Felix looked to her in confusion, waiting for her to tell him what to do. “Remember where I told you to go,” Mina whispered to him. Her room was level with the ground, so she threw open the window. Felix understood, nodding to her once before climbing outside to fulfill the other task she had given him.
As she shut the window, she wished she could follow him, or that when she turned around, her father would be gone. But she had no such luck. Her father was waiting for her, as furious as before. She decided then that no matter what he said or did, she wouldn’t tell him about Felix’s true origin. That was still her secret, and she would cling to it as long as she had strength left in her.
“I can’t tell if you’re naive or just deeply stupid,” Gregory sneered, a vein pulsing on his forehead.
You wouldn’t speak to me that way if I were queen, Mina thought, but she remained silent. Let him rage, and when he was finished, she would speak.
“You should be thankful I stopped you before it went too far. If anyone found out about this, or if you ended up with a child, it would be impossible to find anyone to marry you.”
“And what if you were too late? What if it did go too far?” It was a risky claim to make, but it was worth it to see the blood drain out of his face. Yes, he’d listen to her now. He’d hang on every word.
He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. “Did it?”
Mina waited before answering, letting him anticipate her reply. “No,” she said at last.
Gregory released her, his shoulders sagging with relief. “If I ever catch sight of you with him—or any other man—again, I’ll kill him. How could a daughter of mine be so foolish?”
“I wasn’t going to let him—”
Her father’s laughter interrupted her. “You think you could have stopped him?”
“Yes.”
“And how do you know that?”
Because I made him and I can destroy him. She kept her mouth tightly shut, afraid that her pride would betray her. “I knew what I was doing.”
“Oh? Enlighten me.”
She thought quickly. Tell him the truth of her purpose, her secret ambitions, and he could be an ally. Lie, and he would think her a fool and marry her off as soon as possible.
“I want to be queen.”
His mouth remained hanging open for another few seconds before he shook his head and remembered to close it. Whatever he’d expected to hear, it hadn’t been that. She’d rendered him speechless, and that was a victory.
“I want to marry the king,” she continued. “I spoke to him in the courtyard, the morning of the banquet, and I thought that if I could … practice with someone, then I’d know what to do if I ever spoke to him again. I’d know how to—to make him love me.”
Gregory continued to stare blankly at her for some time, and then he burst into laughter. “I’ve underestimated you,” he said. “Here I was hoping to marry you into an important family, and all this time, you’ve been daydreaming about becoming a queen. You’ve inherited something from me after all.”
The idea of inheriting anything from him was distasteful to Mina, but she didn’t want to ruin her father’s good humor. “You could help me,” she said. “We could work together. You could be the father of a queen.”
He seemed to consider the idea more seriously, his expression growing contemplative. “It wouldn’t be for another few years. The queen’s memory must start to fade before the king can replace her. Are you resolved to wait that long?”
“Yes,” Mina said, thinking of the high table in the banquet hall and of the adoring faces that would turn to her when she took her place there at the king’s side.
“And no more of this … this ‘practicing,’ either?”
Mina flushed. She shook her head.
“If we can make this happen, Mina…” He stopped, nodding to himself as he went to the door. He paused at the threshold. “One more thing before I go. I’m simply curious: Is it the man you desire, or is it the crown?”
There was no safe answer. If she chose the man, she’d be deemed immodest; the crown, and she’d be mercenary. The only answer she could give was the truth:
“Both.”
*
Mina used to be able to determine the season by the trees alone. But in Whitespring, it was always winter, and so she hardly noticed as a year passed, and then another. She hadn’t expected to be queen by the end of a year, but she had hoped she’d at least have the chance to speak to the king again. She often lingered near the western courtyard where they had first met, but she never found him there. During meals in the Hall, she was too far from the high table to even catch his eye, let alone to speak to him. Most of the time, he wasn’t even there, preferring to take his meals privately.
Her father wasn’t concerned. “He can’t content himself with a memory forever,” Gregory kept telling her. “Soon he’ll want solid flesh, and that is something you have that the old queen no longer does.”
And though she found comfort in his reassurances, part of her always wondered, Is that all I am?
She still had Felix, though. She couldn’t risk her father catching them again, so Mina had searched for a safe place to meet him, and one night she found it. In a forgotten corner of the west wing was an abandoned chapel with stained-glass windows, the last remnant of a time when the sun had still shone on Whitespring, before the North had begun to pray to Sybil instead. From there, Mina called for Felix—because she had made him, she could reach out to him with a thought, a slight pull that he felt no matter where he was. He was rising quickly among the ranks of the huntsmen, but the king was still beyond his reach, and so out of Mina’s reach as well.
And then, one night in the Hall, Mina overheard that there would soon be a picnic in the Shadow Garden behind the east wing of the castle. That wasn’t news in itself—the court occasionally held small social gatherings for their own amusement—but Mina also heard whispers that this would be the princess’s first public appearance, which meant the king would be present as well. Mina had another chance at last. When the king saw her again, she wouldn’t be the huddled, shivering girl he first met in the courtyard.