That’s when it catches me.
I choke back a sob, but another wells up in its place, then another. The paper crumples in my hand. I let it fall to the floor and stagger to the bed. Some remote part of me remembers to kick off my boots before I crawl beneath the blankets, though I only remember to untie my cloak after.
Something’s off about the bed. It takes me a moment to realize: It smells like lavender.
I am already good as gone.
I curl up and bury my face in a pillow as another sob rattles me like a loose door in a storm. I thought I could beat it, my fear, my past, the wolf still at my heels. I thought I could win this game.
But it’s a draw at best. I will leave Minkja with my life and my gold and a promise of freedom. Two weeks ago, that would have been enough.
Two weeks ago, I didn’t know how much more there was to lose.
I cry into the pillow until my sobs dry to gasping heaves, and when those are spent, I lie in the dull, sore haze of defeat. My head pounds from weeping, my jewels ache, and every time I think of the look on Emeric’s face my heart shatters all over again.
The day cools to afternoon, then to early evening. The room is mostly shadows when I hear his footsteps in the hall. I hate that I know
they’re his. They slow by my door a moment . . . then carry on.
Of course. Emeric has bigger problems.
Evidently Adalbrecht is too busy for dinner, too, for I hear Trudl bringing trays to the riverfront wing. Emeric’s muffled thanks is a punch in the stomach. I don’t answer when she knocks on the door, because Gisele took the pearls with her, and I have no time to cover the lines of rubies marching toward my heart. I hear the bump of a tray left in the hall before she moves on.
Not long after, the message-mirror pulses warm in my pocket.
Iron shoots through my veins. I don’t want to look, I don’t want to face the damage I’ve done—but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t starving for even a scrap of hope.
I pull the case out, heart in my throat, and unfold the mirror. Words trace across the fogged glass:
Vanja—
I can’t
I wait. There has to be more. There has to be more, it’s Emeric and he wouldn’t do less than a three-part proposal, with footnotes and a bibliography.
The fog fades, reappears. And it spells out again:
Vanja—
I can’t
Something in me breaks. I stare at the mirror, watching the words scrawl out again and again. Pain ripples through me, the jewels glittering as they swell larger. Maybe it’s just the curse, reminding me I only have
two more days. Maybe it’s just my own greed.
I am too much for him. I am not enough.
In the end, I find I still have tears left after all.
`
At some point I fade into fitful sleep.
I don’t know what wakes me up. It’s dark still—but not quite. A chilly blue light fills the room, but it’s too deep a blue to be frigid dawn.
“Get up.”
I wrench around.
