Chapter 28

A t the king's invitation, several tournament participants remained at the palace for the evening feast, including the Wycliff family. Eliza was noticeably absent. The queen spoke exclusively with Lady Wycliff as if the rest of the table had faded from existence. Aria ate with her head down, not speaking unless spoken to—and no one was eager to speak to her now that they knew she was cursed. She heard one girl's whispered comment that the curse would be the death of the princess and look, didn't she appear dreadfully like a ghost already!

After dinner, she had no chance to speak with Henry, since everyone wanted to congratulate him on his excellent showing in the tournament and the possibility of his engagement to the princess.

Just before Aria left the room to turn in for the night, he caught her eyes. He was, admittedly, handsome. He wore his dark brown hair with a bit of length, and though it carried no waves, it flipped in adventurous little curls as it hit his ears and shoulders. Though dressed in formal attire—no doubt on loan from a royal closet, since his own clothes would have been sweat-soaked from jousting—he wore it casually, with his collar loosened and his shirt untucked beneath the blue vest. Eliza called him "heart melting." Aria appreciated that he didn't present as pompous.

But she could not banish from her mind a pair of green eyes. Especially not when a maid stopped her outside her room and delivered a small package.

"It came by way of a courier from Sutton Town," the maid said, curtsying and hurrying off.

Aria unwrapped the bundle to find a glass vial and a scrap of parchment. She read the note first.

I'm sorry it isn't more, but know you have my thanks. For everything.—Baron

The vial held a teaspoon's worth of clear liquid. Aria held it up, watching the yellow lamplight flash across the angles of the vial, watching the liquid roll smoothly as she turned it.

And she thought about magic.

In mythology, like The Epic of Einar , magic was always used to trick and deceive, whether employed by villains or heroes. It was a thing to be distrusted. In modern scholarly texts, magic was dissected and categorized by its relative danger—abide a Caster with caution, flee a shapeshifter with horror. It was a thing to be dreaded. In Aria's personal experience, magic was a confusion. Because the same power that cursed her had also brought her Baron.

She drank the vial's liquid in one swallow, and it tasted crisp as a mountain spring with just a hint of lemon. She smiled, thinking of green eyes and yellow orchards. Though it didn't carry the same strength as his tea, her aches eased, and her exhaustion faded to a dull weariness.

During her correspondence with Baron, Aria had reached out to one other Fluid Caster. It had been hard to find one still at home, but the elderly woman was likely too stubborn to leave her roots. Using a servant, Aria had disguised her purpose, pretending the request came from a merchant who hoped to ease the lingering tiredness of a long voyage. For a steep payment, the Fluid Caster had provided a single flask of "something healing."

Even with all the precautions, it had taken Aria a full, torturous day to work up her courage. The next morning, she'd tested the Caster's work and found it lacking poison, but also lacking luster. It barely eased her weariness, and the effects faded within the hour.

In her next letter, she'd asked Baron about his strength as a Caster.

Is your magic perhaps stronger than that of other Fluid Casters?

He'd responded.

There is variable strength in magic, but to my knowledge, it has less to do with the Caster themselves and more to do with their state of mind when Casting. For example, if Leon first puts me in a sour mood and then demands a correction to the level of salt in his broth, he deserves the resulting inedibility.

Aria smiled to herself, rolling the empty vial between her fingers, but her humor faded. Strangely, she felt a little like the vial—emptied of something powerful. She'd waited with such anticipation to see Baron again only to have the precious moments flee like a messenger bird vanishing into clouds.

Her night would be filled with letter writing, that was certain. But for the moment, with the newfound energy given by Baron, she snuck through the castle to have a closer look at Widow Morton's mysterious Artifact.

Although Widow Morton hadn't made an appearance since Aria's curse first settled, the princess knew as certainly as gray clouds would bring a storm that she would appear that night.

And because Aria could also employ theatrics, she waited for Widow Morton in the throne room, pacing around and between the four thrones on the dais. Aria had lit enough lamps to see by but not enough to fully banish the gloom, so her long, dark shadow played across the stone each time she turned directions.

"You seem anxious, Highness."

The cold voice came from behind, and Aria turned to find that the widow had spread her water mirror upward, rippling across the centermost of the stained-glass windows. The projection seemed thinner than before. Aria could see the iron framework of the window through Widow Morton, as if viewing cracks in the woman's soul. The widow still wore her black attire, but something about her looked different. A too-wide stretch to her eyes, perhaps.

Aria had asked Baron about projecting an image through water, and he'd said he'd never heard of such long-distance communication made easy and couldn't manage it after experimenting on his own.

"How do you perform a Cast like this?" Aria asked.

Widow Morton lifted her chin, as if getting a better look at Aria from beneath her slanted veil. "Curiosity about magic, Highness? I would not have guessed. Perhaps you hope the answer will give you some insight to your curse." When Aria didn't respond, the woman said, "Very well. An answer for an answer. This Cast is made possible through combination with another Caster. Now, Highness, tell me how you manage to resist my curse."

Resist . The woman had a sense of humor, it seemed. "I wouldn't be awake right now if I had power to resist."

"Correction, Highness. You would be comatose right now if you did not have power to resist. How long do you expect a person to last with mere minutes of sleep each day? At the very least, your mind should have fractured beneath the stress, yet I find you here, pacing, scowling, asking reasonable questions."

Aria blinked. She'd wondered why the curse had not grown worse over time but never thought to imagine the stability was not part of Widow Morton's plan. "I thought your magic did that. Extending the ... torture."

"To an extent. The curse has a timeline, after all, but it is a timeline involving the others of your blood. I did not expect you to last this long."

That should have terrified Aria; instead, it made her smile.

"Then I question your skill in Casting, because not only am I alive, but the rest of my family doesn't suffer."

In the first days of her curse, she'd dreaded watching the effect spread. After so many days suffering alone, she'd taken for granted, without even realizing, that Widow Morton's most morbid prediction hadn't come to pass. Eliza was safe.

"Bridle that smile, Highness. You have surprised me, but you have not escaped me."

"Why did you give the soldiers that Artifact?"

Her father's soldiers had been forced back from Northglen, but not before capturing the suspicious Artifact, which they'd claimed had been encased in glass and surrounded by painted symbols of "suspicious warlockry."

"Perhaps I want to watch His Majesty dance."

The woman's image rippled against the wall, as if in silent laughter.

"Is all of this what your husband would have wanted?"

As Aria had hoped, the question caught the widow off guard.

"My husband," Widow Morton said at last, "may have argued for your peace. But he was not a Caster, and he did not speak for me."

"Why continue pretending this is about Caster rights? Your son was not killed for magic; he didn't even possess any. He passed his test at twelve."

A shadow flashed across the widow's face, a moment of flared nostrils and hot anger. Though she returned quickly to her cold mask, Aria could not unsee it, and while her mind churned slowly over the meaning, she heard a noise behind her.

Turning, she saw a shadowed figure slowly dragging open the throne room door. Her breathing quickened, imagining another intruder breaking into the castle, but the figure who stepped into the lamplight was a familiar one.

"Aria?" Eliza squinted, glancing around. "I thought I heard you."

As Aria gaped, her heart plummeting right off the dais, Widow Morton said her final word.

"You should not have questioned my skill. Thirty days left, Highness."

The woman vanished, and a curtain of water fell to splash across the stone.

"I couldn't sleep," Eliza said, looking around as if dazed, as if she hadn't heard the widow. "Really couldn't sleep, and I kept feeling more restless the more I tried. So I went to your room, but you weren't there. What is this?"

Aria stared at the puddle of water seeping into cracks in the floor.

Finally, she rasped, "It's Widow Morton's ... gift."

At first, Eliza didn't believe it. She rushed into the hallways, ignoring Aria's calls behind her and growing more frantic with each guard she found asleep at his post. She fled to their mother's room and shook her shoulder, shouting for her to wake. But the queen did not rouse.

"It will be all right," Aria assured her.

It was a lie, and Eliza was too upset to hear it anyway. In the end, Aria gave her space. They would have plenty of time to talk. Thirty days of it. Unless one of them fell comatose or into a fractured state of mind first.

She returned to her room and stood beside her fireplace, kindling the logs and wishing the crackling little flames could sink warmth deeper than her skin. At her core, there was a chill that never left. A chill she'd gained in Northglen.

Eliza was why the widow had surrendered an Artifact. Once Eliza also suffered exhaustion, the king would have quickly realized the existence of a curse, regardless of Aria's forced silence on the matter. He would have taken bold action against Northglen. So Widow Morton had arranged proof of curse but also given him something to occupy his time. He thought, as most people did, that breaking an Artifact ended things. But the king did not even have the right Artifact.

And Morton only had to keep him occupied one month before it was too late.

If this was a siege, Aria couldn't help feeling the castle had already fallen.