She laughs again, no pity in it. “I give you one last opportunity, Ivy Benton, to take something for yourself.”
I want my sister back.I bite my tongue before the words can escape.
When we were small and Lydia and I drove Mama and our governess up the wall by bickering and tattling on each other, Mama would grab us by our little faces and say,Youare not your sister’s keeper.
But who am I, if not a sister? And what does that mean if not this?
“There is nothing else I want, Your Majesty. I thank you, most sincerely, for your time.”
The queen sighs against her throne. “Bring the next one in.”
Mama talks the whole way home, babbling about my win and her friends, but the words run together, just a buzzing in my ears as I stare out the carriage window.
I fiddle with the edge of the handkerchief and peel it back to find the gash in the middle of my hand almost completely healed. I feel a sudden flood of warmth for Prince Bram. But even the memory of his perfect face and kind smile doesn’t dull the sharp edges of my mood.
It’s only as we pull up to our house that my mother pauses her frantic stream of consciousness chatting and pauses to look at me in earnest. “You know,” she says, steadying herself as the carriage shudders to a halt, “you’d make a wonderful princess.”
I wouldn’t—not this new version of me who is so full of anger. But I smile softly and say, “Thank you.”
“Your new memory will come in handy in the competition for his hand. What did she take in return?” she asks cautiously, as if afraid of the answer.
I see no reason to lie to her. “I didn’t make a bargain.”
“Oh, darling,” she says under her breath, and it breaks my heart to hear her disappointment.
It’s a kindness that she lets me race up to my room and sit there alone for the rest of the day. As the sun sets, Mrs. Tuttle brings up a tray for dinner, but even she has the good sense not to speak with me.
It’s Lydia, back when she was herself, who would have made a good princess. Popular and beautiful, she had a reputation for her quick smile and quicker wit.
It’s well past eleven when I pad across the hall to her room. I’mnot shocked to find her awake. She never keeps normal hours anymore. She’s propped up in bed, a gothic novel in her hands.
“Mama already told me,” she says as I enter. “Will you make me curtsy to you when you win?”
I sink down next to her, like I used to when I was small and she let me sleep in her bed nearly every night.
“Who says I’m going to win?”
“You’ve never had enough faith in yourself,” she whispers.
“You had plenty for the both of us.” A family doesn’t need two stars, and Lydia was already ours.
“No.” She’s staring at the ceiling, neither of us looking at each other. “You’re misremembering.” Maybe it’s the dark, or maybe it’s that I’ll be moving to the palace tomorrow, but the wall between us feels less impenetrable tonight, like we’re speaking honestly for the first time in months.
A beat of silence stretches between us. She closes her book and turns down the gas lamp at her bedside.
We’re uncomfortably close to the subject we can’t discuss. The second of Lydia’s three great betrayals.
Lydia and I have had a deal since I was seven and she was nine.
We sliced our thumbs with a sharp garden rock and pressed them together until they became slippery with blood. She vowed she’d marry Lord Chapwick’s son from down the street, and I could live with them forever. He was a nice boy with a freckled face and an obvious soft spot for Lydia. My life would be my own, and I’d get to be with my sister. I could think of no better future.
It might not have been a magical bargain with an immortal queen, but to me it felt just as sacred and unbreakable. Our deal was the bedrock upon which our relationship rested, a constant.
But then, after her bargain was made and her first season came and went, she didn’t marry Lord Chapwick’s son. Everyone in town thought their betrothal was a foregone conclusion, especially the Chapwicks, but she rebuffed him. I begged her to explain until I was blue in the face, but Lydia could offer nothing beyond “it didn’t feel right.” She pretended she couldn’t hear me sobbing through our shared wall at night. I didn’t understand. I still don’t.
Lord Chapwick’s son married Fiona Edgar instead. As for her two seasons out in society, Lydia barely tried at all, always standing at the edge of the ballroom, lying about a hurt ankle.
“We’ll find someone better for you, Lydia,” I’d say, but she’d just nod with that odd far-off look of hers. It was a betrayal I didn’t know how to forgive her for.
