Mina didn’t speak. She didn’t trust herself not to scream or heap curses on both her new husband and his wretched daughter. And what would she tell her father? That her beauty wasn’t enough and she had nothing else to offer? That even as a queen, she didn’t have the power to win the love of a single man?
But you don’t have that power, and you never will, Mina reminded herself. Even the adoring crowd at the feast only loved her because she was queen—and Nicholas already had a queen to love.
“Is that all?” she said when she found her voice again.
He softened then, letting out a sigh as he rubbed at his forehead. “No,” he said, “of course not. Make any request of me, and I’ll try to grant it.”
Her first instinct was to deny both his offer and his pity, but then she considered more carefully—she was queen now, wasn’t she? She had wanted both Nicholas and the crown; why should she throw away both if she could only have one?
“I want the South,” she said, a realization rather than a request. She was the first southern monarch since before Sybil’s curse—didn’t that grant her some sense of ownership, even responsibility? “When you receive petitions from anywhere in the South, I want you to pass them on to me. I decide what happens there and what projects are funded, with no interference. Will you grant me that?”
He studied her a moment, taken aback by the fervor in her voice as she made her request. Finally, he nodded. “Very well. The South is yours. Anything else?”
A place in your heart. “No,” she said. “Nothing else that you would be willing to give me.”
“Mina—”
“Good night, Nicholas.” She wanted to leave while she still had this partial victory.
She remembered as she left the room that she had wanted to tell him about her heart. She never would now.
*
The queen’s chambers were much grander than those of a magician’s daughter. Her new mirror was already in place in her bedchamber, and Mina scowled at herself in the glass as she took off the gold circlet. She was beautiful, yes, but in the way a rug was beautiful. Something to look at, not someone to love.
She slumped to the ground, weighed down by self-pity. Look at yourself, her reflection seemed to reprimand her, a queen with no king, a wife with no husband, sitting all alone on the floor of her large but empty room and feeling sorry for herself.
Mina couldn’t even look herself in the eye. Her gaze fell on the cracks in the corner of the mirror, the source of all her troubles tonight. She thought of Lynet and fought down the impulse to blame her for the night’s disappointments. She told herself that even if Lynet hadn’t hurt herself, Nicholas would still have turned her away eventually—if not because of Gregory, then for some other reason. She told herself these things, but she didn’t know if she fully believed them—or if she wanted to believe them. It was much easier on her pride to blame Lynet. And didn’t she deserve that reprieve on her wedding night?
She ran her fingers over the lines in the glass, reminded of the scars on Felix’s arms.
Felix.
She still had the empty mirror frame locked away in a chest. She’d kept it because it had been her mother’s, but also because it helped her remember that there was someone in this castle who loved her in his own way. There were times since she’d turned Felix away that she was tempted to call for him again, and she had always resisted—but now there was no need to resist, no reason to be true to a husband who was no husband at all.
Mina made a decision: she wouldn’t spend her wedding night alone.
It was late enough that she could slip through the castle halls unnoticed, and the chapel was deserted, as always, when she arrived there. Would he still come to her, if she called to him? Or would he resist her, resenting her now that she was married?
She called for him anyway, reaching out to him just enough so he would feel that pull and know that she wanted him. Mina could make him come to her, make him love her again with a silent command, but she didn’t want that. She wanted Felix to choose to come to the chapel—to choose her.
She shivered in the cold, waiting. She tried to tell herself that it was a long walk from the servants’ quarters to the chapel, that she had to be patient, but with every moment that passed, she was sure he wouldn’t come. She would either have to go back to her room, alone and twice rejected, or else wait here forever in the dark.
Another minute passed, and another, and the empty chapel—once so welcoming—seemed to mock her for her foolish hope. Did she think herself so worthy of forgiveness that she could expect Felix to simply run to her again?
And then, impossibly, the sound of footsteps. Mina held her breath, listening closely, as the footsteps made their hasty way toward the chapel, growing louder as they reached the door.
Felix’s broad frame filled the doorway, and he was looking at her in surprise. “I didn’t believe it at first,” he said. “I thought I was mistaken, and that I would come here and find this place empty.” He stepped into the room, but he kept his distance from her, watching her warily. “I thought tonight was your wedding night.”
Mina wanted to reach for him, longing to feel the familiar breadth of his shoulders, the scars lining his arms, but she couldn’t bear the thought that even he would push her aside. “Tonight is my wedding night, but … but my husband doesn’t want me.”
Felix blinked at her, his face expressionless. “Then he must be a fool.”
She smiled sadly. “I’ve missed you, Felix.”
He tilted his head. “You turned me away.” There was no reproach in his voice; he was simply stating a fact.
The light shone on his eyes, and she saw how blank and empty they were. The last time she had seen him, he had been almost human, but now, after being away from her, he had become the perfect huntsman and no more. Did he remember loving her at all?
“I shouldn’t have called you again,” Mina murmured. “It’s too late.”
“Too late for what?” Felix said, taking a step closer to her. “Why did you call me here tonight?”
She wanted to do what she should have done the last time—turn him back to glass, destroy any evidence that he had lived, that he had stood here in this same room and loved her. “I don’t know,” she snapped. “You don’t even—”
He took another step toward her. “I don’t what?”
She shook her head, furious at herself for coming here tonight. “It doesn’t matter.”
He was standing directly in front of her now, so that she had to look up at him. “What do you want from me, Mina?” he said, and for a moment, she saw in his eyes a flicker of hope—or perhaps it was just her own feeling that she saw reflected in him.
“I just want you to love me again,” she said.