a steadying breath. I was so close. So close to my heart’s dearest dream finally coming true. And a whole week to wait, while my mother traveled to Le Château and back... I could hardly bear it.

When I stood in the drive the next morning, blowing her kisses as her hired carriage pulled away, my head was filled with beautiful, painted-gold dreams of the balls we’d attend. The people we’d meet. The life we’d live.

I spent the entirety of the first day packing all my things into various trunks, debating which gown would be the best for making a first impression at court.

The second day I spent cleaning the house with more vigor than I ever had before. When Mother returned home, she would see how diligent and responsible andgoodI was. That I was grateful for this gift of a new life.

Mother was due to arrive at Le Château on the third day, and in her honor, I requested the cook prepare a cake, and I drank the sweet wine that Mother and I loved the most. I giddily imagined Mother meeting with the king and his enthusiastic greeting; how he would beg her to go fetch her charming daughter. How she would see it was the perfect place for us.

After the fourth day, she was on the journey back to me. Every evening, with Lope to guard me, I waited on the terrace, breathless with the hope that each night would be the one when she returned. I felt silly, at first; surely she could not leave the palace and arrive home to me in the blink of an eye.

It was strange how much I already missed her. She had always been with me. Every single day. Even on days when she preferred to be alone, I could press my ear to the door to her studio and hear her murmuring to herself or the clinking sound of brushes being cleaned.

By the sixth night, the ache in my heart led me to sleep in her studio. She’d left her shawl there, and it still smelled of her: lilac and linseed oil. When dawn broke, I woke to see her great works all around me. Her current project was a portrait of a little boy, the mayor’s grandson. There was a blank spot on the canvas where his hand ought to have been, and when I stood near, I could see the lines of her pencil outlining the hand holding a ball.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the section she had left for last. She made her art seem so effortless, but I knew her better than that.

“Gods,” she’d always said, “I’d be a happy woman if I never had to draw hands again.”

I smiled at the memory, my finger gently tracing her signature on the painting, a simple curlingM.

There was a wound in my heart where she ought to have been, but surrounded by her art, I felt close to her again.

“Soon,” I told myself. “She’ll be home soon.”

But one night passed, and then another.

I waited at the gate until the knights insisted I return inside. Even then, I sat by my bedroom window, watching the horizon.

She had said her journey would take a week. I promised myself not to worry until it had been more than a week.

An eighth day.

A ninth day.

A tenth.

My mind was racing. Because this wasn’t right. In the fairy tale I was writing, she was supposed to come back.

Was she lying somewhere, injured, in pain? Had she been attacked by brigands?

Was she in a field somewhere, a Shadow’s claws pinning her down, its rattling gasp filling her ears, the breath torn from her body until—

No. No, I couldn’t bear to think like that.

And if something awful had befallen her, if she’d been attacked by Shadows or waylaid by the court—that wasn’t a tale suited for someone like me.