It takes almost an hour of scrubbing with Lora’s harsh soap before the mava even starts to come off me, leaving my skin and face tender and still stained a dull purple in spots. I draw curious looks from the other servants when I emerge into the kitchen.
Waiting there with Lora is the Queen’s handmaiden, the one who helped me with the Queen’s jewels when they spilled over the floor. But she is so out of place here in the kitchen that it takes me a beat to recognize her. Pretty, dark-haired, with constellations freckled across her skin, she’s maybe a few years older than me. She’s dressed more elegantly than the rest of us, in a simple but well-made dress of velvet so dark red it’s almost black, so long it brushes the floor, though she’s marked as a servant by the white cap pinned to her hair. She smiles shyly at me.
“Jules, this is Caro,” Lora says, then adds pointedly, “the Queen’s handmaiden.”
It’s an unsubtle reminder to show respect for someone who outranks me. My heart hardens a little even as I hastily drop into a curtsy. “I’m sorry, miss.”
“No matter,” Caro says softly—whispers, really. Somehow I still hear her over the din of the kitchen, as if I’m hearing the sea’s echo inside a large shell. She gestures airily for me to stand. “I’m pleased to meet you, Jules. Roan told me you were interested in the handmaiden position to Her Majesty and Lady Gold. You can sew, can’t you?”
“A . . . a little, I suppose,” I say, looking between her and Lora. “I did some mending back”—the word Crofton dies on my lips—“in my hometown. But nothing near as fine as Lady Gold’s wardrobe.” A pang goes through me at the thought of Ina Gold’s wedding gown.
“You’ll do fine, I’m sure. We only help tack it for the seamstresses in any case.” Caro reaches out and takes my hand, startling me, and turns to Lora.
“Take as long as you need,” Lora says, eyeing me shrewdly. “Lord Liam had assigned her to a task, but—”
“I’m sure the Queen’s wishes override Liam Gerling’s,” Caro says simply. I try not to smile at Caro’s clear disdain for the elder Gerling brother. A hush falls over the kitchen, and Lora’s head bobs, quick to agree.
Then, the Queen’s handmaiden is tugging me away.
In the hall, she links arms with me, and we stroll side by side like old friends as she explains that the Queen distrusts strangers, so most of my time in this position would be spent attending to Lady Gold. She tells me three of Lady Gold’s ladies-in-waiting fell ill on the journey to Everless. The lie falls so easily from her, that I wonder if I misheard Roan and Ina at the whispering wall. But Bea, too, said that people had been killed.
“No other girls will be helping us? I expected more—”
Caro slows down her walk almost imperceptibly, quarter-turning to look at me. Her eyes are a light, washed-out green, and something sparkles in them.
“More . . . ?” She asks, but I have no answer. I avert my eyes, fearful I’ve pressed too far. But she smiles widely again and picks up her gait. “You have no competition, if that’s what you’re wondering. People are intimidated by real power, Jules. You mustn’t forget that.”
As Caro tugs me along, I have to focus to maintain a smile whenever she looks at me. I’m not used to being so close to another person; surprisingly, Caro’s closeness and cheer warms me.
“You know the estate well,” Caro says, the third time I lead her in a turn toward the royal quarters. “Have you been here very long?”
“Just a couple of weeks.” I hesitate, but then the bitter realization sinks in—with Papa gone and Liam and Roan both knowing who I am, there’s little risk in being myself. “But my father worked here, when I was a child. I grew up at Everless.”
“I see.” Caro’s voice is even softer now; she seems to hear something amiss in my tone. “And why did you come back?”
The image of Papa’s face when I last saw him, alone in the dark cold of the root cellar, flashes through my mind, and for a moment I can’t breathe. Suddenly, I feel that I have to tell the truth, or I might suffocate with the weight of it.
“He died,” I say simply. “Recently.” I don’t think I can manage any more of an explanation. Caro just slows a little, looks into my eyes, and clasps my arm tighter.
“I’m sorry,” she says gently. “And your mother?”
My silence is its own answer.
Caro nods, grasps my arm again. “My parents, too, when I was younger. If you’d like to do this another time . . .”
I shake my head, grateful for the plain empathy in her words. “No. Thank you. I want to get my mind off it.”
“I think that’s the best thing to do in a time of loss,” Caro says. She smiles, the expression full of shared grief and understanding, and it feels as if an anvil has been lifted from my chest.
Genteel noises of soft music and murmured conversations float toward me as we make our way through the upper floors. It makes my skin prickle with nervousness—the quiet between Caro and me is suddenly deafening. What sparkling conversation can I hope to provide Lady Gold, if I bore her handmaiden? I hope she isn’t expecting someone else like Caro, collected and perfectly put together.
As if she can feel what I’m thinking, Caro fills the silence by humming a sweet, sad tune as we walk—it’s familiar, though I can’t place it. She starts to sing: “Your voice is an hour’s rose; your soul a loving thief. I’ll follow you through the fledgling woods, till your heart is mine to keep.”
“That song,” I ask. “What is it?”
“A very old one. The Queen’s favorite.”
The melody is a simple back-and-forth between only a few notes, though the words tell a story of loss, of love—of violence.
Soon, Caro stops at a door on the right and turns to me. Her lips part slightly, and her eyes widen in shock. “Jules, you’re crying.”
I bring my hand to one cheek, surprised when my fingers come away wet. My face flames. “It’s all right,” I assure her, and smile. “It was such a beautiful song.”
Caro smiles, nods. “The Queen had it written in honor of the Sorceress.”
“Is it true? That the Sorceress walked with the Queen?” I ask.
“Caro!” a voice calls from the other side of the door. “Have you found Roan’s friend?”
Roan’s friend. The words echo in my mind.
My heart beats quickly—one, two, three—and repeats, like the song’s melody, while Caro produces a key from her dress and opens the door. I cock my head, confused that Lady Gold should be locked in.
Caro sees my look and leans in close, speaking even more softly than normal. “Lady Gold’s guards were lost recently,” she tells me. “And she doesn’t like to be surrounded by strangers, so she refused to take any Everless guards. It made the Queen furious.”
She opens the door and leads me into a sumptuously decorated suite, all lush red carpets and gossamer curtains floating from huge windows. The space is flooded with the winter sun, but it’s warm, and suffused with the fragrance of rosewater.
One corner of the room is taken up with a massive, cloud-like bed, covered now in dresses of every color, flung there haphazardly as if tried on and discarded. By the bed, Lady Ina Gold stands in a silk shift and petticoat, her arms and calves bare except for a few simple metal bangles, and her short hair loose. She’s holding one dress—as shiny and liquid as molten emeralds—up to the light, examining it with a critical eye. When the door closes behind us she turns to face me and Caro.
Instinctively I cast my eyes down to avoid seeing her half-dressed. “My lady,” I hear Caro say in her carrying whisper. “This is Jules Ember.”
I look up, my cheeks burning, to meet Ina Gold’s eyes. She’s my height exactly, my age, but from a different world than me. The fact that she’s never had a care in the world seems to shine through in her face—her body. Her skin glows, free from even the suggestion of a scar or callus.
A stray thought sends a chill down my spine: someday, long after I’m dead and buried, this girl will be queen.
And another: she’ll spend all those years with Roan.
Ina smiles with no self-consciousness as she reaches out and clasps my free hand.
“Miss Ember,” she says. Her voice is rich, her vowels bell-like, with the strange accent that only the Queen, Caro, and she seem to have. “Thank you for coming. I’m so pleased you could join us. Roan said you were a treasure—I don’t know why he didn’t tell his mother that in the first place, before we wasted our time . . .”
Unsure how to react, I curtsy clumsily in response, keeping my eyes on the carpet. “Lord Gerling wasn’t aware I was at Everless until yesterday, Lady Gold. The pleasure is all mine.”
She turns toward the bed, sweeping her arm out over the array of dresses crumpled there. “Caro and I were just debating. It’s tradition that a bride wear the colors of her groom’s family, the family she’ll be joining. But green doesn’t suit me. And technically”—she raises her eyebrows—“I outrank Roan, don’t I?”
Despite her teasing words, there’s an undercurrent of wonder in her voice when she speaks about the wedding—about Roan—that makes me think she’s not just boasting. Her face shines like a little child who’s woken up to fresh snow.
Already, I know that she is in love with Roan Gerling. And from the way she’s smiling, he must love her back. Who wouldn’t?
My feelings twist and take a strange shape inside me. It’s easy to be jealous of the future queen, who might be marrying a Gerling for politics’ sake; it feels different with the girl in front of me, grinning and barefoot and obviously infatuated.
“Caro thinks I should wear green,” Lady Gold continues. She tosses the green silk gown on the bed, glorious even in its disheveled state. “But I like this one.” She holds up another dress to her body—red, the color of the Queen, with sleeves that drape artfully off her shoulders. “But is it too risqué for Everless?”
“Not at all,” I volunteer, surprising myself. “You haven’t seen it yet, but the Gerling ladies wear much more scandalous things on lesser occasions.”
A trickle of pleasure drops through me as Ina giggles gratefully. Caro looks cross—as if she’s lost a bet. “But do you like it, Jules?” Ina asks. “No Everless girl will tell us the truth. They’re afraid of upsetting me.”
As a little girl at Everless, I was transfixed by the gowns and the jewels that adorned the women, as taken with pretty objects as any girl of better birth. Papa used to call me a little magpie, for the way I collected things—flawed jewels not good enough for Gerling swords, scraps of ribbon, a stray gold earring—and kept them in a bowl on my nightstand. But they were my own stash of tiny treasures. When we were exiled and went to Rodshire, then Crofton, I turned away from such things. I pretended to scorn them.
But now Lady Gold is looking at me as she holds the red dress to her body. Her eyes are on mine, like she actually cares about my answer. I want to reach out and tear the fabric of the skirt to shreds, but I bite my lip and fold my hands in front of me.
“Maybe something gold?” I venture after a few moments. “It’s the secondary color of both your families. And after all . . .” I incline my head meaningfully at Ina Gold, half shocked that I’ve made a joke, and half hoping desperately that either of the other girls will pick it up.
After a moment, Lady Gold does. Her laugh is sudden and infectious, making me smile in spite of myself.
“You know, I hadn’t thought of that,” she says. She turns to Caro. “Gold. What do you think?”
Caro smiles. “It’s a little unconventional,” she whispers. “But gold does look rather lovely on you.” She tilts her head, considering Ina. “I’ll have the seamstresses make one up; in the meantime, let’s keep fitting the others, so they have a model to work off of.” She gestures with her hands, and, sighing theatrically, Ina lifts the green dress from the bed and shakes the wrinkles out, then neatly steps into it and turns so Caro can do up the buttons in the back.
Once she has, Caro folds the fabric of the dress against Ina’s body and instructs me to hold it in place while she deftly inserts pins, never once nicking Lady Gold’s skin. Her voice is no less commanding for being in a whisper.
While I stand blushing, trying to balance keeping a respectful distance from Ina Gold and holding a handful of fabric in place across her chest, Caro and Lady Gold gossip about a hedge witch Caro saw recently, who told her that she would soon reunite with her first and truest love. When Ina teasingly asks her who that might be, Caro blushes and changes the subject to some noblewoman who’s birthed a child with a striking resemblance to her handsome footman.
“Jules,” Lady Gold’s voice breaks through my reverie. “You would know. Is Liam always so dour? Or is it only when everyone else is having a good time?”
The sound of Liam’s name sends an unpleasant jolt through me, and I almost drop the fold of green fabric in my hand. “I—I don’t know Lord Liam well, my lady,” I stammer. I remember that they are outsiders at Everless, though it seems to me that you can never be an outsider when the Queen’s bells ring to welcome you. No one from here would dare to criticize him. “He’s always been . . . distant.”
Lady Gold scrunches her face up, making a show of tipping her nose up high in the air. “I’m Liam Gerling,” she says in an exaggerated, deep version of her own aristocratic accent. “I shan’t talk to anyone at this party. Clearly, my time is better spent sulking in a corner, glaring daggers at anyone who dares to speak to me.”
As I choke back a laugh—I’ve never heard anyone make fun of a Gerling so openly—Caro shakes her head. “His poor mother,” she whispers. “Lady Verissa has proposed a dozen possible brides, I hear, and he turned them all down.”
“Perhaps they changed their minds when they saw what a storm cloud he is,” Lady Gold suggests. “And he just says he turned them down, to cover up the embarrassment. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to marry him, not for all the time in Sempera.”
“Roan got the looks and the personality,” Caro says in a teasing whisper.
“Agreed,” I say without thinking, then hurriedly look down to hide the heat I can feel rising in my cheeks.
Ina seems not to have noticed—or care—but I feel Caro’s eyes on me.
“How long have you known Lord Roan, my lady?” I say quickly. As the words leave my mouth, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind Ina, all pallor and sharp angles and shadows under my eyes. The contrast between me and Lady Gold couldn’t be clearer.
But the princess doesn’t look fazed. “Ah,” she says. “Well, first, call me Ina. And I met Roan when the Gerlings visited the palace two years ago.”
Dimly, I remember that while the Gerlings were gone, Crofton set up a row of lean-tos in the market plaza with games for children, an abundance of music and singing, and as much candied fruit as we could spare. They stood the entire week the Gerlings were away, as a kind of celebration—a desperate attempt at merriment.
“We . . . got along well,” Ina continues. Another of those giggles that simultaneously entrances me and tears at my heart. I know it will hurt me to hear it, but I want to know everything about Roan and Ina.
“We exchanged letters after that,” Ina continues, “but had to keep it a secret; the Queen is supposed to choose who I’ll marry. Actually, it’s thanks to Caro that she chose Roan.” Ina gives the lady-in-waiting a grateful glance. “She’d found one of the letters”—Caro gives a small, mischievous smile—“and the Queen suggested that we forge a closer alliance with the Gerlings before the sun had fully risen. Of course, I never knew about any of this until after the engagement was announced. This one underestimates her influence.” Ina looks lovingly at Caro, who blushes.
“That’s . . . a wonderful story,” I whisper, my chest tight.
“Isn’t it?” The happiness in Ina’s voice is so genuine that I can’t resent her, even though my heart hurts for myself. Once Caro and I release her, she takes a step away from us and twirls, the green fabric lifting in a shining circle around her ankles. It’s not even a finished dress, but her movement makes it look like the most polished of gowns.
“Ina’s whole life is a wonderful story,” Caro whispers to me—a softer version of her normal whisper—as Ina crosses the room to examine our handiwork in the full-length mirror. “You’ve heard about it, surely?”
I nod, trying not to stare at Ina out of the corner of my eye. It seems impossible she was ever anything other than this—glittering, laughing, beautiful, blessed. But everyone in Sempera knows her history: she was one of the hundreds of children whose parents abandoned them on the shores of the palace or surrendered them to an orphanage in the desperate hope that the child would become the Queen’s heir, as she declared centuries ago. A five-hundred-year-old promise, fulfilled now by the girl standing in front of me.
Of course, I, like most of the people of Sempera, am more familiar with the story that lurks underneath the shimmering surface of Ina’s own: Almost all the children abandoned to the Queen grow up in an orphanage. When they come of age—often earlier, even—those who aren’t adopted by families leave for jobs as servants or laborers. Papa had always scorned the Queen’s proclamation. It led to horrors in practice—she lived so long that a child was only chosen once every few decades, only to be found wanting or assigned to some other lesser role, or succumbing to sickness—or, I shudder, remembering Lady Sida’s insinuations, falling victim to the Queen’s whims when she decided she no longer wanted to give up the throne. But that didn’t stop parents from leaving children by the hundreds every year, all fueled by the same delusional hope that their child had to be the one.
Ina approaches us with a handful of fabric clutched in her fist, a silent command that we make it disappear. Sticking a pin between my lips, I kneel in front of the future queen.
And Ina was chosen. The news had sent ripples through the kingdom, or so people said. Vaguely, I remember palace servants gossiping about Ina after she’d been chosen. The smooth stone in her mouth when she was born was supposed to be a blessing from the Sorceress. This news reached the Queen, and the Queen’s own surname, Gold, was appended, and the girl taken to the palace, as good as Her Majesty’s own daughter.
I wonder who her mother and father are. Are they alive today? Do they even know that Ina is the nameless infant they abandoned on the shores? My heart clenches at the next thought.
Maybe that’s what happened to me.
Since reading Papa’s note, I have tried not to think about what it said . . . that he was not in fact my father at all. But if that’s true, and I’ve never met my mother either, it’s possible I, too, was one of those abandoned orphans, taken in by Papa too early for anyone to remember.
Which means that I, too, could have been chosen by the Queen. But I was not.
Something stabs into my finger. I’ve stuck myself with the pin. I yank my hand away from Ina before blood gets on her dress, and suck the blood off my skin—but something is wrong. Ina is twisting to look at me, but slowly, like she’s moving through amber. I have my hands back in place before she turns around. And when she looks at me, she just blinks once and turns away again, as if she’s forgotten what caught her attention. Caro stares at Ina with a confused look for a moment, like she’s forgotten herself.
I realize what happened, of course. When I pricked myself, time froze—or slowed—like when I fished for the trout in a stream, so many days ago, or when I confronted the Gerling guard in the Crofton market while waiting to be selected as an Everless girl. Nerves flare in me. It hasn’t happened since I arrived, or if it has, it was too subtle to notice.
Thankfully, they both seem to dismiss the irregular moment. Ina submits to further alterations, and Caro smiles her mysterious smile. “It’s lucky your parents decided to give you to the kingdom, Ina. No other baby has ever been so lucky, or so deserving.”
The clock ticks once, twice before Ina smiles graciously. She surely doesn’t remember her parents, but it clearly still wounds her—I don’t think I imagined the look of hurt that flashed across her face. It’s hard to believe that anything can sadden this beautiful, laughing girl, Roan’s betrothed, the future queen—but I’ve learned firsthand how difficult unanswered questions from one’s parents can be.
When Caro finally deems the drapes and folds of the dress perfect, Ina slips carefully out of the fabric and Caro and I fold it to be taken down to the seamstress. As we line the shoulders up, Caro says, “Jules, I’m going to recommend to the Queen that you be appointed as the new handmaiden.”
“If you’d like,” Ina adds quickly. “I hope you do.”
It takes a second for her words to land, but when they do, I have to stop myself from dropping the dress to throw my arms around Caro. “Thank you!” I say breathlessly. “Thank you so much.”
“You’ll serve me more than the Queen, of course,” Ina says. “She prefers Caro to look after her, and only sparingly.”
The joy in my heart feels foreign after so much grief. And if I look too closely at it, there’s something dark and strange flitting about its edges—it’s odd to be thrilled at being one step closer to the woman who Papa warned me against, who may have driven him to his death.
But the joy is too sweet to think about the darkness now. I push it back into the corners of my heart, to let out and deal with when the time comes.
“First,” Caro says, “the Queen must approve. We’ll take you to her now.”