Hadrian tentatively reached toward her. She dropped the brush and took his hands, squeezing them tightly. She pulled at him and he wrapped his arms around her while she buried her face into the folds of his shirt. He gently stroked her hair.

Hadrian looked up at Royce with a puzzled expression and whispered, “She made them sneeze to death?”

“No,” Royce said, glancing back over his shoulder in the direction of the bodies. “She boiled water.”

“I didn’t know—I didn’t know if it would really work,” she whispered between hitching breaths. “I—I had to change it. Switch the focus. Fill in the blanks on my own—invent a whole new spell. I was only guessing, but—but it felt right. The pieces fit. I felt them fit—I made them fit.”

Arista lifted her head, wiped her eyes, and looked down the slope of the hill. “They screamed for a very long time. They were on the ground—writhing. I—I tried to stop it then, but I didn’t know how and they just kept—they kept on screaming, their faces turning so red. They rolled around on the ground and clawed the dirt, they cried and their screams—they—they got quieter and quieter, then they didn’t make any noise except—except they were hissing—hissing and I could see steam rising from their skin.”

Tears continued to slip down her cheeks as she looked up at them. Hadrian wiped her face.

“I’ve never killed anyone before.”

“It’s okay,” Hadrian told her, stroking the back of her head and clearing away the remainder of the grass and leaves. “You didn’t want to do it.”

“I know. It’s just—just that I’ve never killed anyone before, and you didn’t hear them. It’s horrible, like part of me was dying with them. I don’t know how you do it, Royce. I just don’t know.”

“You do it by realizing that if the situation was reversed and they succeeded, they wouldn’t be crying.”

Hadrian slipped a finger under her chin and tilted her face. He cleared the hair stuck to her cheeks and brushed his thumbs under her eyes. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to. I’m just sorry I wasn’t here for you.”

Arista looked into his eyes for a moment, then nodded and took a clear deep breath and wiped her nose. “I’m really ruining your impression of me, aren’t I? I get drunk, I wolf down food, I think nothing of sharing a room with you, and now I …”

“You’ve nothing to be ashamed of,” Hadrian told her. “I only wish more princesses were as worthy of their title as you.”