He turned to the looking glass, surveying his outfit with a frown. He looked like a prince, dressed in the latest courtly fashions. But he didn’t look like her Arthur.

“That jacket’s all wrong,” she blurted. “You should wear your brown suede, it brings out the gold in your eyes.”

She wished she hadn’t said it, but too late now.

Arthur’s eyes met hers in the looking glass, and Emry ached for all the things she wanted to say, and all the things she never would.

“The brown suede,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Well, wizard, stop standing there and help me find it.”

CHAPTER 23

Guinevere peered out her carriage window as Castle Camelot came into view. For some reason, she’d remembered it being bigger.

The gate guards stepped aside, banging their halberds, and the trumpets began their fanfare, announcing her arrival. Guin swallowed nervously, pressing a hand to her elaborately braided hair. She couldn’t believe she was here. Again.

Not for another carefree summer, but to make sure her kingdom was protected should peace give way to war. Their northern border was at risk, and her father, King Leodegrance, didn’t have the resources to defend it. Not after last year’s lean winter. Their people could barely afford the taxes as they stood. And the increase it would take to fund a war would leave them starving. Cameliard needed an alliance with a richer, larger kingdom. And in exchange, her prideful father had offered King Uther a trade he couldn’t refuse: his daughter’s hand in marriage.

For her whole life, Guin had known something like this might happen. And yet, as her carriage approached the castle’s inner gates, she felt entirely unprepared.

At least she was meant to marry the eligible young prince, and not the widowed king. Her mother hadn’t been so lucky. At sixteen, she’d sailed from Andalusia to a country she’d never seen, with just the barest grasp of the language, to marry a king thrice her age.

Which had made Guin’s mother entirely unsympathetic when she’d shouted that it was horribly unfair, and she wouldn’t go to Camelot, and to make Papa see reason.

“Daughters are currency, and sons are kings,” her mother had reminded her. “And you, querida niña, are a rare diamond.”

A diamond was a fair metaphor, since the stone needed to be carefully polished to sparkle as it did. And Guin’s parents had been polishing her for years. There were music tutors, and dancing lessons, and instructions on everything from arranging guests at a dinner table, to how deeply to curtsey, to the most flattering angles at which to stand when approaching a throne. She avoided sugar for fear of tooth rot, and dairy for fear of indigestion, and every night, a maid combed her curls with the finest scented oils until her scalp ached and she begged for mercy.