Page 67 of The Court of Venus

“Prospero was right about Mars. He predicted you’d hurt yourself.”

He made a face. “Yes, but I will always be hurting myself or being hurt by others. Does it take a magician to tell me that? If my father had his way, if he listened to every little thing Prospero saw for me, I’d never leave my rooms or pick up a sword or ride a horse. They’d sand the edges of my entire world until there were no sharp points to tear and bruise my precious skin.”

I pinched his arm. He batted me away. “Will that bruise?”

We huddled together for warmth on the way back to Redhall. Slowly, the world began to thaw.

March. The court had moved to a new castle along the Snake. The wood behind Archerhold teemed with life. The king threw pageants and feasts on the green beside the tiltyard to celebrate Prospero’s great triumph: Hal’s betrothal to the princess of Bastian, his third bride-to-be since the age of seven. Prospero’s alliances were often shifting; Lionesse was now the enemy. Soldiers marched with lances and pikes to invade their beaches. Carmin to the north and Bastian to the east were in favor, despite the troubling gossip that Bastian’s emperor preferred the company of the dead to the living.

It was said many had wasted away in the endless lines to see their lost loved ones, neglecting food and drink. It was said the palace staircases were draped with these corpses.

Hal was given a portrait of the princess in a golden locket the size of his palm. It had a small clasp, hung on a thick red ribbon. We peered down at the painting together. I touched the princess’s chipped face and told him she was rather pretty, wasn’t she?

Hal said it was not something he wanted to discuss with me.

“Why not? She was born under Capricorn, so she must be strong-willed. You’d like that, Hal.”

“Does it matter if we like each other?”

He was in a foul mood the rest of the day, riding off with Tom Guildford and the other boys whose company he didn’t enjoy, who oiled him with pretty smiles all day long.

At one of Prospero’s nearby manor houses, I tried to work on my translations. I could hear the stacking of coins upstairs, then the piles collapsing, Prospero’s clipped order to clean it up.

My pen stalled when I thought about all the things I would never have. Some noblewomen my age were mothers. The princess of Bastian—younger than me and betrothed.

I was still by the fire when Hal swept in, handed his hat over to one of Prospero’s secretaries, and flicked rain from his hair. “Evening, Royal Highness,” the secretary said. “Is the lord chancellor expecting you?”

“No, he isn’t.” Hal hid displeasure well. I shrank back into the shadows and buried my face inside my book, but he’d already bounded up the stairs to Prospero’s study. Although I heard their greeting and Prospero’s clap on his shoulder, the door was quickly shut.

I left my book and gown on the armchair and flew up into the rafters as a bat. Perched on a wooden beam, I could listen with startling clarity now—the scrape of Prospero’s chair as he settled behind his desk, and then another chair groaning, which must have been Hal’s.

“How did you find that portrait?” If a grin could be heard, it would be in Prospero’s voice.

“Prospero,” said Hal cautiously. “How final—and by that I mean, considering the previous arrangements with Carmin and then Lionesse, and now Bastian—”

The groaning of wood. “Was she so repulsive to you?”

“I had no issue with the portrait,” Hal said.

Prospero caught on quick. “What issue have you, then?”

“My father had a love match.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Has Roland, in his romanticism, convinced you of this? Your father and mother might have been a love match when they married, but they are no longer in love, for they no longer speak. Though perhaps not speaking has done them good. That’s my first argument for you. My second, and listen very, very carefully, is that your father’s armies, the ones you so desperately seek to join, are sailing up the coast of Lionesse at this very moment. Whose alliance is most necessary to us now?”

Hal muttered, “Bastian’s.”

Prospero sighed wearily. “Yes, that’s right. I have gone back and forth to settle this agreement with the ambassador, and it is signed and dated and sealed by a Mercury, and so you will marry the princess for your father, and for me.” His voice softened. “I’ll convince him to let you play soldier. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“But—”

“Take whoever you’d like for a lover.” Prospero set something down, and I could hear the impatient rap of his knuckle against the desk. “Do you have someone else in mind? Is that it?”

My breath caught. I lost my balance. I hung upside down on the beam, gripping it with the talon in my wing. All I had was the canvas of their emotions—the swirling red of their shared frustration, and then Hal’s anxiety, bursts of it, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to speak.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. Softly, like he was reluctant to hear it himself.

“Your Roet name is coveted and ancient, your eyes are as gray as the bedrock beneath us now. All the power-hungry daughters of the court are beneath you. Whoever she is, she is not worth your father’s wrath.” The shuffling of Prospero’s papers. Another sigh. “You’ve always been honorable. Do the honorable thing now, won’t you? And I’ll send you to Lionesse so you can finally draw your sword.”