“You say Etan will always come in second place to Coroa. But I will always come in second place to you,” she lamented.

“No,” I insisted. “We went through something monumental together. It forged a friendship deeper than most. But we will part ways, and he will marry you. Over time, things will be different, I promise.”

This was not the conversation I’d imagined us having. I simply wanted to know her character better. But I knew my role in this world, and it painted me into one corner and Etan into another. If all I could leave him with was a confident bride-to-be, then that was what I’d do.

“What about Hagan?” she asked. “He seems incredibly kind.”

I laced my arm back through hers and kept us moving. Maybe if we just kept walking, things would somehow resolve themselves.

“He is. He’s perfect, really. Handsome, considerate, always thinks of me first. I can’t imagine another man in Coroa doing a better job as my consort.” I made a point of wording that carefully, and I wondered if she caught it. “Hagan will be my prince, you will be Etan’s queen, and I’d like to think that we could be friends.”

Her head tilted over, looking to me. “Really?”

I nodded. “Truly.”

She smiled, a cautious and fragile thing. She wasn’t a terrible girl. In some ways, things would have been so much easier if she had been.

“Have you ever made a flower crown?” I asked her. “Come, we’ll have to make you one for tonight.”

Thirty-Eight

THANKS TO SILAS, I’D LEARNED many things. I’d learned what love looked like. I’d learned that playfulness and seriousness could walk hand in hand. And, most practically, I’d learned that lots of things could be done with metal.

“This is quite pretty,” Nora commented. “Where in the world did you get a golden feather?”

I smiled at my reflection. “Oh, somewhere along the way.”

With the spaces left between the barbs, it was easy for my seamstress to weave golden thread through them and attach it to the front of my gown, all blindingly bright and beautiful. Someone might say it was ostentatious to have something so large laced into the bodice of my gown, but if I couldn’t come out and tell Etan how desperately I missed him, then I’d show him that he was directly by my heart at all times by whatever means I had.

I’d gone back to my traditional gold. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he liked me in gold. And though it was proper to wear my crown, I laced flowers from the garden into it, so I could try to be Hollis and queen at the same time. Tonight would be slightly less formal, and I wanted to leave him with images of me that he could hold close, no matter what came our way. And many things certainly would. Two different countries, two inevitable weddings, and years of ruling side by side but hardly ever speaking.