Epilogue #2
I was fourteen the first time I tried to stop the ceremony.
After four years of wearing the mask, of watching people drink poisoned wine and fall, I couldn’t bear it anymore.
The night before that year’s Day of Mercy, I crept down to the wine cellars and replaced the ceremonial ashwine with ordinary red.
I thought I was clever. I thought I was merciful.
Until I was caught by the cellar master, who recognized immediately what I’d done.
Father didn’t rage when they brought me to his study, though I wished he had.
I could’ve handled that. Rage would mean I’d gotten through to him, if only for a moment.
Instead, he’d looked at me with such disappointment that my insides hollowed out.
“Why, Amarissa?” he’d asked, his voice terribly soft. “I thought you understood your duty.”
“They don’t deserve to die,” I said.
“And who are you to decide that?” His eyes had turned to flint. “The laws have protected our people for generations.”
The next morning, as punishment, he made me deliver the cups personally. Made me look into each condemned person’s eyes as I handed them their death. One woman, only a few years older than me, grabbed my wrist after taking her cup.
“Be brave,” she said. “One day you’ll find a way.”
After they’d all fallen, Father had the woman’s parents brought forward. “For encouraging rebellion in the royal house,” he announced to the crowd, “these two shall join today’s ceremony.”
I leaped between them and my father. Told them to run. Raced to my father and dropped to my knees, begging him not to do it. The guards grabbed me and held me back while Father himself tipped the cups to their lips.
That night, I couldn’t stop vomiting. Couldn’t sleep. My magic flared so violently that the tapestries in my chamber caught fire. Commander Thorne found me huddled in the corner, rocking, sobbing.
“Breathe, Princess,” he said, removing the scorched evidence himself. “You must survive to change things. You cannot help anyone if you’re dead.”
It took three days before I could keep food down. Three weeks before I stopped seeing their faces when I closed my eyes. Three months before I stopped flinching whenever Father touched my shoulder.
Even now, I still dream of that woman’s whisper. Be brave. And I wake up tasting tainted wine on my tongue.
I didn’t dare outright defy my father again. I learned to be careful. To wait. To look for tiny ways to fight that wouldn’t get more people killed.
When I was twenty, I slipped sleeping herbs into a guard’s drink and helped a man escape.
When I was twenty-two, I “accidentally” spilled wine on the execution list, making two names unreadable.
They weren’t called forward and I hadn’t seen them in the village since.
At twenty-four, I pretended to faint on the dais, creating enough of an uproar that three people slipped from the group and fled town.
All of those people lived today because of what I’d done. Small rebellions, dangerous gambles that could cost lives if Father ever discovered the truth. These secret victories were the only things keeping me sane, tiny sparks of hope in the darkness.
I was the Lady of Mercy, born from the ashes of a girl who learned the true price of courage.
My sitting room door burst open, the wooden panel smacking against the stone wall, and my lady-in-waiting, Mae, rushed in from the hall.
“Princess—” Her voice cracked. She staggered across the room, wild-eyed, her face blotchy and wet with tears.
I rose and rushed to her. “Mae…”
The open door to the dressing room caught my eye. I threw out my hand, and the panel slammed shut. The latch caught at my command. Stillness settled over the room.
Magic. Uncontrolled, instinctual, and, fates help me, visible to whoever might be watching. It often flared when I felt others’ pain.
Dread crept up my spine. Was this how it started, moments when my magic acted without my permission? How long before I lost control completely, before I became like the woman who destroyed half the southern slope?
Mae didn’t notice, but the cinderhawk perched on a branch outside my window did. The bird tilted its head before launching into the sky with a shriek that scraped across my nerves. It vanished beyond the southern castle spire.
“They took him,” Mae sobbed. “They took my Leo.”
I wrapped my arms around her. “To the reformatory?” I’d seen him revive a wilted flower. Carefully told him to keep his ability hidden. But those hunting magic collected anyone who showed even a hint of power.
“Mother turned him in,” Mae said. “She told them he made the garden vines grow too fast. She said the old laws are clear. Said if I wouldn’t protect the court, she would.”
Mae had placed Leo in my arms when I visited her the day after he was born. I’d been nineteen then, already wearing my mother’s mask for five years but still finding joy in simple things like a newborn’s tiny fingers and toes.
“He’s only seven,” I said. “Young enough that they might help him.”
But how could they save him, when I hadn’t been able to save myself?
Mae’s sobs finally quieted into sharp, ragged breaths. She pulled away, wiping her sleeve across her face. Her eyes darted to the closed bedchamber door. “They didn’t hear me, did they?”
“I don’t think so.”
I poured tea from the pot and made her sit and drink it.
“Princess?” one of the other women called from beyond the door. “It’s time to get ready.”
“Stay here,” I whispered, giving Mae another hug. “I’m going to get him back. I promise.”
“How?”
“I’ll find a way.”
I’d saved six people from the Day of Mercy over the years. Six out of hundreds. I would save Leo, but I’d have to be careful. If I drew attention to him, Father would know. He knew everything. And he’d do something worse to Leo than whatever they did in the reformatory.
I made my feet carry me into my bedchamber, where the scent of hot-pressed cloth and griveth moss swirled through the room. I closed the door behind me.
My three ladies dipped into curtsies.
I stripped off my dress, shivering in my undergarments before they tugged the sapphire blue robe over my head and smoothed it across my shoulders.
Blue would show my status.
The fates help anyone wearing white today.
The color made my pale blue eyes look almost silver in the mirror’s reflection. Mother’s eyes, in a face that grew more like hers with each passing day.
One of the servants gathered my long blonde hair, twisting it into a simple knot at the nape of my neck.
Unlike my younger sister, Addie, who’d inherited Father’s dark curls and needed an hour with a hot iron to achieve any semblance of order, my hair fell in natural waves and didn’t need much attention.
I rolled my shoulders, feeling the familiar ache from yesterday’s training session with Commander Thorne. The fighting forms he’d brought from his homeland required stillness and control, so different from the traditional swordplay many in the court mastered.
My ladies adorned me with jewelry. Earrings. A bracelet. And a glittering ring on each of my fingers.
The final touch was the mask. Everyone knew who I was beneath, of course, but it was time for me to fully become the Lady of Mercy.
One of the servants stepped forward, cradling it in a deep-red cloth. Bone-white and polished to a mirror sheen, it had been carved into the shape of a woman’s face, one blank and silent. Only the eye openings would reveal the true me.
I wondered if Addie felt equally hidden behind the elaborate court fashions of her new home. My sister had left a month ago, her trunks filled with silks and jewels rather than ceremonial robes. Father had commissioned an entire wardrobe for her new life.
“Perhaps your sister’s new husband will appreciate her sharp tongue if it’s accompanied by a sharp style,” he’d muttered after another of their arguments. Addie had laughed, that fearless sound I’d always envied.
Mae opened the door and entered the room, her face no longer splotchy and her eyes filled with fury.
At my nod, she lifted the mask.
The moment it touched my skin, I disappeared. My throat tightened. Each time I wore it, it took longer to remember who Amarissa was.
I worried I’d one day take the mask off and find nothing beneath.
As I crossed the foyer, my plain sandals swishing on the ornate marble floor, guards swept open the intricately carved, wide wooden entrance doors.
I stepped out of the castle to instruments wailing and the low murmur of conversation in the distance.
People would be gathering in the village center, coming to bear witness to this Day of Mercy that was anything but merciful to those who’d shown even a touch of magic.
Father emerged in matching ceremonial robes, his gold circlet catching the sunlight.
“Ready?” he asked, his voice low enough that only I could hear. His gaze lingered on my face, and the flicker of old pain there told me he was remembering our mother.
I nodded, and we descended through the castle gardens toward the gate far ahead, the scent of blossoms clogging my nose. It was all I could do not to rip off the mask and let my face breathe.
The enormous steel gates yawned open as we approached, flanked by life-sized stone dragon sentinels, their wings unfurled, their necks stretched out to shoot flames at the sky. Sadly, my court hadn’t stocked a dragon aerie for many generations.
As tradition dictated, I remained a pace behind my father. I walked alone in silence, wondering if my mother would recognize the woman her daughter had become.
The ceremonial mask itched as it shifted on my cheekbones, the morning breeze doing nothing to cool my inner fire. Three years ago, when I’d fallen ill the night before the Day of Mercy, Father had broken tradition, performing the ritual alone rather than forcing me from my sickbed.
“The Lady of Mercy deserves mercy too,” he’d said, sitting beside me later, holding my hand.