Her advisers had a single-mindedness that left her behind sometimes. That was why the marriage talk frightened her: Things that started as mere talk among them seemed to become real institutions, suddenly, forcefully, before she’d ever managed to comprehend them or form an opinion. It had happened with the law that gave blanket pardons for all crimes committed during Leck’s reign. It had happened with the charter provision that allowed towns to break free of their governing lords and rule themselves. It had happened with the suggestion—just a suggestion!—to block off Leck’s old living chambers, take down his animal cages in the back garden, and burn his belongings.

And it wasn’t that she was necessarily opposed to any of these measures, or regretted her approval once things settled down enough for her to comprehend that she’d approved. It was only that she didn’t know what she thought, she needed more time than they did, she couldn’t always be rushing ahead the way they were, and it frustrated her to look back and realize that she’d let herself be pushed into something. “It’s deliberate, Lady Queen,” they’d told her, “a deliberate philosophy of forward-thinkingness. You’re right to encourage it.”

“But—”

“Lady Queen,” Thiel had said gently, “we’re trying to lift people out of Leck’s spell and help them move on, you understand? Otherwise, people will wallow in their own upsetting stories. Have you spoken to your uncle about it?”

Yes, she had. Bitterblue’s uncle, after Leck’s death, had come halfway across the world for his niece. King Ror had created Monsea’s new statutes, formed its ministries and courts, chosen its administrators, then passed the kingdom into Bitterblue’s ten-year-old hands. He’d seen to the burning of Leck’s body and mourned the murder of his own sister, Bitterblue’s mother, who was gone. Ror had brought order out of chaos in Monsea. “Leck is still lodged in too many people’s minds,” he had said to her. “His Grace is a sickness that lingers, a nightmare you must help people to forget.”

But how was forgetting possible? Could she forget her own father? Could she forget that her father had murdered her mother? How could she forget the rape of her own mind?

Bitterblue laid her pen down and went, cautiously, to an east-facing window. She put a hand to the frame to steady herself and rested her temple against the glass, closing her eyes until the falling sensation receded. At the base of her tower, the River Dell formed the city’s northern boundary. Opening her eyes, she followed the river’s south bank east, past the three bridges, past where she guessed the silver docks and lumber docks, fish and merchant docks to be. “Watermelon patch,” she said, sighing. Of course, it was too far and too dark to see any such thing.

The River Dell here, as it lapped at the castle’s north walls, was slow-moving and wide as a bay. The boggy ground on the opposite shore was undeveloped, untraveled except by those who lived in Monsea’s far north, but still, for some unaccountable reason, her father had built the three bridges, each higher and more magnificent than any bridge needed to be. Winged Bridge, the closest, had a floor of white and blue marble, like clouds. Monster Bridge, the highest, had a walkway that rose as high as its highest arch. Winter Bridge, made of mirrors, was eerily hard to distinguish from the sky during the day, and sparkled with the light of the stars, the water, the city at night. They were purple and crimson shapes now in the sunset, the bridges, unreal and almost animal. Huge, slender creatures that stretched north across flashing water to useless land.