“I am no longer courting Kendall,” she said.
Her father looked up sharply.
“You were right to criticize my choosing of him,” Aria said. “I made the decision recklessly, and it was a mistake. We’ve talked, and while he isn’thappy, I think we parted amiably. I have no intention of abandoning my duty, so I intend to find another suitor. After proper consideration this time, I’ve decided to look for someone attractive to me in appearance and personality but who also balances my weaknesses.” She ducked her head. “I suppose that means finding someone who can temper my recklessness.”
Someone she could truly talk to. Someone who would let her speak ideas in their entirety and help her examine alternate options. Help her find the best path forward. Someone who would listen.
Someone like . . .
“No intention of abandoning your duty?” Her father scoffed. “What of the duty to follow through with your decision?”
“You yourself said it was a mistake, Father. Besides, I was notmarriedto Lord Kendall, nor even engaged. Courtship always has the option of ending.”
“So you committed to thisintendingto break it.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why I’m surprised, considering your other decisions of late.”
The words stung. She heard the meaning woven within:I expect you to fail. It’s what you’ve proven you do.
“As a queen,” he said, “do you expect you can change decrees on a whim? Revoke laws once passed? Will you condemn an entire kingdom while you flit from impulse to impulse? You cannot put the cracks in the foundation yourself, then expect your kingdom to stand without falling.”
Two impulses battled within her—the first to shrink, to apologize, to tally her mistakes. The second, to rage at the unfairness. She clenched her jaw.
She thought of Baron’s words.Patience. Controlled temper. Stand tall.If he could do that under worse circumstances, she could at least try.
“I understand, Father,” she said slowly. “And I’m not trying to be impulsive. I’m just ... I ...” She mouthed wordlessly before looking away. “I have this ... quill in my mind, marking every mistake I make. I’m just trying to make it mark less.”
Her father was silent. The firelight cast gray shadows across his white uniform as he moved a marble on the board, then gestured for her to do the same.
Aria looked down, blinked, and realized she’d lost track of whatever strategy she’d been attempting. Anything she tried to hold in her mind slipped away, like a book falling from tired fingers.
She nudged a blue marble diagonally into the next notch, and her father captured it with a marble she’d looked right past.
Dismal grasp of strategy. Mark.
“Just do your duty,” her father said at last. “Stop looking back.”
He made it sound so simple.Just get it right the first time, Aria.
When she’d started marking mistakes, that had been the idea—get it right the first time. How was she so bad at that as to keep running in circlesten years later?
That night, alone and isolated, she wrote to Baron.
I’ve never told anyone this, but when I was eight, I started tracking my mistakes. I thought it would help me learn from them. Instead, I’m more aware of them, more trapped by them. Sometimes I believe they’re all I’m capable of.
I want to be capable of more.
What if I don’t ever get the chance?
She didn’t give that letter to Dawn. She burned it in the fireplace, like her quill from long ago, like Widow Morton’s melted promises. Then she waited for morning’s light to break the gloom.
But the morning brought a new horror. Aria should have seen it coming—after all, she’d reached the halfway point of her curse, and Widow Morton apparently wished to commemorate the occasion.
Someone had infiltrated the castle overnight. While Aria had been in her room, pacing, feeling sorry for herself, someone left a message for the king, stabbed through with a dagger right into his throne.
Aria heard him read it out loud, and it spread goose bumps on her skin.
“When you are vulnerable, Your Majesty, when you are exposed, tell me—would you have me extend mercy or a sword?” He crumpled the parchment in hand. “Morton.”
With a growl, he spun to face the north wall. Outside the stained-glass windows, the nearby mountain loomed, home to Northglen, and Aria could picture Widow Morton looking down at the valley below, as stoic and steady as her granite-pillaredhome. Perhaps she exhaled in satisfaction, manifesting it in the throne room as a chill breeze through the open doors.
