“—searching for arealheir.”
“If you were competent, I wouldn’t need to!” he roared.
Aria’s jaw trembled. She clenched it. The high-ceilinged throne room echoed her father’s voice back to her, repeating the condemnation. It rang in her ears.
Incompetent. Mark.
She crushed the quill in her mind, tossed it in fire and watched it sizzle.
But it returned.
It always did.
Incompetent.
“Regardless of your feelings toward me ...” Aria’s voice shook. One tear escaped her tight hold, sliding down her cheek. “Don’t punish Henry.”
“Law is the strength of a kingdom,” her father repeated. “And my word is law.”
With brisk steps, he exited the throne room, leaving Aria alone.
Aria walked to her bedchamber in silence, closing the doors behind her delicately, like handling a teacup already cracked and breaking. She opened her window to the cold air. The trees had dropped their leaves, littering the castle grounds, bare patches attesting to where the servants had already raked. She couldn’t tell if the skeletal trees looked relieved of a burden or robbed of their identities, but looking at them, a sudden intensity seized her chest.
She marched to the bottom of her bed, where a small but ornately carved trunk waited. Each side bore a masterpiece collection of scenes from history, beginning with Loegria’s founding and touching on its proudest moments. Aria knew every story by heart. It had been her father’s gift to her for her eighteenth birthday, mere months ago, and she’d been so captured by the trunk’s elegance, she hadn’t even convinced herself to fill it yet. Nothing seemed worthy to go inside.
Now she hefted the box from the floor, her aching legs staggering beneath its weight, and carried it to the window. The beautifully stained wood scraped across her window ledge with a horrible screech as she pushed it out, out,out, until she expelled it from her room, watching it plummet two stories to shatter against the ground, spilling fragments onto the leaf-covered grass like a stomach emptied of its contents.
While Aria clutched the windowsill, gasping for air, a sharpcawcame from overhead.
She turned away as the familiar bird glided into her room, landing on a bedpost knob. Though she rubbed the tears from her face, her hiccupping breaths betrayed her. The crow gave a soft, muted version of his call, so soft it almost sounded like a concerned word, like a voice saying—
“Aria?”
A talking animal.Panic flared in her mind, overturning the grief. She remembered every moment of intelligence the crow had displayed—every responsive nod and almost-laugh. Intelligence too sharp for an animal.
With wide eyes, Aria whirled to face the crow.
The bird squawked and dove for the window, but she was faster, pulling the shutters closed with asnap. The crow swerved away, flapping at the corners of her room, but every exit was barred.
Aria snatched up the fireplace poker, holding it like a sword. Her voice trembled. “Reveal yourself, shapeshifter.”
Always, she was the fool. If Widow Morton had a squad of Casters at her command, why not a shapeshifter? How long since the woman had replaced Baron’s crow?
Aria thought of Henry, collateral damage in the war between her father and Widow Morton. As much as her heart ached to know he’d fallen victim, it was nothing compared to the wrenching pain of imagining Baron in his place.
“Now, demon!” she shouted.
With a final pitifulcaw, the crow dropped to the floor, shedding black mist from its feathers. The magic curled like smoke in the air, swirling around a rising form.
Aria clutched her makeshift weapon, preparing to swing—
Only to stop cold.
Because she recognized the terrified brown eyes that took shape, and the boy they belonged to.
“Corvin?”she whispered in horror.
From behind her, someone screamed.
