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Somewhere in the crowd, I hear Camilla laughing.
Guards quickly restrain the girls and escort them out. Many in the audience sneak smiles amid the shocked titters; the princess isn’t the only one who’s suspicious of Raya.
I know Balican ambassadors have been busy behind the scenes as well. Rumor has it, they weren’t informed of Raya’s arrival, which is strange. Dante has been constantly at Cyrus’s side, harried and conversing in a hushed voice; I wonder how much he knows of Cyrus’s true feelings for his bride-to-be.
Presently, the prince has an arm draped around Raya and he’s whispering something in her ear. Whatever it is, it seems to ease her. If you don’t look too hard, you could believe they’re in love.
If you didn’t know the wide-pupil look the prince had for things he truly desired. If you never scraped off his veneer with your own fingernails as he pressed you against a wall.
No one would believe Cyrus would rather kiss me than her, even if the Fates shouted it themselves. People would sooner stop believing in the Fates.
When everyone is calm again, Cyrus at last announces the date of the wedding: the twenty-eighth of Hetasol. The day before the autumn equinox.
I finish off my wine. The Fates’ deadline for Cyrus’s death is the end of summer.
Few things are coincidence.
The fireworks begin in the gardens and the crowd sweeps away to celebrate the couple…or pretend to. I meet Cyrus’s gaze for the barest of moments before he follows the othersout. There is nothing in his expression: aloof brows, even mouth, starched shirt, like how he was the first day he came back from his tour and I was just a nuisance. Not yet crowned and he is already rewriting history.
I never expected otherwise. There are no love stories found upon the throne. Only secrets and schemes and spider-fingered kings.
Still, I wonder.
Was there ever a thread where things were different? Where we didn’t end up resenting each other? Maybe even liked each other?
Was there one where I never saved him?
If I hadn’t, would I have found my way to the palace through some other means? Would it be Camilla rising to take the crown? Or the Council puppeteering his cousin or some other choice of theirs in the dead prince’s place? Would I be safe in my tower in those threads?
But I did save Cyrus that day in the marketplace. Wove that choice into the cloth of the world, severing the other threads. We kissed the morning after the ball, and I’ll think about it every time I see him—the memory of it on my face, in my voice, in my judgment. There is no unraveling of what’s been done.
Alongside my dreams, his touch haunts my sleep. That moonless night, I twist in my sheets, aching for things I never imagined before.
My tower is burning.
Black from char, black with rot, the vines around it continue to grow in their dying throes. Thorny like briar, curling and multiplying until the fire catches them, too.
—
I am burning.
His lips beg along my skin, trailing whispers from mouth to throat to hollows. His hands mold to me like they have always known me. I am the weakness in his heart made flesh.
Our bodies tangle, greed begetting greed.
—
A manor is burning.
Flames crackle like thunder, loud as the screams. On the balcony, a wide-hipped figure stands in stark silhouette, laughing.
The balcony collapses. The figure is gone.
A raven soars into the sky.
On the day that my tower reopens for readings, the king’s footman arrives bearing a message for me. “Please set aside time later this evening, Sighted Mistress,” he says. “Lady Raya will be visiting your tower.”
The footman sidesteps the damaged areas of the antechamber while leaving. The carpet needs to be entirelyreplaced; claw marks go down to the woodwork. The maids cleaned up the blood the best they could, but the dark splotches are obvious. Sometimes I find scraps of fur caught behind furniture, musky as a fresh pelt.
