Chapter Four
The room erupts.
There is a chorus of gasping and shouting as everyone struggles to contain themselves.
Olive Lisonbee’s mother doesn’t manage to catch her when she falls this time, and her head bounces off the toe of my boot as she collapses to the floor, unconscious.
Bram is only eighteen, young for a prince to take a wife. No one saw this coming.
He shocked the whole of England when he arrived at court from the Otherworld four years ago, just fourteen years old. No one knew she had a son. One day he arrived wearing a beautiful green velvet coat and a smile so wide he had the entire court endeared to him in less than a week.
The details we know of the Otherworld are minimal, but we do know that time works differently for the immortals who live there. What was four hundred years here was only ten for Bram.
His presence at court over the past few years seems to have thawed some of his mother’s ice. She sometimes lets a smile slip through; her bargains have become marginally less bloody.
Bram fits in at court so well, most people forget that he wasn’t raised on palace grounds. The papers are filled with glowing reports of his studies, his heroics, his good looks. The whole of the country is half in love with him.
To marry him would be to make the greatest match of any girl in the history of England.
It would mean not only a title, influence, money, and security, but all of that forever. Bram and Mor are immortal. This isn’t just about us, but about every generation that follows.
Queen Mor’s cool voice rises above the cacophony. “Contain yourselves.”
Olive blinks awake, and I haul her to her feet and pass her to her mother. Everyone hushes, but ragged breathing echoes through the cavernous room.
Bram coughs into his hand like he’s trying to cover a laugh.
Queen Mor has had a human prince consort for as long as she’s been queen, but it’s been decades since the last royal wedding. Her kings age into old men while she stays young and beautiful, trapped in amber forever. Once they die, she waits a few months and then finds another young man to marry.
Some wonder if her original bargain with King Edward IV requires that she take a human spouse, some clever wording around the word king, but no one can be sure. I wonder if she might just be lonely. Castles are large and drafty, and eternity is an awfully long time to be alone.
Her current husband, Prince Consort Edgar, Prince Emmett’s father, is in his late forties, with a reputation for being kind and sociable, but he doesn’t accompany the queen on any official business. It is made clear that she is the ruler and he, her companion.
For one heartbeat, her eyes bore directly into mine. I glance away in shock, but by the time I look back, she’s already moved on.
“I ask for decorum as I continue,”
Queen Mor declares, but her mouth is twitching like her son’s, and I have a feeling they both find this whole circus entertaining.
“In order to ensure dedicated courtship and fair play through the season, any young lady who wishes to be considered as a potential bride must abide by the following rule: If you are not chosen, you will never take another spouse. You will live the rest of your days as a spinster. These are the terms.”
There’s an uproar from the crowd. Confused daughters, indignant mothers, shouts of “Why?”
and “Surely you wouldn’t do this to our girls?”
I can’t hold back my laughter.
“What on earth has gotten into you?”
my mother hisses.
I wipe my tears, but I can’t manage to get any words out. It’s all so absurd, standing here in this grand room, in this fancy dress, watching everyone panic about a future so terrible they’d shout at the queen, but it’s a future they’ve already condemned me to.
When I turn back to face the dais, Bram is staring directly at me, his head cocked slightly to the side.
Queen Mor stands and the room falls into a hush. She’s tall, but not inhumanly so. She just moves in a way that makes you look at her, like she’s walking on water. “When I take a husband, my suitors abide by this same contract. This is protocol.”
Of course, the men who don’t find wives still have options and financial and social freedom; we poor girls will have nothing.
“Should you choose not to agree to these rules,”
she concludes, “you are welcome to join the season as usual.”
The queen gestures lazily with her ring-encrusted left hand, and a footman steps forward with a scroll the size of his torso under his arm. Another footman comes from the right and sets up a delicate little table on which to unfurl it. A third places a quill, a silver dagger, and an empty crystal inkwell on the corner of the table.
“Any girl who wishes to be considered may sign the contract now. You have ten minutes to make up your minds, then we’ll get back to the business at hand. You will all still get your bargains.”
The queen sits down and casts a sidelong glance at Bram, whose face is unreadable, but his eyes—I swear they keep landing on me.
The room fills with voices, mothers and daughters discussing strategy. In this war we’ve been raised for, this is the ultimate battle.
I turn to my mother. She looks younger than her forty-nine years, clear blue eyes and blond hair barely run through with streaks of white. I want to give her a hug, tell her everything is going to be well. In so many ways, I feel like I’m the parent in our relationship, always reassuring her, playacting that everything is going to be all right. She opens her mouth to speak, but my mind is already made up.
I had a plan for today. I’ve played it out a million times over in my head. I wasn’t prepared for this, but still, I know what I must do.
I take a step forward.
“Ivy!”
my mother calls after me. “Darling, consider this, please!”
But I have. By presenting myself as a suitor, I will have to be invited to this season’s events. I could get my family back in society’s good graces, my mother could rejoin her friends, my father could meet again with business associates, save the house, and maybe Lydia would stop being so sad.
I think back to my six-year-old self, leaving her necklace at the base of the gnarled ironwood tree. I remember my face pressed to the glass and the shadow I swore I saw walking through the woods. I dreamed about that figure for years. In my head he was a prince, come to rescue me from the monotony of my life. That voice in the back of my head is the quietest as it whispers the wish I made that night—a child’s wish: Maybe if you’re special enough, one of Them will love you.
“It’s going to be all right,”
I whisper to my mother. Maybe I’m lying. Maybe it won’t be. But this is the first opportunity I’ve had to piece even the tiniest shards of our lives back together, and I’m not going to waste it.
A hush falls as I break from the crowd and approach the table.
The queen peers down at me from her throne. “You wish to be considered?”
I see myself as if through a spyglass, peering through time, struck with the knowledge that my future self will look back on this moment and see my life split into before and after.
I square my shoulders. “I present myself as a suitor for the prince.”
“Very well.”
She gestures to a footman, who picks up the silver dagger in his white-gloved hand and passes it to me.
The handle is cold between my fingers.
“You’ll sign the contract now.”
She pauses, sizing me up.
I look down at the empty inkwell and—oh.
Maybe it would be better to feign horror, to look weak and girlish in front of the prince. But I just want to get it over with.
I pull the crystal inkwell toward me.
Then I raise the dagger and slash through the center of my palm. I squeeze my eyes shut and wince as the blade pierces skin.
My heartbeat rushes into my ears. My nerves are so ragged I don’t feel anything at first.
Beads of blood swell, but I haven’t gone quite deep enough. I cut again, slower, with more pressure this time.
The sink of the knife into flesh is sickening, but I don’t look down. I only stop when I feel the warm rush of liquid. I pull the inkwell to the base of my wrist and let the blood flow into it.
Once it’s full enough to dip the pen into, I set it down. I should raise my hand to slow the blood flow, but I don’t want to stain my dress, so I place my bleeding hand palm down on the shiny mahogany table instead.
Then I dip the quill into my own blood and lower it to the parchment. The room is silent. All I hear is the sound of the scratching of the quill and my own ragged breathing. In crimson red, I scrawl:
Ivy Elizabeth Benton
I look up at the queen.
She smiles, something horrible in the twist of her mouth. “I wish you the best of luck, Lady Ivy.”