At home, when she walked through the marketplace, she knew that the villagers were observing her every movement, watching her out of the corners of their eyes like she was a coiled snake about to strike, and so she had become used to scrutiny, to being jeered at and mocked for the slightest misstep. But now that no one was watching, she finally stopped trying to smile at everyone, and the muscles in her cheeks were grateful to her for that. She stopped trying to make eye contact in a hopeless bid for attention, stopped sitting quite so straight, stopped taking tiny bites of her bread and meat so she wouldn’t be caught with her mouth full. She simply observed the people around her and enjoyed being invisible.
And as the night wore on and Mina became more relaxed, something changed. The guests started to grow bored with one another, and their curious eyes began following her movements. The lady beside her struck up a conversation with her, and the old man opposite called her a “real beauty.” She laughed with them, holding her head at angles she knew would flatter her, because she’d studied them so long in the mirror. It was a fair trade: she gave them something pleasing to stare at, and they gave her approval, acceptance, even affection.
If they love you for anything, it will be for your beauty.
Beside her, Gregory was observing Mina’s victory with what looked like something between relief and resentment. This was what he’d wanted for her, after all, this was why he needed her, but Mina knew that he must hate having to need her in the first place. Still, he knew better than to interfere and possibly ruin whatever strange magic Mina’s beauty was working, so he kept silent, and Mina ignored him as best she could. Tonight, she was not the magician’s daughter, but an anonymous beauty.
Every so often, she scanned the crowded room, hunting for one face in particular. As she searched, it occurred to her that her stranger might already be married, but that only made her more desperate to find him and know for certain.
“A toast!” called a voice from the high table.
Mina hadn’t paid much attention to the high table, all the way at the other end of the Hall, but she looked up now—and nearly jumped out of her seat when she saw the king.
No wonder she hadn’t found her sad stranger when she searched the room; she had never thought to look for him seated on a king’s throne.
When the crowd fell silent, King Nicholas stood. “A toast,” he said, “to my daughter and to your princess. May she grow to be as beautiful as her mother, and may you all love her as you loved her mother, the queen.”
The Hall drank to the princess, but the princess didn’t matter to Mina. It was kings and queens she was thinking of, especially the dead queen who inspired such devotion in the people around her. There was genuine feeling in their faces, love for a woman who was dead and unable to return their love ever again. Queen Emilia could not have plausibly loved every person in the room, and yet they all loved her, unconditionally, unrequitedly.
Her ear caught a single word from across the banquet table, and she listened closely to single out the thread of conversation. Yes, there it was again—remarry.
“But will he remarry, do you think? He was so devoted to her,” a sharp-jawed woman was saying to the man sitting opposite her.
“Oh, he must, he must. Not in the next year, maybe not the year after that, but soon enough. The people will want a queen, and the man will want a wife.”
“And the poor princess, without a mother…”
Mina stopped listening; she’d heard what she wanted to hear. The people will want a queen, and the man will want a wife. Her sudden desire was a collision, and it left her shaking. With her beauty, she had made people pay attention to her, to notice her without mocking her. But a queen—
A queen had the power to make people love her.
7
LYNET
Lynet didn’t remain lying in the snow too long—she didn’t want anyone to come passing by and find her there, especially not Nadia. She knew Nadia had nothing to do with her birth—her creation—but Nadia was the one who had told her, and so Lynet blamed her for it anyway.
At that moment, rising from the snow that had made her, she hated everyone who had known what she was before she did—her father, Gregory, Nadia …
And Mina.
Part of her still wanted to believe that Mina hadn’t known, but the doubt would remain until she asked. Before she could back down, Lynet allowed her indignation to lead her up to the queen’s chambers. But when Lynet reached them, the queen wasn’t there. The fire was burning, though, and so Lynet knew that Mina would return soon. She walked around the room, thinking of all the times she had come here before, night after night—all those years, all those confidences she’d shared, all those opportunities for Mina to tell her the secret of her creation.
She’d always thought Mina’s room was one of the most beautiful places in Whitespring. Mina collected pieces of the South that she acquired each market day. Pale orange silk hung around her bed, the gauzy fabric shimmering like liquid. The reds and oranges and yellows of peaches and apples illuminated the room like they were made of light. On the table by her bed was a shining silver-backed hand mirror without any glass in its frame. Mina said she kept it even though it was broken because it had once belonged to her mother.
On the far wall, there was a large, wooden-framed mirror, reflecting all that color and light back at itself, magnifying the room into a world of its own. Lynet paused in front of the mirror, her own reflection startling her. She wondered what she would have looked like had she been born naturally, a child of flesh and blood. Would she still have her mother’s delicate features? Or would her outsides match her insides, her skin finally sitting comfortably over her bones so that she wouldn’t always feel like she wanted to leap out of her own body? She felt trapped by that reflection—and yet some stubborn part of her still wanted to fight for it and take it back from her mother. It was Lynet’s turn to live now, wasn’t it? She had every right to claim this reflection as her own. It would be my own, if I were anywhere but here, she thought. If she left Whitespring, left the promise of a crown and a life that wasn’t hers, then she could be whoever she wanted to be.…
The slamming of a door made her jump, and she heard voices coming from Mina’s parlor. One of the voices was Mina’s, and after listening for a moment, Lynet recognized her father’s voice as well.
“And you didn’t even think to consult me first?” Nicholas was saying.
“You’ve never cared before,” Mina replied. “I’m free to do what I want with the South. That was our agreement.”
“Building and improving roads and reviving the university was one thing, but this is a castle, Mina. What’s the point in taking on such a project?”
There was a heavy pause, and Lynet didn’t need to see her stepmother’s face to know that it was stony with anger. Lynet had years of practice pretending not to notice the arguments between her father and her stepmother. But over the years, whenever she heard Mina’s voice raised in anger or lowered in defiance, Lynet had started to imagine that it was her own, instead, telling her father all the things she wished she could say to him.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Mina said quietly, “but in the South, the Summer Castle’s abandonment always represented the North not caring about us. Finishing its construction will be a legacy of sorts, not just for me, but for you, too. It will give the South something to take pride in, and it will employ hundreds of people. I know the southerners want this, Nicholas. They write to me all the time, telling me how thankful they are that someone finally cares about them—”