Instead, the earl said, “You carried no hand in Henry’s fate. His Majesty has always enforced strict justice, but in recent months, we have dropped the justice and enforced what remains.”
Aria wished she could defend her father.
She could only think of Charlie.
“I wanted to thank you for your earlier remarks, Highness. You made an impassioned case.” Lord Wycliff glanced toward Baron, then back. “Marcus was a dear friend, and I thought I always treated his son with fairness, yet I now realize how that very thought was my first mistake, as if my fairness was consolation. I’m ashamed to say I even told the boy his loss of title wasinevitable rather than an injustice, and in the same breath I told him what a fine example he was. I have been a hypocrite.”
Aria blinked. “I . . .”
“I’m grateful,” Lord Wycliff said, smoothly covering her deficiency. “You’ve opened my eyes. I know I’m not the only one.”
“I’m very glad to hear it,” she managed at last.
He bowed before moving to speak with Baron. No doubt the conversation followed a similar track, judging by the way Baron stood straighter and Corvin grinned.
Aria thought Earl Wycliff would resent her. Blame her. Instead, he considered her words. He thanked her. And if Henry’s father could somehow still see her beyond the shadow of her father ...
Perhaps there was hope for someone else.
Inevitability had been building within Aria, a recognition that any path forward could only point one direction, lead to one destination. If she refused to resign herself to shame and die in silence, then she could only revisit her worst mistake and give one last try to make it right.
After every guest had gone except Silas, who waited for Aria, she told Baron her decision.
“I’m going back to Northglen.”
Aria’s return to the castle was nothing like the comfortable journey she had enjoyed with Baron through the night. Instead, it was full of the silence of two strangers lost in their own thoughts. She wasn’t sure what Silas thought about while he stared grim-faced into the distance, but it didn’t seem any more pleasant than the subjects occupying her own mind.
She wished she could lose herself in the memory of a sunlit, secret passage and Baron’s spine-tingling kiss, but her cursekept interrupting that just as it had interrupted the real thing. Stealing her happiness. Counting the days.
Sixteen days left.
Roughly an hour before they reached Sutton, Silas stopped beside a thin branch in the road. Aria wheeled slowly to face him.
“I’m not going back,” he said. “I’m leaving the country either way, so I’d rather it be on my own terms.”
Aria’s hand tightened on the reins. “If you abandon the challenge, my father will view it as cowardice. He may escalate banishment to execution.”
“Can’t execute what he can’t find. Besides, what’s my guarantee he won’t execute me for failing? From what I hear, no one expected what happened to Wycliff, and when I had my audience with the king, he made it quite clear he expected more from me than both previous attempts.”
A fair point. Aria hated the truth of it.
“When I’m queen,” she said, “you’ll be pardoned, so come home. Don’t keep your sister waiting.”
Silas smirked. He wheeled his horse, then stopped. With a clear debate raging in his expression, he turned back again.
“Look. There’s nothing I can do about your curse, though I would if I could. For Gilly’s sake, at least. I owe him my life, and I’ve never paid that back. Apparently I never will.”
Aria raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“Obviously, I have no right to ask favors.”
She gave a quiet laugh. “Ask, Silas.”
“My father’s arranging a marriage for my sister to Rupert Brightwood, the duke’s son.”
“The widower?” Aria frowned. Margaret hadn’t even seemed to be eighteen yet, and certainly not in desperate straits.
“The widower, the raging drunk, and so on. My father doesn’t care. It’s only the prestige of connection to a duke’s family hecares about. Maggie doesn’t know yet. I’d hoped to find some solution on my own, but I find myself ... out of time.”
