Emmett,
I love you. No, that’s not how I should begin. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can only hope that one day you’ll understand. If you don’t understand, then I can only hope that you hate me.It would be easier if you hate me. Please hate me.
I was told this morning that I am to marry Bram.
It appears that telling me I had lost was just another of Mor’s tricks. He will propose tomorrow and I will say yes.
Please believe that I wanted to flee the throne room screaming. That I wanted to run away with you. I wanted it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
But this is bigger than the two of us. If we run, we may be destroying our only chance at unseating Queen Mor. I’m doing this for Greer. For my sister. For Eduart. But mostly I’m doing this for you and your father.
Bram deserves a wife who loves him, but I know I could never love him if he’s competing with you. So I finally know what bargain I will make. Once I have written this letter, I am going to ask Queen Mor to remove all memory of you from my head. It’s the only chance any of us have for peace. I know you will find happiness with someone who isn’t me. I pray I am able to become the wife Bram deserves.
Somewhere, across time and space, there’s a version of me and a version of you, wearing matching rings, tangled up in front of a fireplace, together. I have to believe that’s true.
In another life, it would have been us, but not in this one.
I can’t have you in the way you deserve to be had.
Know how desperately I love you.
Know how sorry I am.
And know that I’m doing the best that I can.
Ivy
p.s. I owed you a coat.
I read the letter twice more, trying to understand. It isn’t until I set it down that I realize I’ve torn the edges, that’s how tightly I’ve been gripping it.
There’s nothing but roaring in my head. White-hot fear like a forest fire has been set alight, and there’s nothing but the animal instinct to run.
I nearly throw the door off its hinges sprinting out of my room and down the marble staircase. I have to stop her, if I could just explain—
I pause at the second-floor landing. Do I make a break for the throne room or the cottage?
There are voices coming from the main hall, the sound of hooves as a carriage pulls up.
I grip the railing, taking the stairs two at a time.
Ivy and Queen Mor are standing in the middle of the soaring foyer. Ivy’s blond hair is in two braids. She’s wearing a simple gray dress, and her pale skin is covered with dappled light filtering in through the leaves of the tree growing up through the staircase.
I stand there panting, and they both turn to me.
There’s a dazed look in Ivy’s soft brown eyes. She sinks her teeth into the skin of her full bottom lip and tilts her head. She’s so beautiful, it nearly knocks the wind out of me.
She curtsies to me hurriedly, saying, “Your Highness, it’s nice to finally meet.” There’s something odd about her teeth. I look closer and realize there’s blood stuck between the gaps of them. She presses her lips together self-consciously, as if she realizes it at the same moment I do.
She can’t meet my eye as she tucks a stray golden curl behindher ear. “Bram speaks highly of you. I was quite hoping we could be friends.”
It feels like I’ve been shot. I look down at my own torso, surprised to find my rib cage intact. Musket balls don’t pierce. They blow everything wide open into a bloody mess. That’s how this feels.
“Friends?”
Mor’s gaze snaps to mine, and she shakes her head slightly. If I didn’t know her better, I might think she feels sorry for me.
“Ivy—” I say it under my breath. I can’t help myself. Every inch of me is begging to reach out to my girl, take her in my arms, kiss her until she remembers. My guts are splattered all over the frescoes on the wall behind me, and the only one who knows I’m bleeding is Mor.
