Aria nodded slowly, considering.
“As it happens,” she said, “I lack a lady-in-waiting. I could recruit Margaret.”
She would have elevated Jenny to the position, but she didn’t dare risk her father’s ire. Still, between Jenny’s help and Eliza’s constant company, Aria had never found the need for a lady-in-waiting.
“It’s an honor reserved for the upper ladies of court,” she added, “which should satisfy your father’s desire for prestige. And he certainly can’t protest if I require my lady-in-waiting to remain unwed as long as she’s in service. Besides, this way Margaret can see snow.”
“Thank you,” said Silas, with more gratitude than he likely would have shown for anything on his own behalf.
Aria shook her head. “It’s not a favor. As it so happens, I need something as well.”
“Shrewd.” But he didn’t seem to begrudge it, instead waving for her to continue.
“My own sister, Eliza. She ran away a week ago, chasing Henry Wycliff. She suffers the same ... ailment I do, and I worry constantly that she’s in danger, that she’s ...” Aria took a shaky breath, looking away. “That she’ll never come home.”
“I can’t bring her home if I’m exiled.”
“I just want to know she’s safe, wherever she is. I want you to ensure my father’s soldiers don’t drag her back. She deserves to make her own choices.”
“This is a taller order than my request, Highness.”
Aria looked at him with pleading eyes. “If you could just try. I have to know someonetried. I would go myself, but I have to deal with Morton.”
If Aria couldn’t fix that problem, Eliza would die anyway. As would Jenny.
“Very well,” said Silas. “It’s a deal.”
He set off down the trail in earnest, and Aria returned to the castle alone.
Standing in the throne room like a prisoner brought for judgment, Aria withstood her father’s berating, his claims that she made a mockery of him by breaking house arrest, and when he demanded to know the location of Silas Bennett—who was meant to have brought her home—she lied.
“He is gathering resources to break the Artifact. He’ll be here shortly.”
Her father did not believe her. He did not even pause to confer with his advisers, who stood in the wings, before giving an order.
“Search the countryside!” the king barked. “A whole battalion of soldiers! Find him!”
Aria looked out the stained-glass windows at the fading sun, drowning in the horizon. She thought of soldiers collapsed in sleep across the hills, exposed to the freezing temperatures of night.
“I lied,” she said. “There’s no point searching for him. He’s gone to Northglen.”
Forgive me, Silas.She had to try something to protectallthe lives the king would damage.
“He knew he couldn’t break the Artifact, and he feared you would have him executed. ‘Better to join with Morton,’ he said, ‘if I’m enemy to the king already.’ He finds her mercy greater than yours. Perhaps rightly so.”
Lord Philip paled. Aria heard the guards whisper beside the door. Her father gripped the arms of his throne with white-knuckled hands.
“A coward and a traitor!” The king’s face flamed to match the red edging of his uniform. “No doubt sent by Morton from the start!”
Aria could clearly see the cracks in her father. He was a patchwork of red and white, divided like stained glass, and she could follow the divisions like a map, one leading her back days, weeks, months, along a clear path in the growing wildness of his words and actions, in the justifications she hadn’t even realized were justifications, in regret disguised as strength.
At Eliza’s ball, he’d told her there was only one right path.It is your consistency as a ruler that forges right. Consistency is the only foundation stable enough to carry a kingdom.He’d ordered her to do her duty without looking back, without reconsidering and second-guessing.
In killing Charlie, her father had committed to a path. He would not renounce it, would not retreat. He was charging forward on sand, as if he could manifest a road through sheer strength of will, and Aria knew he would sink until swallowed. How many others would he drag down with him?
She had to prove he was wrong, but Aria had never convinced her father of such a thing in all her life.
“Father, I know the truth about Charles Morton.”
