“I always dropped my sword during practice,” he said. “One clash, and it flew out of my hands. And I used to be scared of the horses. The real ones, I mean. They would bite my toes when I tried to ride them. I think my father gave me the meanest ones on purpose.”
“Your father—” She broke off, hunting down the right words. She did not know how to approach the whispers of his cruelty without insulting Rodric or giving her indiscretions away. “He sounds very strict.”
“He wanted me to be strong, like he is.” Rodric ran a hand down the horse’s back, tugging on the loose threads of the saddle. “I never lived up to his expectations.”
“That can’t be true.”
“It is,” he said. “I will never be a fighter.”
“Fighting is not the only way you can be strong. I am sure your father knows that.”
“No,” Rodric said. “He does not. But I studied hard. He made sure of that, too. I hope I’ve done enough to make a good king.”
Aurora tilted her head, examining him closely, from the splayed strands of brown hair down to the large, booted feet. He did not look like a king. But, she supposed, she did not always look like much of a princess either. “Your father became king ten years ago,” she said. “But he was preparing you to be king before that?”
If Rodric noticed that she had changed the subject, he did not comment on it. “My father believes there’s only one way for a boy to be, be he a prince, a noble, or anyone. And he was advisor to the king for many years, through all the famines and the uprisings and many other terrible things. Strength and knowledge were how he thought I would survive.”
Aurora ran her fingers through the doll’s hair again. Her hands shook. “Were things truly so terrible back then?”
“I don’t remember a lot of it,” Rodric said. “My father became king when I was eight, so the trouble before then . . . my parents tried to keep me out of it. But I remember being afraid. There was an uprising when I was six. I remember looking out of my window in the castle and seeing the city burning, and all the people, hundreds of them, filling the streets. They crowded around the castle and started hammering on the doors, screaming.”
“What did they want?”
“Food, I think. I told my mother, they can have some of my food. Give them some of ours. But she said no, it wasn’t really about food at all. They hated us, she said, and they were just looking for an excuse. The whole castle seemed to shake from the way they pounded on the doors. I don’t know what would have happened if they’d got in. They were there for days.”
“What happened?”
He turned to look out of the window. The narrow shaft of light fell over his face, making his hair glow. “The king—the old king—he called in the soldiers. They killed everyone who fought back.”
Aurora swallowed. “But if they had got in,” she said. “If they had broken through the doors—”
“They probably would have killed us all. They killed the guards. They killed the servants unlucky enough to be outside the castle walls. And the things they shouted . . .”
Aurora shivered. She could almost hear the screaming, almost see the hate in the people’s eyes as they surged toward the castle. It was the same hate she had seen in Tristan’s once-affectionate face as he spoke of the king. It could not happen again.
“After that,” Rodric said, “the king imprisoned my father for failing to save the kingdom from famine. He was the king’s chief advisor at the time, so the king assumed he must have been scheming against him, giving him bad advice to undermine him. He accused my mother of being a foreign spy. For a while, it was just me and my tutors, locked up in a tower. I wasn’t told what was going on, or where my parents were, or if I would see them again.” He bowed his head, staring at the faded, fraying saddle.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That sounds awful.”
“It’s over now,” he said. “And it will be worth it, if—well. It will be worth it.”
The silence was like a living thing, creeping between them, crawling over their skin.
Rodric stepped abruptly away from the horse and walked toward a large chest at the edge of the room. Two wooden swords stuck out of the top. “Are these yours too?” he asked. He freed one with a tug.
“Yes,” she said. “Not that my mother approved. They’re not very ladylike.”
“This is more like the toys I knew,” Rodric said, holding up the blade for examination. It was a roughly cut, simple thing, given to her by one of her guards on her birthday. “Of course, my father would have filled them with lead, to make practice that much harder.”
“I never got much practice,” Aurora said. She stood up and placed the doll beside her. “I would swing it around by myself, but I never really had anyone to play with.”
“No one?”
“You’re not allowed to make many friends when your father is afraid you might be attacked at any moment.”
He handed her one of the swords. It felt lighter than she remembered, but calming, somehow, to hold. She swished it through the air, her fingers tight around the hilt. “That’s not quite—I mean, if you don’t mind, Princess . . .” Rodric walked closer and rested his hand over hers. “Like this.” He adjusted the placement of her fingers. “If you loosen your grip, it’ll be easier,” he said. “Think of it as part of your arm. You don’t have to cling to keep it there.”
She attempted another swipe, and he smiled. “That’s good,” he said. “You’re better than you think. Not much force behind it, but you could be quick. Dangerously quick.”
He stepped back, opening up the space between them.
“Shall we practice?” Aurora said.
Rodric shook his head. “We shouldn’t,” he said. “If I hurt you, I wouldn’t—we should not risk it.”
“You said I wasn’t that bad.”
“It’s not your lack of skill I’m worried about.”
She turned away, letting the sword hang loose by her side. “I thought I’d be like one of the girls in the stories,” she said. “Swinging swords, fighting dragons, having adventures. But . . .” She stared down at the ragged old doll. “Nothing turned out as I thought.”
“For me, either.” She looked up. Rodric was staring into the air again, his lips pressed tightly together.
“What about you?” Aurora asked. She stepped toward him. “What did you want?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It always seemed that my future would be decided for me.”
Aurora looked at the sword in her hand. The little girl who had run around this room, slashing at ghosts and shadows, had never felt that way. The present was fixed, but the future . . . anything had seemed possible then.
“It must have been lonely,” Rodric said, still not looking at her. “Playing in this tower by yourself.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose it was.”