One of the little girls had spun too violently and nearly collided with the fountain before Lynet lunged to catch her. “Be careful,” she said, but the child’s laughter drowned out her warning.
“My friend thinks you’re pretty,” the little girl said, pushing her tawny hair off her forehead with her wrist. She pointed to a boy her age, six or seven likely, who was staring firmly at his feet, his face a little red. “You should dance with him.”
“Oh, I can’t—” Lynet started to say, but then she wondered—why not? When else would she have the excuse at her age to dance like a child again? “Actually, yes, I will,” Lynet said, and she let the girl pull her by the hand over to the other children.
The boy was even redder now, so Lynet took his hands and said, “Will you show me how to dance? I was never allowed to when I was a child.”
He nodded, and soon they were spinning together in a circle, hands linked. The other children all wanted a turn, and Lynet danced with them all, one by one. She quickly grew breathless, and the heat of the sun weighed her down, but for a while, at least, she forgot that she had ever been anyone else.
And then, as she was mid-twirl, she received a vivid reminder.
Walking across the square at just that moment was Nadia.
That dark braid down her back, the sharp lines of her face—Lynet nearly stumbled over her feet as she fell out of the dance, so sure that she’d seen Nadia. But then she looked more closely, and she didn’t recognize anyone in the crowd. Was her mind playing a trick on her by showing her what she wanted to see? That dream last night—
But if she had seen Nadia, then what was she doing here? The only way Lynet could imagine her leaving the king’s sickbed was if … if the king didn’t need a surgeon anymore, one way or the other. Suddenly all her old fears were upon her again, winding around her like invisible coils.
Lynet left the children behind to follow the apparition in the direction of the marketplace, hunting for one dark head among a patchwork of colors, but Nadia—if it really had been her—was gone.
She was still walking through the marketplace, glancing from face to face, when a large bell rang out. Lynet jumped at first, but then she remembered the bell tower that was part of the newer church. People were starting to head in that direction, and Lynet joined them, curious. By the time she reached the churchyard, she heard the sound of cheering, and she saw the same children dancing outside the gates.
Lynet approached the little boy she’d first danced with, kneeling down to summon him over to her. “What’s happened?” Lynet asked him. “Why is everyone cheering? Why did the bell ring?”
He smiled brightly. “There was a message from Whitespring,” he said. “The king and princess are both dead, but Queen Mina is still on the throne.”
“To the southern queen!” a grown voice called out.
“To the southern queen!” the crowd answered.
The boy ran off then, leaving Lynet still on her knees.
* * *
The news rapidly spreading through the city was that the king had been seriously wounded in a hunting accident, and the princess, in her grief over his impending death, had flung herself off a tower. When the king heard his daughter was dead, he died on the spot.
There were three parts to the story—one Lynet knew was true, and one she knew was a lie, but the third … she had no way of knowing about the third.
It’s my fault, Lynet thought as she wandered without direction through the city. She was barely aware that she was moving at all. He died because of me—because of all the things I told him, because I ran away. She suddenly felt a nauseating rush of guilt for cutting her hair.
Lynet ducked into an alley and doubled over, her body retching even though she had eaten nothing today. When her stomach relented, she huddled against the wall, leaning her forehead against her knees as her whole body shook with tears. It was silly to cry now, she told herself. She had known he would die—that was why she had wanted to leave in the first place. But now she wondered … if she hadn’t decided to run, if she hadn’t gone to the chapel to find Mina, if she had sat by her father’s sickbed like a good daughter, then would he have lived? Should she have had more faith that he would make it through the night? And if he had lived, would she and Mina still have become enemies?
Mina. The gossip was that she had kept the throne in order to prevent a war of succession. Lynet could never go back now, not unless she wanted to fight Mina for the crown. Not that she wanted to go back—she wanted to forget.
But as she rose on uncertain legs and left the alley, she wondered if that was even possible. There was no use pretending she was another person anymore, not when her father’s death had so sharply reminded her of who she was. She was probably the only person in this city who had cried for the king, and that grief defined her more clearly than her short hair or her new dress. She couldn’t forget that the king was her father, or that she had loved him.
Even now, as she continued walking through the city, she saw signs of Mina everywhere, more reminders of the life she’d tried to leave behind. The bridge that she had crossed in the cart that first night was one that Mina had rebuilt. She passed by a group of workers who were digging a new road, on the queen’s orders, so that the main road north would be less crowded. And always in the distance, over the hills, Lynet could see the shine of gold from what could only be the Summer Castle. Mina had moved to Whitespring so long ago, and yet Lynet still kept finding all these pieces of her that she had left behind. What did I leave behind? she wondered now. What pieces of herself were still in Whitespring?
The sound of a child laughing interrupted her thoughts, and she looked up to see a little girl of five or six sitting on her mother’s lap by the edge of the fountain in the square. The mother was braiding the girl’s thick brown hair, and Lynet felt a sudden stab of pain in her chest, her hand reaching for curls that were no longer there below her shoulders. That should have been us, she thought. Mina should be here with me. If they had known each other in some other way, if Lynet’s father hadn’t been a king, or if Mina and Lynet had both been made of flesh alone, no glass or snow in their hearts, would they be together now?
She moved on from the fountain with new purpose. She had delayed this moment long enough, hiding away and trying to forget the ties that still pulled at her heart. She had been relieved to feel alone and untethered before, but now felt herself tumbling into that black and empty void that kept threatening to swallow her whole. And yet there was still one way out from the void—Mina. Mina was her only family now, and Lynet couldn’t let her stepmother go until she knew there was no way to cure her.
No more distractions. No more chasing ghosts or dragging her feet. Tonight, under cover of darkness, she would break into that church. Tonight, she would become Lynet again.
24
MINA
The funerals were over. The bodies of both King Nicholas and Princess Lynet had been laid to rest in the royal crypt beside the late Queen Emilia, the three of them reunited at last. Mina had bowed her head with the rest of the court as they all offered prayers to Queen Sybil in the Shadow Garden and the caskets were carried down to the crypt.
If the people of Whitespring thought her cold or unfeeling, she didn’t care. She knew that if she fell apart in front of them now, they would never be able to believe that she could rule as queen, never trust her to be stoic in the face of hardship. And she knew, too, that if she gave in to guilt and grief, if she let them twist her face into something as ugly as her heart, that image of her would last forever, far longer than her beauty.