Page 19

19

Despite my fatigue, sleep proved fleeting. I woke late in the night to the stirrings of yet another flare. Nausea curdled my stomach, making me regret every bite of dinner.

Beside me, Aric was asleep. He lay on his back, his head turned away from me—I must have imagined pressing up against him, thank the Virtues. The thought alone was enough to make my face heat with embarrassment. He wasn’t touching me now, his breaths steady and slow with sleep. A sliver of moonlight trickled through the window and caught his hair, making it shine like molten silver against the pillow; the rain must have finally stopped.

I eased out of bed, wary of waking Aric, and groped my way over to the saddlebags. The tonic bottle’s glass was cool against my fingers as I worked it open. I drank half the dose, then put the rest away. I had only one full dose left after this—I couldn’t afford to use it now and need it more later.

I slid back into bed, holding my breath so as not to disturb Aric. But now that sleep had escaped me, it was reluctant to return. My cuts and bruises were aching again, and more than the physical discomfort, my mind was restive. I couldn’t stop thinking about the events of the past few days. The wedding with its strange magic. The assassin’s attack that had started a spiral of disaster. The potential for this crisis to spin into an all-out war, despite everything I’d sacrificed, if we couldn’t break the curse before the coronation.

I stared at the rafters, trying not to move, but my mind squirmed mercilessly, prodding me with guilt from every angle. Instead of peace, I’d secured chaos. Half the Gilden court believed I was a murderer, the other half that I was a kidnapper. I had turned the man I married into a part-time horse. And worst of all, I had abandoned my people, the retinue whose only crime was loyalty to the woman who had failed them: me. While I read by a crackling hearth, they shivered in the castle dungeons, subjected to only the seas knew what mistreatments.

Julieta. Catalina. The other soldiers who made up my guard, men and women who’d volunteered to protect my life with their own. What would they think of me now?

Against my will, Catalina’s face flashed into my mind. Not as she was now, but as she’d been ten years ago, before I dug a gulf between us and filled it with the bitter salt of regret. Her eyes, soft as she looked into mine, as she brushed her fingers along my jaw. The hurt in them, not much later, when I’d spoken the words I must. She’d volunteered to come to Gildenheim, so perhaps she’d forgiven me. But I couldn’t forgive myself, even though by any measure, I’d done the right thing.

I let out a frustrated sigh. Sometimes I wished I could scour unwanted memories from existence. All I did by keeping them was pick at wounds that should have long since scarred over.

“Is your condition bothering you?”

I froze. Drown it. I’d gotten careless again, forgetting that Aric could hear me.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s all right.” Aric turned onto his side, facing me. “I wasn’t sleeping well anyway. I rarely do.”

I rolled onto my side, mirroring him. Now our faces were scant inches apart. His lashes cast shadows onto his cheeks.

“It’s flaring a little, but the tonic should take effect soon.”

“Is that not what’s bothering you, then?” Aric’s tone was tentative, as if he expected me to lash out in response.

Something about the darkness invited an intimacy I might regret in the morning, but couldn’t resist any more than gravity now. “I was thinking about the guards I brought with me to Gildenheim.”

Aric waited. I ought to be wary of his patience, but I lacked the strength to muster my defenses.

“I’m worried about them,” I confessed. To my horror, my voice cracked, the admission breaking a part of me I’d barely been keeping intact. “They’re good people. They’ve done nothing to deserve being thrown into a dungeon except be loyal to me. Their job. ”

Aric’s expression echoed my own guilt. It was his people who had imprisoned my retinue, after all.

“I promise you, Bianca, no one will hurt them in my name. We don’t condone torture in Gildenheim.”

Maybe so. But even kings didn’t know everything that passed within the walls they ruled.

“These guards of yours,” Aric said cautiously. “Is one of them… more to you?”

I stiffened, then let out another sigh. I had already given too much away. I should make it clear that I wasn’t dishonoring my marriage troth before Aric drew the wrong conclusion from my silence. “Yes. No. Both. My captain of the guard—Catalina Espada. We used to be close, but we’ve never shared a bed. Maybe we could have, once. But I didn’t have the choice.”

The last spilled out of me before I thought it through. I frowned. No, that wasn’t right. I’d had the choice. I’d chosen the right thing: to put Catalina aside before whatever grew between us sank roots deep enough that it would hurt to tear them out. I’d chosen my duty.

“If you would rather keep what lies between you private, I respect your boundaries,” Aric said. “But if you’re willing to tell me, I would… like to know more.”

I didn’t try to hide my surprise. “Why?”

A wry smile flickered across his face. “Can you truly care for someone you don’t know?”

My returning smile was ironic. Of course he would use my own words against me.

I looked down for a moment, considering. My history with Catalina was a vulnerability. But Aric had shared something of himself with me earlier tonight. Maybe a marriage, like magic, was an exchange.

I lifted my gaze to find Aric still watching me. Perhaps it was the moonlight, making everything surreal. Perhaps it was my exhaustion. But in his eyes, I could find no intent to wound—only curiosity, sincere and compelling.

“It started when I was fourteen,” I began, and allowed myself to remember.

The connection between Catalina and me had bloomed slow and fragile like a rose in late summer, tempting the frost’s bite. Looks exchanged between bouts of weaponry training. Her going too easy on me when we dueled, me going too hard on her. As the months passed, it progressed into more. Touches lasting longer than necessary. Our hands brushing when we passed in the halls.

And then, one spring evening near my sixteenth birthday, our first kiss, in a courtyard beside the training grounds. Catalina shy but eager, I reckless, thinking I was immune. Clumsy and sweet and promising something more, our lips found each other and explored as much as we dared. I thought I was brave. I thought we were alone.

But of course the palace had eyes in every nook and cranny. This was the court of Damaria; futures were made or broken with the power of knowledge, leveraged just so.

My parents called me before them the next morning, as stern and unforgiving as the palace’s defensive facades. They understood, they said, that young people had desires. But I represented House Liliana. One day I would marry, not for love, but for advantage. And when I did, I couldn’t afford the whispers that my loyalty was compromised because I cared for another.

I was my parents’ daughter. I understood. My country, my House, my people all came first. There was no room for anything as small as selfishness. I could want, I could yearn, but I could never have. I had to be infallible, to let no one see the cracks in my armor. And love—that was a fatal weakness. One that couldn’t be allowed to fester.

I did what was necessary. I told Catalina, unflinching, that we would never be anything more. That what had happened between us was a mistake. I cut my nails into my own palms but showed her no remorse. We’d practically grown up together. For Catalina to believe me, I couldn’t give her anything but my utmost resolve.

I watched her heart bleed for long enough to make her think I didn’t care. And then I turned away and walked to my room, every bit as sedate and serene as my parents could wish for. I locked the door, refused entrance to anyone save Julieta, and cried until I was empty. Then I rose and made myself forget the feelings I’d briefly entertained, shedding them like snakeskin, until I was a new person and they were no longer true. In their stead, only guilt remained—the guilt of hurting my best friend, a wound time hadn’t fully closed.

Aric listened until I was finished. Silence stretched out between us, delicate as gossamer.

“I’m not in love with Catalina,” I said. “We’ve both moved on, and I’m happy for her. She deserves someone who wouldn’t hurt her. Someone who would never cast her aside for the sake of politics. But…” I swallowed, confessing a truth I rarely admitted even to myself. “I know that’s how the world works for people like us. But sometimes, even now, it still hurts. Even though I should be strong enough not to care.”

Aric shifted, his brows drawing together. “Caring doesn’t make you weak.”

I released a raw laugh. “Of course it does. It’s a vulnerability that anyone who knows it can exploit.”

“Respectfully, I disagree. Caring means you’re strong. It means you’re brave enough to let yourself feel, even though it puts your heart at risk.” Tentatively, Aric reached out, sweeping a lock of hair from my brow. “And you are strong, Bianca. Stronger than I think you know.”

I caught my breath, not daring to move as his fingers skimmed my cheek. “That isn’t true.”

Aric’s gaze was uncomfortably keen. “Why not?”

It was my turn to hesitate. I was reluctant to let down the walls shielding me from anyone who could do me harm. But Aric had already seen me at my weakest and my worst. It couldn’t hurt to tell him what he had surely surmised for himself.

“I’m not brave,” I said, the words flat as a blade. “I’m not strong. My whole life, I’ve done exactly as expected of me: taken the road presented and never strayed from it. If I were brave, I wouldn’t have cut Catalina off and avoided her for the past ten years.”

I could see Aric thinking, turning his answer over like a pebble rolled across the palm of his hand.

“It takes strength to make a difficult choice,” he said.

“Not if it’s the only one.”

“Was going to a foreign land to marry a man you didn’t know the only choice?”

“The only right one,” I said. “The only one that counts. It was my duty. That’s the only choice that matters.”

Aric knew that. It was the choice he had made, too. We were nobles. We did what we had to do, and that didn’t take strength or bravery. It took only compliance to follow the roads laid out for us from birth.

Aric was silent for a moment, but he wasn’t done. He took my hand by the wrist and turned it over, revealing the gilt scar from our wedding.

“Duty or not, you should have the choice.” He touched the thin gold mark, and a shiver thrilled through me despite the bed’s warmth. “You ought to decide for yourself who you share your life with.”

I shook my head. “We’re both born of noble families. You know that isn’t how it works.”

“But why shouldn’t it be?” he countered. “We decide the fates of entire countries—what’s stopping us from deciding the course of our own lives?”

I had no answer. The idea was wild, it was ludicrous, it contradicted everything I’d been taught, and yet I wanted it to be true so much it hurt.

Aric folded my fingers closed, hiding the scar from sight.

“You mentioned divorce earlier,” he said, resolve steeling his words. “When we return to Arnhelm, I’ll give you back your choice. I’ll annul the marriage and we’ll make a new treaty with our own terms. I want you to choose your life freely.”

Shock made me glad I was already lying down. Gradually, our truce had transformed from a necessity to a proper alliance. That our marital arrangement would continue was something I now realized I hadn’t questioned. Aric might not want me as a wife, but we were bound together in this nonetheless. Or so I’d assumed.

I hadn’t expected him to cast me loose. Much less because he wanted to give me freedom.

The prospect should have made me feel at liberty: the entire ocean before me, any compass direction ready to be made my own. Instead, it unmoored me. I felt lost, adrift with no shore in sight.

Without my marriage to Aric—without a clear and single path to follow—I hardly knew who I was. If I wasn’t the daughter unflinchingly fulfilling her duties… I wasn’t sure I was anyone at all.

Aric was waiting for my answer. I swallowed and forced a smile.

“Thank you,” I managed to whisper.

I allowed myself to imagine it. Once we reversed the enchantment and returned to Arnhelm I would be freed from a marriage with a man I didn’t love. I could do anything I desired. Marry whomever I chose. Not Catalina—that chance was long gone. But there were countless other options. A woman from the Zhei Empire, who would bring with her silks and spices. A man from Damaria, who would make me always feel at home. The road branched into endless possibilities, a thousand routes whose ends I could not envision.

The choice was mine.

The thought should have been a weight off my shoulders. So why did it feel instead like the weight had doubled, suffocating me?