THE NAME SHE ANSWERED TO

Isabella

On the eve of the Rite, James and I spent our allotted answers on each other. We met in the tower chamber after midnight and we locked the door.

"You look tired," James said when I entered.

"I am tired," I said. "I did not sleep last night."

"Did something happen after I saw you?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "Matron Vanya came to my chamber. I need to tell you about Vanya's vial."

"What vial?" James asked. He sat up straighter.

"She came three nights ago without warning," I said. "She dismissed the maids and closed the door. She told me how the Rite works. She said a temple sapling is rooted in ash and held against the candidate's mark, and if the line is Vine, it blooms silver before the entire court."

"What else did she say?" James asked.

"She said the word Vine as though it burned her tongue," I said. "Then she offered me a small crystal vial. She said it would dim the mark until the sapling reads only a plain crescent."

"Where is the vial now?" James asked.

"It is in my chamber, hidden in my drawer," I said. "I told her I have learned not to trust gifts from anyone who breathes palace air. But my wolf smelled nothing wrong in the liquid and grew unnaturally still when I held it."

"What did you do with it?" James asked.

"I touched one drop to the stone windowsill, reasoning that a poison would simply sit there," I said. "By morning the drop had sprouted a thread of silver vine no longer than a fingernail, curled toward my collarbone."

James stared at me and his face tightened.

"Isabella, you should have told me sooner," he said.

"I was afraid to tell you," I said. "Vanya told me not to tell you. She said you cannot decide this for me."

"She is right about that part," James said. "But I should still know."

"I need to tell you something else," I said. "On the morning after Vanya came, I returned from the tower before dawn and found a palace guard slumped outside my chamber door, wrapped from throat to ankle in silver vines that had burst through the stone floor."

"Was he sent to hurt you?" James asked quickly.

"The night watch said he had a knife beside his hand," I said. "They called him an assassin. He was unconscious and the tips of the vines pulsed faintly. My steps brought the vines to life, and they leaned toward me and then drew back, leaving a single silver bloom on the floorboards."

"What did the bloom do?" James asked.

"It hummed, and the voice that came out of it was one I have never heard but recognized at once, soft and tired and warm," I said. "It sang the third verse of the lullaby. The words lodged in my memory whole. A silver door beneath the roses, where the frost never thaws."

"A silver door beneath the roses," James repeated.

"Yes," I said. "The roses can only mean the garden where the beast came over the wall. There are no other roses near a wall that high."

"I know that garden," James said.

"I remember kneeling beside the fallen creature that night," I said. "I noticed one small patch of ground where the frost had not thawed even when the sun climbed the walls. I think the door is there."

James was quiet for a long time, and then he looked at me directly.

"I need to admit something too," he said. "After you left the photograph, I went to the darkroom to pull the full negative strip from that night. I needed to print the frames around the buckle."

"What did you find?" I asked.

"The strip runs thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, and then thirty-five," he said. "Frame thirty-four has been cut away with a clean blade, so recently that the edge has not yellowed."

"Who cut it?" I asked.

"I do not know," he said. "I have lain in the tower for two months with the studio sealed, so someone with a key entered while I was supposedly senseless and knew exactly which frame to take."

"What was in frame thirty-four?" I asked.

"I cannot say who or what it showed," he said. "My field log says frame thirty-four is the only exposure that night marked with a magnesium flash, which I use only when I see something I need to prove. But my memory of that night is in fragments. Cold canvas, the weight of a cup pressed into my palm, a sweetness laid over something bitter. That is all I remember."

I wanted to ask him about the cup, but I did not. Neither of us mentioned what was in my bedpost. I had hidden the photograph of Riley's buckle in the hollow of my bedpost and I had not told him. He did not ask if I had kept it. We both knew I had kept it, and we both let it stay unspoken.

"I should end the pretence," James said suddenly. His voice was firm and his hands tightened on the blanket. "I should wake before the court tomorrow and stop the Rite. I can walk into the cathedral and tell them I am awake. I can stop them from reading you."

"You should not," I said.

"Why should I not?" he asked. "If I wake, they cannot force you. I am the prince. I can stop the Rite with one order."

"Because if you reveal yourself now, you spend the only advantage we have," I said. "You have spent two months pretending to be senseless while the vines spread up your arm. They speak freely around you because they think you cannot hear them. If you reveal yourself, whoever cursed you will know before dawn that you remember something."

"I do not care if they know," James said. "I care more about you standing alone before them."

"I have spent my life holding a line while terrified," I said, and my voice shook because the sentence was true. "I sat beside Noah's bed for years while he burned with fever and I never left. Fear is not a reason to spend the only advantage we have. If you reveal yourself, whoever cut that frame will know you are looking, and they will hide the rest."

He did not agree. I could see it in his face. He wanted to stand up and fight for me directly.

"Isabella, I cannot lie still while they put a sapling to your skin," he said.

"You can," I said. "You must. If you wake tomorrow, they will bring a different plan the next day. If you stay still, they will show us who they are."

He did not agree, but he did not stop me either. He leaned his forehead against mine and I felt the mark on my collarbone warm against his skin.

"I will be listening tomorrow," he whispered. "Even if I cannot move, I will be listening for you."

"I know you will," I said.

I returned to my chamber before dawn. Near midnight, there was a soft knock at my door. I opened it and found Cecilia standing there, pale and unpainted, without her usual powder.

"Cecilia?" I said. "What are you doing here?"

"May I enter?" she asked. Her voice was low. "I should not be here."

"Come in," I said, and I closed the door behind her.

"I have overheard servants carrying a sapling into the cathedral that did not come from the temple grove," she said quickly. "It was wrapped in cloth as though from a walled garden. It did not smell like ash. It smelled like roses."

"Who ordered it?" I asked.

"My father and Duke Vance," she said. "I heard them speak. They said the temple sapling might bloom silver for you, so they wanted another sapling that would read you differently. They want to control what the court sees."

I looked at her face and I saw how frightened she was.

"I recognize the courage in the warning, because I know what it costs to speak against one's own family," I said to her. "I know your father will punish you if he knows you came."

"He will," Cecilia said. "But I could not let them bring a false sapling without telling you. It is not right."

"Thank you," I said. "I thank you plainly without pretending the news changes anything. The Rite will still happen tomorrow."

"What will you do?" she asked.

"I do not know yet," I said. "But you did the right thing."

She left quickly after that, looking over her shoulder as she went.

Then I was alone with the vial.

I sat on my bed and held the small crystal vial in my palm. The liquid inside was clear.

"Refusing to drink means the mark will be read exactly as Duke Vance intends," I said to my wolf.

"Yes," my wolf said. "If you refuse, the false sapling will read you and they will show the court whatever they want."

"And drinking means trusting the woman the King may not trust," I said. "Vanya gave me this vial, but the King does not trust Vanya. I saw it in his face when he looked at her."

"Vanya told you not to trust anyone who claims to have known Seraphine, herself included," my wolf said. "It was the most honest thing anyone in the palace has told you."

"I know," I said. "I need to decide now."

My wolf pressed steadily against my ribs. He had been quiet for months and now I felt him strong and close.

"Are you afraid?" I asked him.

"I am not afraid," he said. "I am ready."

I opened the vial before dawn. My hands did not shake this time. I lifted it to my mouth and drank.

It tasted of rain and iron. The liquid was cold at first and then warm as it went down my throat. I felt it settle in my chest and then move to my collarbone where the mark was.

The mark throbbed once, and then it dimmed, and I felt a strange lightness behind my ears, as if something that had been closed for a long time had opened.

As it settled, my wolf, silent until a week ago, speaks a name aloud.

But it’s not Isabella.