“I think it’s your turn to tell the truth,” Lydia says to me.
I’ve tried so hard to be the perfect sister, to save our family from ruination by any means possible, tamping down my anger, my own wants, in the process. I’ve done it all because I love my parents, and I love Lydia more than I will ever be able to explain. But the anger in me is rising again, that awful tide of hurt I feel powerless to stop.She’s so much easier to love when she’s not in front of me.“We had a plan, Lydia, and I can’t understand why you abandoned it.”
“Ivy—” She says my name like a warning. This is the one topic still too sensitive to touch—not her disappearance, but her third and final betrayal.
“We made a pact,” I say. “We had it all figured out. You were going to marry Percival Chapwick, I was going to live with you forever, and we would have beenhappy.I was never going to be any good at any of this.” I gesture at my gown and swept-up hair and the palace. “You were the one who was meant for society. You were always perfect and sweet and good.”
“I couldn’t stand it!” Lydia stands up at the table, knocking her chair over behind her. “I was perfect and sweet and good, and then I realized one day I was never going to get to be anythingbutthat. You, Mother, and Father all put me on this pedestal I never asked for. I couldn’t live up there forever.”
“We were going to be together!”
“Are you mad that we’re not together, or are you mad that you finally had to grow up and take some responsibility?”
It stings as badly as if she’d just hit me. “I’ve taken all of the responsibility! You’ve left everything on me. I’m not strong enoughto bear it—this wasn’t the role I was supposed to play.”
“It was a child’s fantasy, Ivy. I was never going to marry Percival Chapwick. I thought we were just playing a game when I promised you. It was never real.”
“It was real to me!” It was the bedrock upon which my life was built, and it crumbled underneath me. I’m not under the queen’s enchantment, but I can’t stop myself from telling the truth. What does it matter anyway? She’s never going to remember.
We’re both crying now, big, ugly tears we’re powerless to stop.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” Lydia says. “I’m sorry I don’t remember the bargain I made. All I know is that I went into that throne room and I panicked. I thought of a life as small as our mother’s, and I couldn’t bear it. I don’t know what came over me.”
I feel so unbearably guilty. What’s the point in doing everything I can to save my family if I can’t save my sister—the person I love most in this world—from my own vitriol.
“I don’twantto hate you!” My voice cracks, echoing through the marble hall. “You were always the most beautiful, the most refined, the most beloved of us. You don’t understand what it was like to live in your shadow.”
She takes a step toward me, and I step back, swiping a hand roughly down my tear-streaked face. “You wereperfect.”
She throws her hands up in frustration. “I was perfect so thatyougot to be everything else. You think I didn’t want to talk back to my tutors, or fall asleep during etiquette lessons, or run in the woods instead of needlepointing with Mama? I might have been perfect, but you were the bravest, the most daring, the most fun. You were everything I never got to be, because I was protecting you.”
None of it matters anymore. “And now you’ve abandoned me.”
Tears stream down her cheeks. “That’s not my fault.”
“But our future rests on me, all the same,” I say. “I had no other choice. Mama and Papa aren’t strong enough to survive exile from society. I never would have stood a chance at getting an offer of marriage otherwise.”
My mother is too deep in conversation with Faith’s grandmother to overhear us. I don’t even know if she’d be offended to hear me say it.
“You don’t know that for certain. Sometimes I think you enjoy your martyrdom,” Lydia replies.
I thought I could carry the responsibility of this family on my shoulders, but it’s crushing me. It’s like I can’t breathe anymore.
“It’s not your responsibility to save us,” Lydia says.
“Of course it is! No one else is stepping up! This would all be so much easier if you weren’t so willfully naive. The world isn’t a fairy tale, Lydia. Things don’t always magically work out for the best. There’s no handsome prince coming to save you.”
She rolls her eyes and throws her head back, laughing. “That’s rich, coming from you, who, at this very moment, is hoping for a handsome prince to save her!”
“Screw you, Lydia.”
I look over the table, which is now in full carnage. Faith is huddling with Marion in the corner while her father and grandmother scream at each other.
Emmy’s mother is listing her physical flaws one by one on her fingers.
Marion’s sister is writing down every last article of Marion’s clothing she’s stolen in her absence.
Olive’s mother is giving a detailed account of an affair she had with her husband’s brother, while Olive watches, horrified.
