I did not blanch. By then, her serious face and somber tone had prepared me: I had been impoverished while Elin had been given a future. In one move, Robert had tied me to his house and to his daughter: my ruin, her gain. I exhaled, though it felt like there was no breath left in my chest. “I… see.”
“Yes, m’lady.” Alice slid a carefully folded handkerchief across the tabletop.
The title, I realized, meant so little. The house was an opulent weight that could only pull down. And I faced a graver issue: I had no means to take care of my girls.
My long wait outside the palace guardhouse was made all the more uncomfortable by my doubts. I was not certain my plan to gain entry would work. After all, I suspected my daughters had been left out of the messenger’s invitation intentionally. But I knew Sigrid would recognize the name I had given.
I walked up and down the walkway. Paused in the shade of a tree. Sat on a stone bench. I looked at all the people I had passed earlier. The lute player, likely hoping for employment, played his sad songs. The pregnant girl continued to cry. The youth perpetually wrapped and unwrapped his bandages. And the ladies-in-waiting—none alike yet all similar, continually replenishing themselves—waited by their very nature.
After an interminable amount of time, the guard, scab now picked fresh off his chin, approached me. “You can go in,” he said. “Follow the page.”
“You have something,” I told him, tapping my own chin. “Right there.”
I followed a bespectacled attendant along a cobblestone path, passing a series of silent, erect guards. When we entered the castle, we climbed a stone staircase and came to a long gallery, our footsteps echoing on the blue-and-white checkerboard floor.
The room was only half lit; every curtain on every east-facing window had been pulled shut. Walking at a pace that felt slower than natural, I passed gilt-framed painting after gilt-framed painting. The blank stares of nameless faces. A room of artificial eyes.
I came to a stop in front of an oversized family portrait. The slight tilt of the head and the half-pursed smile of the woman at its center was unmistakable. Sigrid still looked beautiful. But the lordliness in her expression was unnecessary. The fur-trimmed robes and jeweled crown might have done that work for her.
I had seen a likeness of our king plenty of times before—kind-eyedand sharp-boned—but the two children who stood at his side were new to me. The prince was as tall as his father, if not taller, for I did not think a royal portrait would depict any man standing above the king. He had the same warm brown eyes, with a crop of his mother’s honey hair, as if an unseen hand had deigned to mix the best from each parent. By contrast, the girl who stood on the opposite side was her mother in miniature. Red lips and flaxen tresses. Blue eyes like looking into my own past: I could practically hear Sigrid beating her heels against the Tremaines’ rock wall.
We kept walking. Lady Tremaine—had it worked? I had spent years wondering if Sigrid hated me, resented me, blamed me for her accident. But seeing the likeness of her family, each clad in velvet and fur, and then following the attendant through the palace rooms, passing fabric-covered walls, oil paintings, and statues, high-backed chairs and inlaid-tile ceilings, through blue rooms, pink rooms, velvet rooms—each its own acidic bite of opulence—gliding past a thoughtless wealth of wealth, every jewel tone rendered in a color brighter than nature, it occurred to me: She had no reason to think about me at all.
When, at long last, the guard slowed ahead of a closed door, I felt a sense of relief. Nervously, I began to fidget with my gloves. They were uncomfortable—hot in the summer and not warm enough in the winter. The whole kingdom wore them because the queen did.
Gloves, after all, were a clever way to cover a missing finger.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Except for an attendant pulling the drapes shut over the east-facing windows, Sigrid was alone. This surprised me, for I had pictured her surrounded by musicians and courtesans and ladies-in-waiting. She didn’t rise when I came in and didn’t acknowledge the footman when he announced me. I curtsied, and then stood, waiting.
“Tremaine,” she said, thoughtfully. “I thought it might be you.”
“My thanks for receiving me.” I stood still, and then, remembering, added: “Your Majesty.”
“Come closer,” she commanded. I complied and walked toward her, allowing her to inspect me.
“It has been some time,” I offered, beginning what I hoped would be a round of pleasantries.
“Sit.” She nodded at the chair across from her, on the other side of a small, round table. I arranged my dress and consented. Wordlessly, Sigrid began to prepare tea, using a silver spoon to scoop the leaves into the pot. We said nothing as it steeped for several long moments. I watched as she added loaded spoonfuls of sugar, more than I could stomach, to porcelain cups. When she had finished, she handed mea saucer with a brimming cup of scalding liquid. “Have some,” she instructed. “The leaves are all screened from the sun by silken shades.”
I raised the cup to my mouth. I could feel the steam. It was too hot.
“Drink,” she said, and I did, feeling the water burn my tongue. I couldn’t taste anything through the heat except the sugar. Satisfied, Sigrid nodded. I returned the cup to its saucer, and we regarded one another.
She wore a low-necked peacock-blue dress adorned with dramatic folds of lace that created bells at her elbows and covered her chest in a transparent screen of feigned modesty. It was a shock to see the age on her face—like a mirror, it confirmed the passing of time. Unlike the painting, she was freckled and puckered. Her eyebrows had thinned and she wore two bright spots of rouge on her cheeks, reminding me of a doll. But her eyes were as shrewd as ever.
“What an unconventional introduction,” she mused. “If I recall, Henry didn’t have a title.”
“No,” I acknowledged. I looked down and stirred my tea—Agatha, who had come roaring back into my subconscious the moment I got to the palace, reminded me:clockwise—to cool it off, careful not to splash or clink. “The title is from my second husband, Lord Robert Bramley.”
“I heard Henry died.” Sigrid measured more sugar into her tea, stirred twice, and discarded the spoon with efficiency. “But you remarried? A step up, it appears?”
“My second husband also died.”
“What a touch you have!” She had lost her habit of pairing smiles with her insults. Instead, the queen watched me coldly.
The room felt, suddenly, airless. The heat from the fire too warm. The drapes at the windows too thick. Helplessly, I complimented her—her appearance, her room, the finery of her porcelain. “It is,” I added, at the end of my soliloquy, “so wonderful to catch up.” I was incapacitated in the face of our many imbalances, our strange history: I could not right the kilter of our conversation.
