over the past hundred years, and you didn’t show me any of this.”
“I brought you everything I could find, Rora. And we still haven’t gone through them all. I didn’t hide this from you.”
“You must have known, though. You told me that we had a shared heritage, that we belong together. But you didn’t say one word about this.”
“If you thought I thought I was entitled to you, you’d never have trusted me. You’d never have even pretended to trust me. You have enough of that whole entitlement thing with Rodric, don’t you think? And I’d much rather get what I want on my own terms. Do you think I care at all about history or about what I’m supposed to do? When has that ever figured into anything I’ve done?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m still trying to figure you out.”
“Well, be sure to let me know when you do.” He picked up a rook and twisted it between his fingers.
It sounded like a dismissal, so Aurora turned away. But she paused when she reached the door, her hand on the doorknob. “I want to believe you,” she said. “I do. But everything you say seems too good to be true.”
She stepped out of the room before he could reply. But that night, a piece of paper slid under her door. The truth is what you make it, Finnegan had written. So why not make it something good?
NINETEEN
THE DEATH KNELL WAS SO INNOCUOUS WHEN IT CAME. A letter in Finnegan’s hand. Concern that even he could not hide. And a mud-splattered poster, shipped across the sea.
“I received a letter from Nettle,” he said, marching unannounced and unexpected into the library. “You’ll want to see it.”
Aurora looked up. She had been searching through the diplomatic documents, hunting for evidence of what Orla had told her. She had found nothing so far. “What is it?” she asked, as Finnegan approached. “Has she found out more about Rodric?”
“No,” Finnegan said. “She has no news about him; she wrote before she reached the capital. But she sent this.”
He held out a worn sheet of paper, and Aurora took it from him. It was surprisingly thick, the edges contorted by rain. Aurora unfolded it.
It was a wanted poster, like many Aurora had seen before. Aurora’s likeness stared back at her, regal and commanding. The king now promised two thousand gold coins for her capture.
It was covered in graffiti. Several different hands had scrawled insults across the paper, over her forehead, filling every spare inch. Traitor, one said. Murderer. Whore. And across the bottom, underlined several times, witch.
She tightened her grip on the paper, contorting the words. Murderer. Witch.
“This is what they think of me?”
She shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew the lies that the king had spread about her. But to see it there so baldly, to see people’s hatred of her, their words thrown out like truths, like nothing . . .
She had thought they needed her. She had thought they were waiting for her support. She had not thought this.
“Was there a letter, too? An explanation?”
Finnegan held up two smaller sheets of paper. She took them from him, but the words were all in code. “What does it say?”
“Things have gotten worse since you left. No one wants to be in the capital. Nettle says that there are rumors that magic will return if you’re killed. She doesn’t say if the king started them, but it’s what they’re all saying now. That that’s what the prophecy meant after all.”
Aurora closed her eyes. “Of course they’re saying that,” she said. “Of course.” They had believed that Aurora was their savior, woken by a magic kiss. After that, any story would be easy to believe.
She crumpled the wanted poster into a ball in her fist.
“Not everyone will believe it,” Finnegan said.
“But enough do,” she said. “Enough to write those things about me.”
“Did you expect them all to be on your side?”
“I don’t know.” She threw the crumpled poster onto the table. Perhaps she had. She had spent so much time worrying about them, planning for them, sacrificing herself for them. Surely they should want her help in return. But no. While she had been worrying, they had been hating her. “They’ll think whatever they want to think.”
Finnegan rested a hand on her arm. “It’s good that you came here,” he said, so quietly that she almost couldn’t hear him. “They would have torn you apart if you’d stayed.”