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She dropped the bottle into her bag and said, “Whatever it takes. You want things to be different? Work to make them different. Work until your back aches and your fingers bleed and everything hurts so bad, you forget the pain in your heart.” Quieter, she added, “You can’t ever outrun something you carry inside you. Don’t waste your time trying.”
I tipped my head sideways, really looking at her. This woman had practically raised me, and I was struck by how little I really knew about her. She was outspoken and irascible, quick to share her opinions, and yet somehow never talked about herself, not really.
She grew uncomfortable under my gaze and went to the door. “You have until noon to wash and dress in a chemise. Your lunch will be delivered here then—unless you’d rather attend the banquet? Ha, I thought not. At one, a maid will help dress you. At two thirty, another will attend to your hair. And at four, another will come to powder your face and put some color into those pasty cheeks of yours. Hopefully, you’ll be somewhat presentable in time for the procession, which will start at five.”
“You think I require eleven hours to become ‘somewhat presentable’?”
“At least. A week would have been better, but we have to work with the circumstances we’ve been given. And all of this is assuming you won’t simply change back into your slovenly farmer’s wear and escape into the wild the instant I leave this room.”
“Well,” I said, reluctantly eyeing the dress laid out on the bed, “if the king desires my presence at his coronation, I suppose I have no choice but to stay. Are you going to be there?”
She scoffed. “Are you jesting? I wouldn’t be caught dead.”
* * *
The dress I’d bought from Mercer was even more beautiful in the daylight, the color of ripe raspberries shimmering in morning dew. It fit me exactly, too, sweeping in a wide arc from one shoulder to the other, creating a perfect parallel to the cut of my clavicle.
The housemaid Onal had bullied into helping me was a reticent, reluctant girl named Nina; she tugged and teased my hair into a half-dozen of the most current styles, only to nervously unpin it as many times more, afraid Onal would find the work unsatisfactory. After the seventh failed attempt, I thanked and dismissed her, letting my hair tumble loosely over my shoulders instead.
Zan liked it that way the best, free to be lazily twirled between his fingers.
I was trying to banish those painful thoughts when Kellan knocked softly and entered.
“I was supposed to be drinking with Jessamine tonight,” I said with a sigh. “She’ll be sorry I stood her up.”
“I’ve met Jessamine,” Kellan said, “and I think she’ll manage fine without you.”
He came to stand beh
ind me as I studied my reflection in his tall, gilt-edged mirror.
“I brought something for you,” he said. “A final touch.”
He moved my hair aside and lifted his hands over my head. Strung between them was a black velvet ribbon, upon which hung a single ornament: Zan’s firebird charm. Paired with the crimson dress, the gems became incandescent, sparking fire with the slightest turn.
The firebird settled into the hollow of my throat as Kellan said, “It’s not my place to tell you how to feel. I know that. But I know what this meant to him. And to you.”
“Thank you,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster.
“I’ve got to get back to the party,” he said. “Father Cesare said that you should head up to the sanctorium before the procession begins. He has a book he wants to show you.”
I nodded, secretly relieved. In Syric, the coronation procession wove in and out of the streets, running from the castle to the Grand Empyrean Basilica on the other side of the city, a five-mile journey with the citizenry gathered on each side to cheer and cast flower petals under the feet of the processional participants. I’d never seen it myself, as my father ascended to the throne many years before I was born, but I heard the stories from my mother, who’d describe the events in intricate detail while I absorbed every word with bright eyes.
This would be a procession in miniature, winding through the maze from Greythorne Manor to the steps of the Stella Regina; a nod to tradition, at least, on aging cobble instead of gleaming silver stone, scattered with leaf litter rather than rose petals. The Stella was no Grand Basilica, but it had a simple, exquisite kind of beauty: white marble pillars and crimson doors, crowned by a gleaming black roof. And it had a lauded place in royal history: Praying at the Stella Regina before the end of the Renalt-Achlevan war, King Theobald said that the Empyrea herself had come to him in a dream and commanded him to offer the next female heir of his line to the next prince of Achleva. It was, in a sense, the birthplace of the treaty that would one day bind my fate to Zan’s.
Though I could hear voices and laughter coming from the direction of the banquet hall, I turned gratefully in the other direction; there was not much I wanted to do less than go rub shoulders with the same people who’d witnessed my reckless attempt to save Simon at the last banquet I’d attended in Syric. I slipped out the back service entrance into the cool afternoon air.
In preparation for the procession, the monks of the Stella had tied blue ribbons into the hedges along the proper path to the church so that no one would get lost on the way in. I wished they’d been there the night before but was glad enough for them now. I was only a few steps in, however, when I heard someone come up behind me.
“Aurelia?”
I turned to find my brother at the mouth of the maze. He was wearing the new cape I’d left at his bedside, his dark golden curls gleaming against the cobalt blue of the fabric. He also wore a doublet of gold brocade and a shiny new pair of gold-buckled shoes.
I hugged him quickly. “Don’t worry, little brother. I’m not leaving. I’m just heading up to the sanctorium a little early. I’m going to talk to Father Cesare and then pick out my seat. Don’t want to risk getting stuck behind Lady Gaskin and that three-foot bird’s nest she calls hair.” I felt a sharp jab in my ribs. “Ouch! What is—”
He had been holding the narrow, point-ended puzzle box when I hugged him. He quickly hid it in his tunic and went about brusquely straightening and smoothing his cape and clothes. “Aurelia,” he said, more businesslike than a child carrying around a toy had any right to be, king or not, “I am not worried that you won’t be there tonight. I know you will be. I needed to talk to you because . . . Here. Take this.” He looked over both shoulders to make sure we were alone before thrusting an object into my hands.
It was my luneocite dagger. I’d laid it away in one of my trunks after Simon forbade me to use more magic; Conrad must have rifled through my things to retrieve it.
