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“You feel anxious?”
Juliana stared at him incredulously. “For the past three years I’ve lived under the assumption that we could be attacked at any given moment.”
“Ah,” said Hawthorn, smiling as he drank again, “for a moment, I thought you were worried about me.”
Juliana didn’t dignify that statement with a response. “What are you going to do about Lucinda?”
He sighed, slumping back in his chair. “Pretend to entertain her for the next three days. Hopefully she’ll do something utterly vile and I can truthfully tell my mother I’d rather die than marry her. Wait,” he paused, “I’d rather die than marry her. Oh, look, it appears I’m already there.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Apparently, I am.”
Juliana decided not to press it. She crossed the room and lent against the windowsill, staring out at the garden. “I’m usually the melancholy one.”
He did not smile. “My turn, for a moment then. I imagine I’ll have a few more of these moments before your service is up. Fair warning.”
“I shan’t complain.”
“You will,” he said shortly, with a twinge of sadness she couldn’t quite pin.
Hawthorn successfully avoided Lucinda all the way until dinner time, where she was seated next to him at the table. Juliana was posted in the shadows, watching her leaning towards him, hating the twist in her gut every time he offered her so much as a smile.
Why should she care? If he forgave her, it was for the best. They’d likely barely see each after his birthday, anyway.
One way or another.
A vine nudged her elbow, and she reached out to pet it. “I just don’t think she’d make a good queen, all right?” she whispered.
The vines trembled in their giggling way, and slunk back to the walls.
After dinner was cleared away, dancers were brought into the hall, and after them, music. A few courtiers began to dance.
“Shall we not take a turn about the room?” Lucinda asked, pawing at Hawthorn’s arm.
“You are asking me if I wish to dance?”
Lucinda laughed. “I’m asking you ifyou’llask me.”
Hawthorn’s jaw twitched, almost imperceptibly. “We may dance, if you so wish.”
“I do,” she said, dragging him by the hands. “I remember you were a fine dancer.”
“I was a boy then.”
“Then I’m hoping you’ll be even better now.”
She placed his hand against her delicate, slender waist, and forced him into a twirl. Hewasa good dancer, but Lucinda moved like a wind nymph, as graceful and fluid as a feather.
Juliana’s stomach turned. She could dance as well as any mortal who’d trained in footwork, who’d grown up on a diet of faerie music. But she did not possess this otherworldly elegance. She never would.
I am not one of them. Not one of them.
The vines trembled behind her, no longer giggling, but hissing. They coiled down the walls like snakes, making Juliana panic.
It’s the vines,she reminded herself, noting the minute differences in movement that somehow quelled her fears.
They wriggled across the floor.
