“No, Highness! No, I ... wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Good.” And since it was proper, she added, “Thank you for your service. I’m sure you take your duties very seriously.” She glanced once more at Corvin. “Sutton Town has an excellent physician. I suggest you visit on your way home so she may tend to the future lord baron’s wrist.”
“It was to be my first priority,” the steward said.
She didn’t call him out on the lie, instead offering a small smile of approval. With any luck, he would take her opinion to heart, and the Reeves boys would have a more comfortable time of things at home.
If only she could say the same for herself.
At the king’s invitation, several tournament participants remained at the palace for the evening feast, including the Wycliff family. Eliza was noticeably absent. The queen spoke exclusively with Lady Wycliff as if the rest of the table had faded from existence. Aria ate with her head down, not speaking unless spoken to—and no one was eager to speak to her now that they knew she was cursed. She heard one girl’s whispered comment that the curse would be the death of the princess andlook,didn’t she appear dreadfully like a ghost already!
After dinner, she had no chance to speak with Henry, since everyone wanted to congratulate him on his excellent showing in the tournament and the possibility of his engagement to the princess.
Just before Aria left the room to turn in for the night, he caught her eyes. He was, admittedly, handsome. He wore his dark brown hair with a bit of length, and though it carried no waves, it flipped in adventurous little curls as it hit his ears and shoulders. Though dressed in formal attire—no doubt on loan from a royal closet, since his own clothes would have been sweat-soaked from jousting—he wore it casually, with his collar loosened and his shirt untucked beneath the blue vest. Eliza called him “heart melting.” Aria appreciated that he didn’t present as pompous.
But she could not banish from her mind a pair of green eyes.Especially not when a maid stopped her outside her room and delivered a small package.
“It came by way of a courier from Sutton Town,” the maid said, curtsying and hurrying off.
Aria unwrapped the bundle to find a glass vial and a scrap of parchment. She read the note first.
I’m sorry it isn’t more, but know you have my thanks. For everything.—Baron
The vial held a teaspoon’s worth of clear liquid. Aria held it up, watching the yellow lamplight flash across the angles of the vial, watching the liquid roll smoothly as she turned it.
And she thought about magic.
In mythology, likeThe Epic of Einar, magic was always used to trick and deceive, whether employed by villains or heroes. It was a thing to be distrusted. In modern scholarly texts, magic was dissected and categorized by its relative danger—abide a Caster with caution, flee a shapeshifter with horror. It was a thing to be dreaded. In Aria’s personal experience, magic was a confusion. Because the same power that cursed her had also brought her Baron.
She drank the vial’s liquid in one swallow, and it tasted crisp as a mountain spring with just a hint of lemon. She smiled, thinking of green eyes and yellow orchards. Though it didn’t carry the same strength as his tea, her aches eased, and her exhaustion faded to a dull weariness.
During her correspondence with Baron, Aria had reached out to one other Fluid Caster. It had been hard to find one still at home, but the elderly woman was likely too stubborn to leave her roots. Using a servant, Aria had disguised her purpose, pretending the request came from a merchant who hoped to ease the lingering tiredness of a long voyage. For a steep payment, the Fluid Caster had provided a single flask of “something healing.”
Even with all the precautions, it had taken Aria a full, torturousday to work up her courage. The next morning, she’d tested the Caster’s work and found it lacking poison, but also lacking luster. It barely eased her weariness, and the effects faded within the hour.
In her next letter, she’d asked Baron about his strength as a Caster.
Is your magic perhaps stronger than that of other Fluid Casters?
He’d responded.
There is variable strength in magic, but to my knowledge, it has less to do with the Caster themselves and more to do with their state of mind when Casting. For example, if Leon first puts me in a sour mood and then demands a correction to the level of salt in his broth, he deserves the resulting inedibility.
Aria smiled to herself, rolling the empty vial between her fingers, but her humor faded. Strangely, she felt a little like the vial—emptied of something powerful. She’d waited with such anticipation to see Baron again only to have the precious moments flee like a messenger bird vanishing into clouds.
Her night would be filled with letter writing, that was certain. But for the moment, with the newfound energy given by Baron, she snuck through the castle to have a closer look at Widow Morton’s mysterious Artifact.
Although Widow Morton hadn’t made an appearance since Aria’s curse first settled, the princess knew as certainly as gray clouds would bring a storm that she would appear that night.
And because Aria could also employ theatrics, she waited for Widow Morton in the throne room, pacing around and between the four thrones on the dais. Aria had lit enough lamps to seeby but not enough to fully banish the gloom, so her long, dark shadow played across the stone each time she turned directions.
“You seem anxious, Highness.”
The cold voice came from behind, and Aria turned to find that the widow had spread her water mirror upward, rippling across the centermost of the stained-glass windows. The projection seemed thinner than before. Aria could see the iron framework of the windowthroughWidow Morton, as if viewing cracks in the woman’s soul. The widow still wore her black attire, but something about her looked different. A too-wide stretch to her eyes, perhaps.
Aria had asked Baron about projecting an image through water, and he’d said he’d never heard of such long-distance communication made easy and couldn’t manage it after experimenting on his own.
“How do you perform a Cast like this?” Aria asked.
