Chapter 50

A ria plummeted only a moment before the world slowed, the air softening against her skin, her body growing light as a feather. Snowflakes drifted past her in the air, and she drifted in the same way, still falling but gently, slowly. Her skin prickled with goose bumps. She looked down at a sheer black drop.

Trying to breathe calmly, she pressed one hand to her hair, clutching the comb that had saved her life. With the other, she reached out, grasping at snowy boulders in the cliffside and fumbling with scraggly bushes until she caught purchase at last. Once she was no longer falling, the feeling of regular weight returned, thumping her against the cliff, and then she hung in place, dangling from the side of a mountain she otherwise would have been dashed against.

Frigid wind howled in the dark. Even guarded from the direct blasts, Aria felt the swirling eddies of it, and her bare fingers soaked in the cold of the rock. She shivered. Looking up, she saw the light of the mansion spilling into the night, and her insides shriveled. Had she fallen so far in a matter of seconds?

She looked down.

Mark. You already looked down and regretted it. Repeating the same mistakes. Never learning.

Aria closed her eyes, tucking her head against her extended arm, the other clinging to a prickly bush beside her shoulder. She shivered in the night. She'd locked the quill away, yet it returned. She'd burned it, yet it returned. It always returned.

Repeating the same mistakes. Never learning.

She'd disobeyed her father again. Returned to Northglen again. Chased the same circles of conversation with the widow and emerged from the encounter even worse.

Repeating the same mistakes.

She was eight years old again, making strokes on a paper, watching with dread as the marks kept coming and coming and coming. A hundred. More.

Never learning.

"Fine," she whispered to the quill. "Now what?"

It hovered without answer. It didn't have answers; it didn't have solutions. Only condemnations. If Aria held to the mountain forever without moving—if she didn't think, didn't breathe —it would have nothing to criticize. Without her efforts, it would be useless.

It was already useless.

When Aria wanted to learn to swim as a child, her father took her to the lake a few times a week for the entire summer. The first time in the water, she clung to him and cried, never trying to paddle her arms or move from his embrace. She told him she never wanted to go back, but as usual, he didn't listen, and after finding herself back at the lake a second and third time, she accepted she would have to do something about her fears. For a while, she paddled weakly. She hated water in her face. She thought of drowning and couldn't breathe. But her father continued bringing her back. After weeks, she could swim on her own. By the end of summer, she was sneaking out to the lake without him.

Yes, Aria kept repeating mistakes. Because she was going back to the lake. She was paddling weakly and gulping muddy water and failing to float. But she kept coming back.

Maybe she hadn't learned yet.

But she would.

Success would not come by hiding, by fleeing. It would come by returning to the lake.

Aria set her jaw, and she started climbing. Her fingers slipped in powdery snow as she reached for handholds, and she hissed as she grasped sharp rock edges and prickly brush. The skin of her hands reddened and ached. A cut along her palm stung with every movement, then grew numb.

Corvin's comb proved to be a lifesaver once more. As she climbed, she felt lighter and lighter. Each push lifted her higher, until she began lurching up the mountainside, catching new holds with more ease. For a moment, she almost felt like she was flying, racing toward a starlit sky almost within reach.

At last, she wedged her boot against a rock, heaved herself upward—

And her fingers caught the mansion's foundation.

Above and to her left rose the gaping windows of the ballroom. Aria eyed a narrow window to her right, where a stone ledge extended at its base. She leapt toward it and caught hold. Though her teeth chattered, the cold couldn't prevent her triumphant grin.

Then she nearly lost her grip as the window opened and Lettie's timid face peeked out.

Aria found herself swallowed by a circle of blue light. This magic was nothing like the exhilaration she'd experienced while climbing the mountain; this was a split second of feeling like a mind without a body, falling into a pit without a bottom.

Then came a moment of actual falling, ending abruptly by a lurch into new surroundings as Aria stumbled on a rug and landed hard on one knee. Her stomach flipped, nearly losing its contents. Her numb hands needled painfully in the sudden warmth, her eyes watered, and she couldn't hear until her ears popped.

"Sorry," said Lettie. "I think I pulled too hard. It's more difficult when I move myself along with someone else."

They were in a bedroom. Aria thought at first it was Lettie's, but the pristine arrangement of every item was not the work of a child. The bedcovers and pillows had been settled with perfect symmetry, and though the furniture was clear of dust, the room smelled musty and unused all the same. It felt like stepping into a preserved tomb. Even the fresh flowers on the mantel felt more like a graveside offering than an addition of life.

Charlie's room.

Lettie rubbed her hands. Her fingers shook.

"Does it hurt?" Aria asked. She paused to swallow down the remaining nausea. "Using magic."

After hesitating, Lettie nodded. "No one else says so, but mine does. Mine has always been different."

"It's hard to be different."

Lettie nodded again.

Aria meant to stand, meant to be strong, but she sank to the floor instead, crossing her legs beneath her, grateful for trousers. She couldn't tell if the dizziness was from the climb or Lettie's magic or both, but either way, the room wavered, and she breathed shallowly.

Lettie took a few quiet steps on the rug. She brushed her fingers over a cushioned chair beside the bed and smiled faintly.

"Charlie was different too. He always slept here, and Mama got so mad that he wouldn't use his bed, that he wouldn't be human. He just loved being a cat."

"I wish I could have met him," Aria said honestly.

"You would have liked him. Everyone liked Charlie."

"Why did you bring me here, Lettie?"

The girl tensed. She knotted her hands in her skirt. Then she pulled a folded sheet of parchment from her pocket.

"I took it earlier," she said, hanging her head. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to know what it said."

Aria hadn't even noticed the moment the peace agreement had vanished; her attention had been rather captured by other things.

Lettie unfolded it. "You wrote about Charlie."

"I want to prevent what happened to him from ever happening again."

"It's my fault," Lettie whispered. "He wanted to sneak around the castle, and Mama locked him in our rooms so he wouldn't. He was so sad. I ... I wasn't supposed to, but I ..."

At once, Lettie's whole body shook, a trembling autumn leaf moments from falling.

Aria climbed to her feet and stumbled forward. She took the girl's hands gently in her own. "Lettie, listen to me. It isn't your fault."

But the girl rambled on, telling the story that probably played on repeat through her mind every night. "Anytime we went somewhere new, he always explored, and he never got caught. He never got caught—until I helped him. I wish I could take it back. I wish I never had magic!"

"Shh," Aria murmured, rubbing soothing circles on the girl's hands.

"When Charlie died, Mama was so angry. She's never been so angry. She broke the dishes one by one because Charlie would never eat again." Lettie's voice shrank as tears leaked from her eyes. "If she knew I was the one who helped him, she would have cursed me, not you."

Aria steered Lettie into Charlie's chair, giving her a gentle push so she sat. Lettie burrowed into the cushions, rubbing her cheek against the soft velvet of the curving back. She hugged a pillow to her chest, her breath coming in hiccups.

"Did you know I have a sister?" Aria took a shaky breath of her own. "Two, actually, but my sister Eliza and I did everything together. We used to go riding and have picnics. She made me laugh."

Lettie slowly calmed, watching her with tearful blue eyes.

"Something bad happened, and I promised Eliza I would fix it, but I couldn't. She ran away from home, and I thought it was because of me. But she left me a letter that said it wasn't, that said she loves me. Lettie, if Charlie could send you a letter right now, I think he would say it wasn't your fault. He would say he knew you just wanted to make him happy. He knew you loved him. And he loved you too."

Lettie sniffled, wiping her nose. She opened her mouth to speak, and then her eyes moved to the doorway, and she froze, trembling again.

Aria's stomach fell. She turned to see Widow Morton haunting the hall like a dark shadow.

"I thought I rid myself of you, Highness." She stepped into the room. Her gaze roamed from the untouched bed to the vase of graveside flowers, and as the line of her mouth tightened, Aria saw the cracks in the woman's anger, trails leading to a bottomless pain Aria could never hope to understand.

All the determination she'd felt while climbing a mountainside vanished, stolen like breath from her lungs in a blast of wind. Twice, this woman had tried to kill her, and the odds of Widow Morton's success still felt inevitable. Aria had no weapons, no magic, no armies, no true power at all. If she were a Caster, if she were a queen, perhaps she would have a chance. But she was just a helpless girl.

"Mama ..." Lettie shrank in the chair.

Widow Morton didn't look at her daughter but at Aria. "I can never forget the last time one of my children was alone with royalty."

"She didn't hurt me," Lettie whispered.

"So I see."

Aria caught her breath once more, daring to feel a thin spark of hope. One thing was certain: If she surrendered now, Widow Morton and the king would both continue their forward rampages. The kingdom would go to war. Even without weapons, without magic or means, Aria would fight to her final breath to prevent that. She was the only one who could.

She thought of her own mother, remembered her words in the music room, urging Aria to do what was right. She still didn't know what was right.

But she agreed with Baron.

We all get it wrong, so perhaps the answer is simply mercy. Mercy for others, and mercy for ourselves.

"I was Lettie's age," Aria said. "My twelfth birthday—Were you there? Most of court was—when I announced my mother had named me after the only thing she ever loved."

Widow Morton raised an eyebrow but attempted no murder. For the moment.

"I believed that for years—until I realized my mother's name is Marian. ‘Aria' is the heart of it." She gestured around the room. "‘Clarissa' and ‘Charles' don't quite line up the same, but Charlie was your heart, wasn't he?"

The widow snorted quietly. "What a foolish question."

She stepped to the dresser, lifting a small, decorative box that had been perfectly centered upon it. After feeling at the neckline of her dress, she pulled out a key on a thin chain and used it to wind the music box, which echoed with a tinkling lullaby. The box was painted in soft pastels, with the silhouette of a dancer across the lid.

Lettie smiled, wiping her nose. "Charlie's music box."

"I had this made before his birth," Widow Morton said, "when I was certain I was having a girl. But Charlie loved it all the same. He wouldn't sleep without it, even as a teenager. I think he did it half to tease me. He was always ..."

Her free hand curled into a fist, pressing white-knuckled against the dresser. Whether she trembled with grief or rage, Aria couldn't tell. Perhaps both. Surely both.

She didn't know what conversations Widow Morton might have had with her father between Charlie's death and her hostile letter, but she knew what would have been absent from all of them—an apology. That was something her father could never give. He had to be right.

In the face of that, Aria couldn't blame the woman before her for wanting to crack foundations and watch things fall.

"I'm sorry," Aria whispered. "I'm so sorry for what my family did to yours."

Widow Morton whirled, music box clutched in one hand, poised to smash it to the ground, but Aria leapt forward and caught her hand, their bare fingers overlapping around the fragile box. A shiver ran down her arm at the thought of what the Caster could do with a touch, but she did not retreat.

Widow Morton stared into her soul with wild eyes, a deep gash across her cheek scabbed with fresh blood. " Twice you have come into my home with empty words! I tried to listen, but in that hollow, I heard only the screams of my son."

"I can't fix it," Aria said, voice breaking. "I wish I could. Nothing can."

" Excuses ! When Peregrine murdered Charlie, he offered excuses, and now—"

"I can't fix it," Aria repeated. "Not if I write a thousand peace treaties, not if I die a hundred deaths. You can't fix it. Not if you kill every member of my family, not if you collapse the entire kingdom. Your son is gone. We can't fix that. Nothing can ."

Widow Morton recoiled, leaving Aria holding the music box. The woman stared at it.

"But if you let me," Aria pleaded, cradling the box, shielding it in both hands, "I will protect your daughter. I'm sure I'll make mistakes—more than I want to; worse than I want to—but I will fix them. I'll learn. I'll negotiate and study and listen until I find the path forward.

"When I sat with you the first time, you asked what reparations I could make, what I could offer. This is what I want. Please just let me, and I'll protect instead of destroy."

Lettie darted from the chair, wrapping her arms around her mother.

Slowly, the anger drained from Widow Morton's expression, leaving behind a pale emptiness. The widow held to her daughter.

"I believe you, Highness," she said softly. "But it's too late. I can no longer break the Cast. I felt it when we touched just now. The curse has grown beyond my reach, and I have doomed us both."

Just as quickly as Aria's heart had swelled, it shattered.