Since you took me, I do not say, although it must be in my eyes.
He shakes his head sadly. “What you lack is nothing to do with experience.”
“No, but—” I begin.
“Enough. I have made my decision,” he says, raising his voice to cut me off. After a moment when we both are silent, he gives me a conciliatory half smile. “Fight in the tournament if you like, for sport, but you will not put on the green sash. You’re not ready to be a knight. You can ask me again after the coronation, if your heart’s still set on it. And if it’s a whim, that will be time enough for it to pass.”
“This is no whim!” I hate the desperation in my voice, but I have been counting down the days to the tournament. The idea of waiting months, just so he can turn me down again, fills me with wild despair.
Madoc gives me an unreadable look. “After the coronation,” he repeats.
I want to scream at him: Do you know how hard it is to always keep your head down? To swallow insults and endure outright threats? And yet I have done so. I thought it proved my toughness. I thought if you saw I could take whatever came at me and still smile, you would see that I was worthy.
You’re no killer.
He has no idea what I am.
Maybe I don’t know, either. Maybe I never let myself find out.
“Prince Dain will make a fine king,” Oriana says, deftly shifting the conversation back to pleasant things. “A coronation means a month of balls. We will need new dresses.” She seems to include Taryn and me in this sweeping statement. “Magnificent ones.”
Madoc nods, smiling his toothy smile. “Yes, yes, as many as you like. I would have you look your finest and dance your hardest.”
I try to breathe slowly, to concentrate on just one thing. The pomegranate seeds on my plate, shining like rubies, wet with venison blood.
After the coronation, Madoc said. I try to focus on that. It only feels like never.
I’d love to have a Court dress like the ones I have seen in Oriana’s wardrobe, opulent patterns intricately stitched on skirts of gold and silver, each as beautiful as the dawn. I focus on that, too.
But then I go too far and imagine myself in that dress, sword at my hip, transformed, a true member of the Court, a knight in the Circle of Falcons. And Cardan watching me from across the room, standing beside the king, laughing at my pretension.
Laughing like he knows this is a fantasy that won’t ever be real.
I pinch my leg until pain washes everything away.
“You’ll have to wear out the soles of your shoes, just like the rest of us,” Vivi says to me and Taryn. “I bet Oriana’s sick with worry that since Madoc encouraged you to dance, she can’t stop you. Horror of horrors, you might have a good time.”
Oriana presses her lips together. “That’s not fair, nor is it true.”