Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(11)
Aurora can’t be certain what will come next, only that this feels painfully, beautifully right.
She sets her letter, and the wedding wreath, on top of a bureau before she leaves.
When she is back in her own room, Wren shifts, fluttering open her eyes. Aurora stands hovering near her, and Wren startles slightly. “What are you doing?” she whispers.
“I need your cloak,” Aurora whispers back, packing, hurrying.
“What? Why?” Wren asks, sitting up.
“I am going to save Heath,” Aurora says. The promise arrives with a surge of determination. “And all of you.”
Already Wren is up and out of the bed. “I’m coming with you.”
Another feeling comes back to Aurora now: the moment when the wooden door to the hall of tapestries wobbled, cracked, and her ax, at last, broke through.
5
Isabelle
“This is your fault,” Isbe tells William.
“My fault your sister and her maidservant friend have vanished with the dawn?”
“Shh,” she hisses, pulling him from the doorway, where murmurs echo against damp limestone as the bustle of guests fills the courtyard. Canopies billow in the crisp spring wind. Garlands of hawthorn and fern hang from lattice archways, their musky scent permeating the fog. Banners bob and dip, thwack and clap. She can hear the harsh cries of a few children tossing acorns—the ten-year-old phantoms of herself and Gilbert and Roul.
Isbe folds and unfolds the letter in her hands. In it, Aurora stated that she abdicates the throne in order to be free to marry whomever she chooses. And, as Isabelle is already of age and the only other daughter of the deceased king, Aurora has officially named her queen, upon marriage to William of Aubin.
Sister. I want to go back to Sommeil, Aurora had said, a whisper of urgency in the cadence of her fingers. But I don’t want to leave you again.
And yet you have, Isabelle thinks. For the impossible dream of an unfinished romance. Aurora has clearly gone off to find the hunter she met in Sommeil. Heath.
Isabelle and the prince follow the corridor farther away from the inner bailey, toward a quiet alcove near one of the northeast stairwells. “Obviously, no one can know about this letter,” she says now, trying to swallow back the tremor in her voice. “The people will revolt if they think she has abandoned us on the day of her coronation. We need to go after her and Wren.”
“They can’t have gone far,” William offers. “I’m sure the guards will locate them before nightfall.”
He is probably right—after a frantic search of the palace, the royal carriage was discovered missing about an hour ago. Even if they got a head start by leaving in the dark, everyone knows that the spring mud makes travel by carriage cumbersome. Still, this is the second time Aurora has strayed from the confines of the castle grounds in her entire life, and Isbe knows all too well what happened last time.
“How can you be so dismissive?” Isbe grabs his arm, forcing him to stop pacing. She feels him turn to her, the dark heat of his defensiveness. “Your bride ran off on the morning of your wedding! Don’t you realize how damaging this could be if the guests find out? And what do we even know about the girl with ash in her hair?”
“We know,” William says quietly, “only what the travelers told us last night—that Malfleur rallied, pressured, or possibly imprisoned many of the survivors of the fire. If your sister has indeed fled straight into the jaws of the enemy with the notion of finding one man, then she has done something both valiant and excessively reckless. I can’t say that either quality surprises me,” he adds, a bitter quirk to his voice.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean . . . ,” he replies, then quiets for a moment as a pair of servants rushes past them, carrying clattering trays. Once they are at a safe distance, he continues, “I mean that you and Aurora are not so unalike, after all.”
“It seems a particularly bad time to throw around accusations of rash behavior,” Isbe snaps, “or any insult, for that matter. Your tone is not befitting of a prince—or a bridegroom. Certainly not a king.” However, his point has given Isbe a new thought. “Now if you’d be so kind as to indulge another reckless decision, please call a servant to escort me to the stables at once.”
The prince lets out a breath too forceful to be considered a sigh. “I suppose you plan to go after her, despite the fact that we’ve already sent our best men.”
“Our best men,” she says, “may not prove as useful in anticipating my sister’s next reckless move.”
“I said valiant and reckless,” he corrects.
She shrugs, dismissing the half compliment.
“Isabelle,” he says more determinedly. Instead of calling for a servant, he leads her past their alcove and into the solitude of a stairwell, where his breath suddenly turns louder, heavier. “Don’t.”
Silence.
“Don’t go after her. Stay.”
Still she can’t respond, afraid any words would be sand against her throat.
“Stay and marry me in her place.” There they are. The words she wanted him to say before, has been waiting for him to say. His lips are close to her ear; his body hovers in front of hers, his cloak almost enclosing them both.
She takes a step backward, but her shoulders hit the curved wall beside the steps. He has her hands in his now. He tugs on them, ever so lightly, but it sends a tingling current through her.