Page 2 of Crimson Kingdom

She embraced me once, then she turned around to walk back inside. Back to her dark rooms.

And I went to mine.

I gave myself one week to stay in my rooms. One week for my mother to come to my bed and run her fingers through my curls, bringing me pastries I couldn’t quite bring myself to eat.

Then Taisiya arrived, carrying a letter with the seal of Clan Bear.

The pristine parchment held exactly one sentence in familiar, elegant script.

You forgot something.

Evander had figured out she was the spy, and he had let her live. Let her return, even.

I was grateful. Genuinely.

Even if I couldn’t help but remember the way he had filled entire pages when he was writing the other clans regarding trade agreements, and yet, he had spared me only three, impersonal words.

Which was for the best, I was sure.

What was there really to say, after the way we had left things?

So that day, I got out of bed. I returned to my life, to normality, even if no part of it felt normal anymore.

Even if no part of it felt like it was mine.

Ten days after I got home, Avani finally consented to speak to me.

She sat on my bed as tears spilled down her cheeks and repeated what she had said the first day.

“I thought I had lost you, too.”

But this time it was quiet despair. It was an olive branch. She threw her thin arms around me, and I hugged her back.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“You’re home now,” she said. “You’resafenow.”

Safe.

That was something, even if it didn’t always feel true.

Even if I still woke up at night drenched in sweat and half-believing it was blood dripping down my back, spilling on the snow around me.

Even if the last time I felt safe was lying in bed with the man who stole me and wishing he wanted to keep me half as much as I realized I wanted to stay.

The days passed in a blur of teas with the ladies and sparring with Da’ and sneaking out to the villages with Davin. Of dodging cautious conversations with Mamá and quietly slipping into Avani’s bed like I had when we were kids to avoid sleeping alone.

Of going through the motions of pretending to be all right.

Forty-two days after I left Socair, I received yet another letter.

This one was from Theo, and was decidedly longer than three words.

It was a proposal.

Or, at least, a request to visit to discuss a betrothal.

I set it on my vanity and didn’t open it again.