I stood and dropped a crooked curtsy, trailing Grandpapa to the doors. But just before I returned to the corridor, I glanced behind to look at her.
The Dowager watched me with a sad gaze. I was only a girl, but I knew such a look. Whatever my grandfather had said to her had convinced her to accept me. My admittance was not of my own merit; it was not based on my potential. Was it the name of my father that had swayed her? The name I did not know? Did his name truly even matter, though?
She believed that she had just accepted me out of charity, and I would never passion.
I chose that moment to prove her wrong.
ONE
LETTERS AND LESSONS
Late spring of 1566
Twice a week, Francis hid amid the juniper bush that flourished by the library window. Sometimes I liked to make him wait; he was long-legged and impatient, and imagining him crouched in a bush was cordial to my mind. But summer was a week away, and that provoked me to hurry. It was also time to tell him. The thought made my pulse tumble as I entered the quiet afternoon shadows of the library.
Tell him this will be the last time.
I lifted the window with a gentle push, catching the sweet fragrance of the gardens as Francis emerged from his gargoyle-inspired position.
“You like to make a man wait,” he grumbled, but he always greeted me this way. His face was sunburned, his sable hair escaping from its plait. The brown courier uniform was damp with sweat, and the sun glinted off the small accrual of achievement badges hanging from the fabric over his heart. He boasted he was the fastest courier in all of Valenia despite his rumored twenty-one years.
“This is the last time, Francis,” I warned, before I could change my mind.
“Last time?” he echoed, but he was already grinning at me. I knew such a smile. It was what he used to get what he wanted. “Why?”
“Why!” I exclaimed, swatting a curious bumblebee. “Do you really need to ask?”
“If anything, this is the time I need you the most, mademoiselle,” he responded, retrieving two small envelopes from the inner pocket of his shirt. “In eight days comes the summer solstice of fate.”
“Exactly, Francis,” I retorted, knowing he was only thinking of my arden-sister Sibylle. “Eight days and I still have much to master.” My gaze rested on those envelopes he held; one was addressed to Sibylle, but the other was addressed to me. I recognized the handwriting as Grandpapa’s; he had finally written. My heart fluttered to imagine what that letter might hold within its creases. . . .
“You are worried?”
My eyes snapped back up to Francis’s face. “Of course I’m worried.”
“You shouldn’t be. I think you will do splendidly.” For a change, he wasn’t teasing me. I heard the honesty in his voice, bright and sweet. I wanted to believe as he did, that in eight days, when my seventeenth summer marked my body, I would passion. I would be chosen.
“I don’t think Master Cartier—”
“Who cares what your master thinks?” Francis interrupted with a nonchalant shrug. “You should only care about what you think.”
I frowned as I pondered that, imagining how Master Cartier would respond to such a statement.
I had known Cartier for seven years. I had known Francis for seven months.
We had met last November; I had been sitting before the open window, waiting for Cartier to arrive for my afternoon lesson, when Francis passed by on the gravel path. I knew who he was, as did all of my arden-sisters; we often saw him delivering and receiving the mail to and from Magnalia House. But it was that first personal encounter when he asked if I would give a secret letter to Sibylle. Which I had, and so I had become entangled in their letter exchanges.
“I care about what Master Cartier thinks, because he is the one to claim me impassioned,” I argued.
“Saints, Brienna,” Francis replied as a butterfly flirted with his broad shoulder. “You should be the one to claim yourself impassioned, don’t you think?”
That gave me a reason to pause. And Francis took advantage of it.
“By the way, I know the patrons the Dowager has invited to the solstice.”
“What! How?”
But of course I knew how. He had delivered all the letters, seen the names and addresses. I narrowed my eyes at him just as his dimples crested his cheeks. Again, that smile. I could see perfectly well why Sibylle fancied him, but he was far too playful for me.
“Oh, just give me your blasted letters,” I cried, reaching out to pluck them from his fingers.
He evaded me, expecting such a response.
“Don’t you care to know who the patrons are?” he prodded. “For one of them is to be yours in eight days . . .”
I stared at him, but I saw beyond his boyish face and tall gangly frame. The garden was dry, yearning for rain, trembling in a slight breeze. “Just give me the letters.”
“But if this is to be my last one to Sibylle, I need to rewrite some things.”
“By Saint LeGrand, Francis, I do not have time for your games.”
“Just grant me one more letter,” he pleaded. “I don’t know where Sibylle will be in a week’s time.”
I should have felt sympathy for him—oh, the heartache of loving a passion when you are not one. But I should have remained firm in my decision too. Let him mail her a letter, as he should have been doing all this time. Eventually I sighed and agreed, mostly because I wanted my grandfather’s letter.
Francis finally relinquished the envelopes to me. The one from Grandpapa went straight to my pocket, but Francis’s remained in my fingers.
“Why did you write in Dairine?” I asked, noting his sprawling script of address. He had written in the language of Maevana, the queen’s realm of the north. To Sibylle, my sun and my moon, my life and my light. I almost burst into laughter, but caught it just in time.
“Don’t read it!” he exclaimed, a blush mottling his already sunburned cheeks.
“It’s on the face of the envelope, you fool. Of course I’m going to read it.”
“Brienna . . .”
He reached toward me and I relished the chance to finally taunt him when I heard the library door open. I knew it was Cartier without having to look. For three years, I had spent nearly every day with him, and my soul had grown accustomed to how his presence quietly commanded a room.
Shoving Francis’s letter into my pocket with Grandpapa’s, I widened my eyes at him and began to close the window. He understood a moment too late; I caught his fingers on the sill. I clearly heard his yelp of pain, but I hoped the hasty shutting of the window concealed it from Cartier.
“Master Cartier,” I greeted, breathless, and turned on my heel.
He was not looking at me. I watched as he set his leather satchel in a chair and pulled several volumes from it, laying the lesson books on the table.