Page 124 of The Court of Venus

“Sometimes I was a maid of honor,” I told him. “Other times I was a servant I’d noticed walking through the palace. The courtiers assumed he was with a different woman each night. All of them were me. But somehow Prospero found out about us, and he manipulated me.”

The girl standing before her father, their luminous eyes clashing. “You are nineteen,” her father said. “So I will not treat you like a child.”

“Yes, not yet twenty-one. I should have years left with you.”

“The Staffords are an old family, and they will care for you. I have taught you all I can.”

And the girl thought, as the tears gathered in her eyes, that to be a woman was to bow in gratitude for all that brought her pain. “No.”

Prospero tore his hands through his hair. “Planets be damned, you will go, Bianca. I have kept you longer than I should have.”

“Why?” Her eyes were shining.

“Because I have loved you. And by doing so this long, I’ve surely subdued you. It is time for you to make your way.”

A nagging thought pressed against her mind. “Have you chosen Roland over me? Did he somehow convince you he was worthier than I was?”

The king endured all of my emotions. He bellowed into the palm I used to quiet him, brushed away tears, clenched his fists.

“Your son—he—” I rubbed the heel of my hand across my eye. “I broke his heart when I left. And I left because I was ashamed, convinced I was not for him. For Alvion, or for you. I thought I was saving him. I said he should marry the Bastian princess as was agreed, because he so wanted to make you proud.”

Hal, chasing after her in the meadow. “You’re agreeing to this? Swear allegiance to me instead. Be my sorcerer. Live here, with me.”

It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it as soon as he saw her face. His hand dropped from her arm.

Divine my future. Be the instrument I wield.

“What if we will only feel more than we do now?” the girl said. “What if it will only become more painful?”

“I lived with the Stafford family for a season until I realized I had made a terrible mistake,” I continued. “I’d acted out of fear. I felt it writhing in me, Your Majesty. This terrible fear, and my own doubt. I wrote Hal a note, begging his forgiveness. A fortnight later, I ran to the messenger as soon as I heard the hoofbeats over the drawbridge. I truly thought it was his reply, that I would see him again as I’d dreamt for months and months, but it was not. It was not. It was a letter from my old master Prospero, telling me that Hal was dead.”

Slowly the awareness spread through her body. There was no disbelief—for disbelief, there had to be a thread of hope. There was no hope. She knew it was true: Hal was gone. He was gone, and far too many courtiers would smile when they heard. And so what rose in her was a snapping, snarling need for vengeance.

“I would have done anything to throw myself into a grave instead of him.” A wracking sob, a wrench of my chest toward the bed. “Anything. The story of his death didn’t satisfy me, you see.”

My pale eyes, reddened by tears, cut to the king’s. Understanding played across his features. He scrambled away from me on the bed, grunting from the effort.

“But I could do nothing. I was still bound by my oath to the Staffords. I was not even permitted to attend his funeral. Years passed. I waited patiently, and my patron finally died. I felt as lucky as a Jupiter; I was free to return to court. I heard Your Majesty was throwing a magicians’ tournament to celebrate his new bride. I knew that was my opportunity. My one chance. I sought the truth of Hal’s death, as if the knowledge would take away my pain. But nothing can take away my pain, Your Majesty. I see that now. I see I must live with it forever. Because on a clear morning, three years ago, you inducted Hal into your council to rule beside you.”

The king had begun to make the frantic sounds of a dying animal. “You told him to say the oath in a holy place, alone. I thought, once I learned this, that a privy councilor had used the opportunity to assassinate him in the quiet of the forest. Prospero, perhaps. I looked right past you, Your Majesty. For why would you kill your own son? Your legacy? The very thing you coveted above all else? You were never in my sight. Not remotely. But you changed the words of the oath. I know because he showed me his memory. He said, ‘give my future.’ The oath is ‘offer my future.’ Such a little slip. Barely noticeable. One word. But now I know, because I’ve spoken to a Mercury, how meaningful that one word is. To give versus to offer. An offer denotes a choice. You couldn’t anticipate, of course, that I would speak to Hal’s ghost and see the very moment he died. That I alone would know you gave your own son a blood cipher.”

The king, shaking his head frantically, had begun choking on his own phlegm.

I grasped his mind. He calmed instantly, sinking into his pillow. “Tell me why, Your Majesty. Help me to understand. They say you went mad with grief when Hal died. But you were mad with guilt, weren’t you? Mad because Prospero, who promised you a long life, had failed you. You may speak now.”

He gaped like a fish.

“I said, speak.” I whipped my knife from my sleeve and held it to his throat.

Death was so close. Now he knew it. He saw it against him, a quick flick of my wrist. “Henry was no son of mine.”

That confused me. “He looked just like you.”

“No,” he spat. “Not a bastard, you bitch. He betrayed me. She said so. As sons went, Henry was soft besides. He was good and kind, as you say. But Prospero insisted it is better to not rely on sons. Sons can die. So many of my sons have died. He said I would live for years, and he was close to uncovering the secret.”

“She? Who is she?”

He whispered the name. I shook as I exhaled, but my knife remained steady against him. “What did she say Hal did?”