Chapter 2

My father flinched hard. "Lilith, hold your tongue!"

I turned to Lilith, my voice clear. "I don't believe in any of that, Lilith. You don't have to feel guilty."

Lilith's eyes flickered. She let out a long sigh. "Rowena, none of this has anything to do with you. Whatever comes of it, I will carry it myself.

"You have your own destiny. How could I push you out in front of me to save myself?"

I looked back at her. "If you really believe destiny decides everything, why are you stopping me?

"I have already decided to take the decree for you, which only proves it was meant to happen. So there is nothing for you to feel guilty about."

Lilith had not expected that answer, and she froze for a moment.

Instead, Edmund's gaze settled on me. "Your sister calls this decree a bitter fruit. You still want to take it?"

I turned to face him, my eyes steady. "A bitter fruit is still fruit.

"I learned young that out in the hills, fruit is what fills your stomach, and a full stomach is what keeps you alive.

"Bitter or sweet, it makes no difference, as long as it keeps me alive."

When I finished, the room went silent again.

Edmund studied me for a long moment, then let out a quiet laugh. "So House Seyler does know how to raise a daughter after all.

"This marriage will need further discussion."

Edmund took the marriage decree with him and rode back to the royal capital.

It was the first time in living memory that a royal marriage decree had left the capital and gone straight back again.

All of House Seyler waited with their hearts in their throats. Only when night fell with no further word from the capital did anyone breathe again.

Up in the attic I fed Mira the medicine I had just boiled, and she watched me with aching eyes. "Rowena, you should not have stepped forward today.

"If the Duke had lost his temper and called for punishment, how could someone as powerless as you have survived?"

I blew on the medicine, still too hot, and held it to her lips. "Mama, if the Duke had called for punishment, all of House Seyler together could not have borne it.

"I don't want my life sitting in Lilith's hands. I want to find my own way out."

Mira opened her mouth to say something, and then quick footsteps came up the attic boards.

Lilith stepped into the room and pinched her nose against the old, rotting smell of it. "No one comes up here, Rowena, but you should still keep it clean.

"A person of quiet, simple tastes keeps herself neat even in a hut in the woods."

I set the bowl down on the table and looked at her steadily. "Of course this place cannot compare to your rooms. We cannot afford dragon's-breath incense brought from the southern reaches, resin so rare that a single drop takes ten years to form."

Never mind incense for magic. Not even ordinary incense ever made it up to my mother's attic.

I had never talked back to Lilith so boldly, and her brows drew together before she could stop them. "Rowena, you never used to be like this.

"Do you really think that because you showed your face to Duke Edmund today and offered to take the decree for me, you will actually get what you want?

"God decides what a person is given. Some things are pressed on me whether I want them or not, and no one else can take them away.

"God decided you would be born to your mother and branded a bastard. Nothing will ever change that."

Her whole face said there was nothing to be done about it. "You are to be pitied, really. From birth, the rules of this world have kept you shut inside this house. You ought to cultivate yourself beside me instead, untouched by money and never grasping after rank."

I did not follow.

What she was really saying was that a royal marriage decree does not change easily, and that she had already prepared herself to become a duchess.

And yet that same day she had humiliated the Duke in front of everyone, sworn she would die before taking the decree, and gambled every life in House Seyler for the sake of her own reputation.

Her words and her actions contradicted each other, and still not one person saw through her. They all praised her for caring nothing about fame or fortune. "If you truly cared nothing for money, you would not insist on dragon's-breath incense that costs ten gold ingots for barely one-thirtieth of an ounce."

I looked at her, completely serious. "If your heart is really in your magic, why does it matter whether the smoke is dragon's-breath or anything else?"