you return to this palace if you hated Prince Castian?” she asks, stepping around me to return to her table.
“I don’t—”
“All I ask is that you be honest with me about this. I told you. Your emotions are practically written on your face.”
I’m strangely relieved someone is breaking through my fa?ade. I am tired of walking these halls and eating in these rooms and playing a role that has returned all too easily. To tell this girl that I want to kill the prince would only result in my own defeat. And yet, I can respect her. Everything I’ve seen her do is a small defiance of the crown.
“I have nowhere else to go,” I say. “And I am under the order of Justice Méndez.”
“You could have procured forged papers and passage to other kingdoms.”
“I had the chance. It’s almost hard to determine what I’m more afraid of, dying here or starting over somewhere completely unknown.”
“Starting over is never easy. But you chose the most difficult thing anyone can do. Facing your past.”
Can she see through me this easily? Méndez doesn’t seem to be able to. Or is he playing a part, the way Leo once graced a stage?
“I helped spill a lot of blood here. At the very least, I am rooted to Puerto Leones in more ways than I can understand. Even if it does not want me.”
She takes a deep breath. The fireplace crackles with orange flames in the corner of my eye, but somehow I can hear the sharp whistle of wind coming from somewhere. It does not make sense that a girl who is descended from queens would be in this grim and drafty room, but she does not complain. I drink the bitter wine and sniff back the sting in my nose.
“You know you can’t get them back,” I tell her. “The memories.”
She turns her face to the light-filled window opposite the citadela below us and drinks. “I know quite well how your power works. I should tell you, the memory is of Castian.”
“I figured as much.” I bite my bottom lip. Though she is not like other royals I’ve come across, I need to tread carefully when I talk about the prince. “It must be difficult to defend him after you were subjected to humiliation when he ended your engagement.”
Lament fills her eyes. She looks pretty even when she’s sad. “I was impetuous. I was spoiled. I thought I had it all. Others in my position have to choose between an advantageous union for their families or love. I was lucky to have both for a while.”
“And then?”
“He broke my heart. People talked as they always do, and I was made a villain. And yet, I know him. I know the boy I grew up with. Together we mourned the deaths of everyone he loved.”
I stiffen at the sentiment, trying to picture a murderer in mourning. When he killed his brother, did he mourn then as well? As if she were a Ventári herself, Lady Nuria nods her head.
“Yes, including his brother, despite what the rumors may say. The prince knew nothing but violence at the hands of his father. It chipped away at him. Changed him. When he came back from the Battle of Riomar, the change was magnified threefold. We tried but it didn’t work. Sometimes I wonder if only I had tried harder. Done more. But I don’t know how to help him. Didn’t know, I should say. Do you have many regrets, Renata?”
And without hesitating, I say, “Every day.”
“I can’t change what Castian has done. I can change the strength of my feelings, but I would need you to take a memory. One that I relive each day, wishing I had listened to his turmoil then. Listened to when he wanted more than this.”
Something in me wants to trust her, or at least wants to try. I’m not a good judge of character, I suppose.
“Have you ever been in love, Renata?” Lady Nuria’s lashes cast long shadows on her cheeks with the firelight.
I don’t answer, but I feel a vein in my neck twitch. I avoid her gaze and think of Dez. I should have told him. . . .
By the curl of her smile she seems to take this as a yes.
“Then you know how terrible I feel. I have to see him at balls and festivals and every time I walk past the statue of him in the middle of my citadela. All I can think, all