had replaced her stolen sword with her father’s, and that too she tossed to the ground at the guards’ feet. “Demeine deserves better. The people of Serre shouldn’t live in fear simply because their court is changing hands, so will you protect your people today? With Laurel? With me?”
The older guard nodded, the gold sun pin on his chest catching the light, and bowed his head. “Of course, Your Majesty.”
Coline, thoroughly, rightfully, distracted spoke with Brigitte and the guards. I yawned, eyes fluttering shut. Yvonne leaned back and picked up my hand, and I lifted it to the light. Nothing called to me. There was no hum. No thrill of power awoke in my veins. There was only silver and light, a mirror streaked red beneath my skin.
“Are you worried?” Yvonne asked, eyeing the odd slices of silver writhing where open wounds should have been.
I leaned into her and shook my head, Isabelle’s arm still about my waist and Coline’s voice in my ears. “How could I be worried when I’m with all of you?”
Epilogue
Emilie
One Month Later
No one outside of us who had been there truly knew what had happened, but people gossiped and whispered about godly retribution, Thornish magic, and medical experiments gone wrong. We mostly let the rumors stand and kept what we had won in Segance between us, Her Majesty Nicole—who demanded I call her Coline—and the Thornish delegation of soldiers, politicians, and one ecstatic artist thrilled at the prospect of speaking to us. Considering we weren’t at war, and Coline was much more concerned about Demeine than her father had been, no one seemed to mind.
Coline made it remarkably clear that her nobles needed to have more on their minds than previously.
My mother almost liked her.
Almost.
“At least she’s doing things properly,” she said on the eve of Coline’s coronation.
I stared at her, unsure if I were unconscious and dreaming in the Segance infirmary somewhere. “She killed her father and took his crown.”
“Only slightly less traditional than waiting for him to die.” She tapped my teacup with her finger. “Drink.”
Our relationship, in the strained month after the death of His Majesty Henry XII and peace with Kalthorne and reorganization of the noble houses—which was, to my mother’s chagrin, still ongoing—had simplified. She mothered me.
Aggressively.
“You died,” she had said to me days after the fight in Segance. She had traveled there to discover what had become of me, and Madeline had found her first. The words were an accusation.
I had nodded. “So they keep telling me.”
She had not left my side since, and no amount of begging saved me from her endless teas and tonics.
I sipped the tea and let her talk. It was far easier than arguing, and, as much as I hated it, I was too tired. My ability to channel magic had never returned. It was as if someone had reached into my soul and plucked out a part of me, separating us forever. As if I were eternally walking down a familiar set of stairs and missing the same step every time.
“Have you decided what you’ll be wearing tomorrow?” my mother asked softly. She fiddled with the vials of honey and medicines from Yvonne Lortet.
Her alchemistry almost made me wish I had gone to finishing school, but it was a very small almost. Without magic, I couldn’t even see the power stored in her creations. It was an unbelievable ache.
“When you divined my future before sending me off to school and saw me in clothes you didn’t approve of and no physician’s coat, I think Mistress Moon was very truthful,” I said. “I have a suit. I look very good in it.”
Madeline, Annette, and Charles had not hesitated in buying new clothes for the occasion, and Madeline and Annette had taken a particular interest in torturing me with trips to a tailor’s and dressmaker’s and several other places where I had been poked and prodded while half-asleep and recovering. Annette, at least, I trusted to pick out something appropriate. Madeline was liable to pick out something solely to vex me.
“Good.” My mother packed up her alchemistry curio and kissed my forehead. “You looked quite happy in that future.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Our affection was a fragile thing, a careful titration, but I was still afraid to twist the lever and let my emotions flow free. It was a slow, steady drip, and for now, we were both all right with that.