Seraphina(115)

I found Glisselda in Millie’s room, weeping, her head in her hands. Millie, who was rubbing the princess’s shoulders, looked alarmed that I had entered without knocking. “The princess is tired,” said Millie, stepping toward me anxiously.

“It’s all right,” said Glisselda, wiping her eyes. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and her blotchy pink cheeks made her look very young. She tried to smile. “I am always pleased to see you, Phina.”

My heart constricted at the sight of her sorrow. She’d just lost her mother and had the weight of an entire realm thrust onto her shoulders, and I was a bad friend. I couldn’t ask after Kiggs; I didn’t know why it had ever seemed like a good idea.

“How are you holding up?” I said, taking a seat across from her.

She looked at her hands. “Well enough in public. I was just taking a little time to … to let myself be a daughter. We have to sit vigil with St. Eustace tonight, the eyes of the world upon us, and we thought a quiet, dignified sorrow would be most fitting. That means taking some time to bawl like a baby now.”

I thought she was referring to herself in the plural, as was her royal right, but she continued, “You should have seen us drafting that letter after council. I would weep, and Lucian would try to console me, which started him weeping and made me sob the more. I sent him to his beastly tower, told him to get it all out.”

“He’s lucky to have you looking out for him,” I said, and meant it, however torn up I felt.

“The reverse is true,” she said, her voice breaking. “But it is nearly sunset, and he has not yet come down.” Her face crumpled; Millie hastened to her side and put an arm around her. “Would you go fetch him, Phina? I would take it as a great kindness.”

It was a rotten time for my lying skills to fail me, but too many contradictory feelings crowded in on me at once. If I was kind to her for selfish reasons, was that worse than being virtuously unhelpful? Was there no course I could take that would not leave me wracked with guilt?

Glisselda noticed my hesitation. “I know he’s been a bit cantankerous since learning you were half dragon,” she said, leaning in toward me. “You understand, surely, that he might find it difficult to adjust to the idea.”


“I think no less of him for it,” I said.

“And I … I think no less of you,” said Glisselda firmly. She rose; I rose with her, thinking she intended to dismiss me. She raised her arms a little and then dropped them—a false start—but then she steeled herself to it and embraced me. I hugged her back, unable to stop my own tears or to identify their source as relief or regret.

She let me go and stood with her chin raised. “It wasn’t so difficult to accept,” she said stoutly. “It was simply a matter of will.”

Her protest was too vehement, but I recognized her good intention and believed utterly in her steely will. She said, “I shall scold Lucian if he is ever less than courteous to you, Seraphina. You let me know!”

I nodded, my heart breaking a little, and departed for the East Tower.





At first I wasn’t sure he was there. The tower door was unlocked, so I rushed up the stairs with my heart in my throat only to find the top room empty. Well, not entirely—it was full of books, pens, palimpsests, geodes and lenses, antique caskets, drawings. The Queen had her study; this was Prince Lucian’s, charmingly untidy, everything in use. I hadn’t appreciated the surroundings when we’d been up here with Lady Corongi. Now, all I saw were more things to love about him, and it made me sad.

The wind ran an icy finger up my neck; the door to the outer walkway was open a crack. I took a deep breath, willed down my vertigo, and opened the door.

He leaned upon the parapet, staring out over the sunset city. The wind tousled his hair; the edge of his cloak danced. I gingerly stepped out to him, picking my way around patches of ice, pulling my cloak tight around me for courage and for warmth.

He looked back at me, his dark eyes distant though not exactly unwelcoming. I stammered out my message: “Glisselda sent me to remind you, um, that everyone will be sitting with St. Eustace for her mother as soon as the sun goes down, and she, uh …”

“I haven’t forgotten.” He looked away. “The sun is not yet set, Seraphina. Would you stand with me awhile?”

I stepped to the parapet and watched the shadows lengthen in the mountains. Whatever resolve I might have had was setting with that sun. Maybe it was just as well. Kiggs would go down to his cousin; I would go traveling in search of the rest of my kind. Everything would be as it should be, on the surface at least, every untidy and inconvenient part of myself tucked away where no one would see it.

Saints’ bones. I was done living like that.

“The truth of me is out,” I said, my words crystallizing into cloud upon the icy air.

“All of it?” he said. He spoke less sharply than when he was truly interrogating me, but I could tell a lot was hinging on my answer.

“All the important parts, yes,” I said firmly. “Maybe not all the eccentric details. Ask, and I will answer. What do you want to know?”

“Everything.” He had been leaning on his elbows, but he pushed back now and gripped the balustrade with both hands. “It’s always this way with me: if it can be known, I want to know it.”