Chapter 23

30 days left

I t's today!" Eliza squealed. "It's today! It's today!"

She danced around the room in a way that made Aria's tired legs twinge even while standing still. But inside, she was dancing too.

Because today, she would see him again.

She glanced out the window; it was still morning. Never had a day crept slower.

Jenny finished lacing Aria's sleeves and began fastening sections of her hair. The princess's mint-green gown, commissioned especially for the tournament, bore the styles of summer, with sleeves that draped at her elbows and a skirt split at the front across a white underskirt. Her wide neckline traced a line beneath her collarbone and didn't close until just before the points of her shoulders. Her mother had warned that, without gloves, full sleeves, or even a shawl, Aria would freeze in the wind. Perhaps she would, but she hadn't been able to resist a last breath of fresh air before the heavy winter descended. Besides, the curse froze her often enough no matter what she was wearing; winter had become her companion long before the season arrived.

A better reason for the dress was that the green reminded her of Baron's eyes, and the style was more flattering on her than any of her other gowns.

Now I sound like one of those damsels from Eliza's poetry , she thought.

"Aria!" Eliza gasped, hands pressed to her mouth. "You're gorgeous !"

Too generous a description—Aria's eyes were sunken, revealing her for the tired skeleton she was—but if she was merely bones dressed for viewing, at least the viewing was elegant.

"Have you prepared yourself, Eliza?" Aria glanced coyly over her shoulder.

Eliza spun once more and leaned, dizzy, against a bedpost. "For what?"

"For when Henry wins the joust and declares to the entire court his intention to be your suitor."

Eliza turned as red as crushed tomatoes. Jenny's composure cracked into a smile.

"He has promised no such thing," Eliza said demurely. "Though when I see him before the joust, I shall be sure to remind him the most romantic acts are performed by a hero before a crowd." She raised an eyebrow. "And what of your mystery baron? Will you finally reveal him to me today?"

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps I shall just look for the man with two brothers and a crow."

"His brothers he may bring to court, but I doubt the bird will attend."

Jenny laughed, fumbling a pin. She righted it in the next moment, then stepped away. As requested, she'd left most of Aria's hair flowing down her back, taking only sections from each side to braid with ribbons and pin at the center. It was not as formal a style as Aria usually wore to court, but she remembered the way Baron stared at her when she'd visited his estate—and that day, she'd worn her hair down.

"Why have you kept him secret all this time?" Eliza whined. "Is it Christopher Hatcher? It's Lord Christopher, I'm certain. He hasn't quite inherited yet, but he will be a baron."

Secret. The word pierced Aria's ribs, and she shifted beneath the blow. There was no reason to keep her correspondence with Baron a secret; they were both unattached, eligible members of court.

Though one of them had been removed from title because he bore a witch's mark.

Hypocrite , her quill accused. The stroke it made seemed bolder than others, a thick, dark line marring the parchment of her imagination.

She was not ashamed of Baron. Not ashamed to be friends with a Caster.

Hypocrite.

Jenny helped Eliza dress, and they spoke of suitors and love, Eliza pestering the maid about her own romantic interests but earning no information beyond a mischievous smile. Jenny always seemed relaxed around Eliza while remaining formal around Aria.

Aria nearly joined the conversation, then stopped. She couldn't think of anything to say.

Once Eliza was ready at last, she and Aria left together, though Aria made her way to the kitchen alone. Eliza had her own secret rendezvous with Henry—earlier than Aria's meeting with Baron, since Henry was a tournament participant and Baron was not.

The kitchen buzzed with chatter, active as a hive. Everyone looked forward to a joust, including servants, who were relieved from duties during the event and allowed to stand behind the banisters at the edge of the field. Cook wouldn't attend—she carried no love for sporting events—but she would keep her staff busy so their few hours of absence wouldn't matter. Aria didn't want to be underfoot in the chaos, so she ducked into one of the nearby servants' quarters to wait.

To stave off exhaustion, she paced with purpose. She thought if she refused to sit, no matter how her body begged, she would be fine.

She didn't remember sitting.

She didn't remember closing her eyes.

But she woke sprawled against a servant's bed, with a curious maid hesitantly prodding her awake. Heart thundering, Aria sat up, feeling a wave of nausea.

She couldn't have.

Not the one day —

"Highness," the maid said urgently. "Are you all right? Are you ill?"

"The joust?" Aria's voice rasped. Inwardly, she prayed for a way to turn back the time.

The poor girl was baffled. "Less than an hour off, Highness. If you need—"

Aria thanked the girl, already dashing through the door and around the corner. She practically flung herself into the kitchen.

And she ran directly into Baron.

He grunted at their collision, barely catching himself with one hand on a rack of pots that clanged and rattled. His other arm darted around Aria's waist, keeping her from tumbling to the floor.

Leon's cackle echoed through the kitchen. "And you say we're clumsy."

A dull whack likely signaled Cook's wooden spoon against Leon's shoulder. Aria didn't check because she was busy looking up into Baron's eyes, as striking as she remembered—though much closer than she remembered—a lovely green speckled with faint hints of gold, like the first touch of autumn on a late summer day. A section of tawny hair had fallen across his forehead, and Aria felt the urge to reach for it.

She'd grabbed his arm by reflex, and she felt the corded muscles beneath his suit jacket, evidence of the swordsman beneath the noble.

She was staring. And blushing.

Baron's lips quirked into a wry smile.

Aria cleared her throat and stepped back. "There you are. Not that you were meant to be anywhere else. I'm sorry—I was in a rush because I didn't want to keep you waiting. I'd already kept you waiting, I mean, and I ..."

Causing physical endangerment. Mark. Babbling. Mark.

"Think nothing of it. Better you bumped into me than into that." Baron nodded meaningfully toward the far wall, which held a display of hanging knives.

Aria pressed her hands to her cheeks, fingers cool against the heated skin. She drew in a deep breath before lowering them, composing herself.

"Thank you," she said. "For your good humor and for waiting. I'm afraid I ... fell asleep."

At her words, his smile fled, leaving him with a grim expression as if he'd remembered an unpleasant duty. He ran one hand through his hair, pushing the unruly section back into place among the rest of the thick waves. He tugged at his gloves.

With a glance at a passing kitchen worker, he said, "Perhaps we could speak in the hallway."

"Yes, of course." Aria hesitated, then said, "Or, I thought we could visit the observatory tower, if you're interested. It's secluded and has a lovely view. I thought Corvin might enjoy it more than the kitchen."

Corvin perked up from where he'd been cracking walnuts. "Oh, I've seen it. I—" His face blanched. "I mean, I snuck up there the—the night of the ball."

Aria smiled. "It's lovely, isn't it?"

"Yes, it—fantastic view. I'm good. I'll stay here."

Baron had paled as well. No doubt he'd warned the boy not to go sneaking in the castle. For his sake, Aria restrained her smile.

"The hallway is fine," Baron said. "This won't take long."

One hand braced on the hilt of his dress sword, he disappeared through the door, and after a moment of confusion, she followed.

The empty hallway felt strange after the bustling kitchen, like they'd stepped into the night air away from a fire. Aria pointed down the hallway at a bench, and Baron strode to it alone, without offering his arm for her. It wasn't like she needed an escort for a twenty-foot walk, so Aria shook off her momentary disappointment and sat beside him.

He held himself stiffly, looking forward. "I apologize for Corvin. He has a bad habit of ... going places he shouldn't."

"Curiosity's not a crime. Besides, it's not as though he ..." Her voice trailed as she thought uncomfortably of Widow Morton's son, then finished softly, "Spied."

Her posture stiffened to match his. They sat in silence.

All these days, Aria had looked forward to seeing him again. How could an in-person conversation be more difficult than words on paper?

"I know—" he started.

"You promised—" she started.

They looked at one another. Aria coughed a small laugh.

"You first, Highness."

Highness. She'd hoped he would call her Aria , but she wasn't about to suggest it. Though it felt a silly distinction, she wanted him to choose informality without any influence from her.

"You promised me a story." She reached up and lightly touched the top of his witch's mark with her fingertip, just beneath his chin. "About how you got this."

At her touch, a line of goose bumps dotted his neck, and she felt a flash of guilt. She'd not considered her fingers might be cold. His skin was certainly warm, with the faint prickle of stubble, and though it seemed a shame to lower her arm, she did, rubbing her hands in her lap to warm them.

For a moment, Baron didn't speak. He cleared his throat, leaning back against the wall as if away from Aria's touch.

At last, he said, "You're aware Casting ability is woken by an effort on the Caster's part."

She nodded.

"Most often it's in response to their physical environment. I'm told Richard Langley, at ten years old, cleared rubble to save his friend. Dowager Countess Morton reportedly grew frustrated with cold bathwater and warmed it herself. She was seven."

Aria's eyebrows shot up. "Such a trivial thing?"

"To change an entire life, yes. It most often happens in childhood because children want things desperately without regard to consequence."

And we brand them for it. Aria squirmed beneath the thought.

"By the time un-activated Casters reach adulthood, they've learned to tamp down the call of magic, reaching for other solutions in its place. Eventually, the spark vanishes altogether. There's a reason the law doesn't bother testing after seventeen."

"And yourself?"

"I'm something of a ... unique case. I've been activated as long as I've been alive."

Aria frowned but didn't challenge him. His green eyes flickered in her direction, then away.

"At my birth, there were complications. My mother bled far too much. Father says when he first held me, I cried, but I also faintly glowed with a Casting. He thinks I activated my abilities in an attempt to save my mother."

"As an infant ?" Aria's eyes widened. "How ... ?"

"A great deal of magic is instinct rather than thought." He lifted one shoulder, though the careless gesture didn't match the strained lines of his jaw. "Regardless, whatever attempt I made failed, and my mother died. My father was left with arguably the world's fussiest child, one who soured milk without meaning to, or vanished bathwater in a tantrum. Many of the servants refused to work with me, and it was nigh impossible to keep a nursemaid. I scared them."

His bittersweet smile at his description of vanishing bathwater faded, leaving Aria with an ache. She'd never seen this side of magic.

She'd never seen this side of Baron.

"Father was never afraid. He could have kept his distance for safety's sake, but while I was small, he carried me almost constantly. After that, he led me around by the hand. He never even wore gloves."

"You could have affected his blood," Aria said, realizing. Blood is only fluid.

Baron gave a curt nod. After a pause, he said, "I wanted to be just like him. He was ... everything." He blinked a few times. "On to the witch's mark. There was no chance for me to be a well-kept secret, not with the constant cycling of nursemaids. Father received pressure early on to have me branded, and by the time I turned six, it was no longer a request."

"But twelve is—"

"The age for testing unknowns," Baron said, "but once a Caster is identified, branding happens quickly. I believe Widow Morton was eight for hers."

"I didn't know," Aria said softly.

She'd read her great-grandmother's branding law, but the official documentation covered only the age of testing and subsequent branding after a failed test. The policy for how to handle a Caster discovered outside of testing must have been documented during her grandmother's reign, though Aria hadn't yet found it.

Baron rubbed his witch's mark with his thumb, following the curves of the misshapen S .

Aria stared at the warped skin, imagining him as a little boy, imagining how much it must have hurt.

"Were you scared?" she whispered.

He cast her a rueful half smile, lowering his hand. "Obviously."

Her cheeks burned. Asking insensitive questions. Mark. But before she could apologize, he pressed on.

"Ironically, the day I gained my mark was also the day I gained my name. The man wielding the iron tried to console my father—not about his child being in pain, but about losing his heir. A Caster couldn't sit at court, after all. Among some other choice words, my father told the man I would be baron, and that's exactly what he called me from that day forward."

With a soft smile, Aria said, "I think I would have liked your father."

Baron hunched forward at that, bracing his elbows on his knees, staring down at his loosely knit fingers.

"It doesn't matter now," he said. "None of it matters. He's gone." He clenched his fists. "At least he doesn't have to see he was wrong."

In the silence, Aria's quill trembled, then dipped.

Mark.

She didn't know what it was for. There were no words for what she felt, but she had to have made a mistake somewhere, because only that could explain the sharp twist inside, the pinched pressure that made it hard to breathe.

Maybe it wasn't her mistake, but she was tangled in it. Her great-grandmother had written a hurtful law. Rather than correcting the policies, her grandmother had expanded them. Her father had been the iron voice that solidified the doubt cast on Baron all those years ago: A Caster cannot sit at court.

Aria had to do something. Something to mend it. Something.

Because it wasn't right.

Gently, she rested her hand on Baron's back, between his shoulder blades, and began rubbing circles with her fingers. She felt his muscles shift, but he didn't sit up or pull away. He looked up at her, a question in his bright eyes.

"I intend to abolish the branding law," she said. It wouldn't fix everything, but it was a place to start.

He frowned, as if he didn't quite believe it.

"I ..." All at once, she found herself admitting things she shouldn't. "Truthfully, I met with Widow Morton once, and we discussed changes to the laws regarding Casters. She was not impressed with my offers, I'm afraid, but still, I—"

"Do you mean it?" Baron asked.

She met his piercing eyes. There was a vulnerability in his expression. He held his lips slightly parted, as if he considered speaking more but couldn't find the words.

"Yes," Aria said.

She didn't know whether to give that a mark or not. If she did, it wouldn't be for lying.