I scurry into the room and scan each level for any sign of Sir or Mather or Dendera, anyone. The more empty corners I see, the harder my heart hammers.
They’re not here.
Their absence shakes me out of the lightness of preparing for the ball, of getting to take a bath, of the luxury and finery of Bithai. Here I am, standing in Cordell’s library, playacting like some foreign damsel, all ball gowns and lavender-vanilla perfume. I should embrace this. I shouldn’t care that I won’t find out anything before the ball, because this type of normalcy is what Sir wanted for me, isn’t it? To dance and laugh and wear frilly dresses. To lead an easier life.
But however nice it is to have a tub full of steaming water, however pretty my gown is, I’ve never wanted this kind of life. Dendera would talk about the days when Winter was whole and its court was intact, when Queen Hannah would throw lavish balls like all the other kingdoms of the world. The ladies would dress in fine ivory gowns and the men in deep blue suits, and everything glittered silver and white. I would listen to Dendera’s stories and smile at the images, but it was the tales of Winter’s battles that filled my dreams. Tales of protecting our kingdom. Fighting for our land. Defending our people.
Not that the courtiers were any less worthy of Winter than the soldiers who fought for it, but I never wanted the life Dendera said she’d had. I wanted a life of my own, a life where I could feel myself being a part of Winter. And that, to me, came through fighting for it.
A piece of parchment on the music stand catches me, and I pick it up. Something about the way the script bends in a frantic, scratched hand, like whoever wrote it was in a hurry to get the poem down.
Words made me.
They shifted over me from the moment I took breath;
Little black lines etched into my body as I wriggled and screamed
And learned their meanings.
Duty. Honor. Fate.
They were beautiful heart tattoos.
So I took them and kept them and made them my own,
Locked them away inside of me and only took them out
When other people got their meanings wrong.
Duty. Honor. Fate.
I believed in everything.
I believed in him when he said I was his greatest duty.
When he said I would be his greatest honor.
I believed no one but him and his three words.
Duty. Honor. Fate.
I believed too much.
There’s a pain in it, the same I-want-more-than-this pain that makes my dress a little less pretty. It sucks my breath away. I’d expect something like this just lying around if we were in Ventralli, which is known for its artists, but not in Cordell. Cordell is all money and power and fertile farmlands. Who wrote this?
“Lady Meira?”
I fly around, parchment fluttering to the ground, gown whooshing in a great funnel of red. At first I think it’s Noam. Same tall build, same golden hair, same dark-brown eyes. But this man isn’t old enough to have gray in his hair, only a few years older than me, and his skin is smooth, sporting only a patch of stubble on his chin. He’s much more handsome than Noam too, not quite as harsh, like he’s more apt to sing a ballad than lead a kingdom.
I smooth my dress. “Prince Theron,” I guess.
An intrigued light brightens his face. His eyes drop to the parchment resting between us on the carpet, words up, and the light falls. He dives, grabs the paper, crumples it in his fist like he can disintegrate it through sheer will.
“Golden leaves,” Theron curses, catches himself, and grimaces, the paper in his hands cracking through his careful foundation of manners. “I’m sorry. This isn’t—it’s nothing.”
I frown. “You wrote that?”
His mouth tightens. Fighting with admitting to it or getting this conversation back on course.
I motion at the paper he gently sets on a table. “It’s good,” I say. “You’re talented.”
A little of Theron’s panic ebbs away. “Thank you,” he says cautiously as the corners of his lips lift. It’s not Mather’s full-face smile, but it still disarms me, making my legs weak under the layers of skirts and petticoats.
I clear my throat, pulling my focus off of Noam’s shockingly attractive son and back on to why I’m here. Even if Sir or Mather shows up now, we would have to talk in front of Theron. So I lift my skirt in a slightly more ladylike way and walk around the piano toward him.
“Apparently I’m wanted at a ball,” I say. “I don’t want to risk incurring the wrath of Rose. Are you on your way there as well?”
Theron nods and puts a hand on my arm when I pass him, gently enough for me to feel an indescribable tingle rush up and down my body. A single spark of lightning created by his fingers on that one small spot of my arm.