Guin stared out at the half-remembered castle, with its turrets and battlements and crimson-cloaked guards marching drills on a distant lawn. Resentment rose in her throat, threatening to spill out as a frustrated, piercing scream. But no tantrum could fill her kingdom’s empty coffers, or guarantee a plentiful harvest, so she swallowed down her theatrics.

She tried to recall the boy she’d played with a decade earlier, but her memories were hazy. All she remembered was racing his fair-haired friend to the pond, and drawing in some boring old books, and having to apologize for it like a badly behaved child, even though she was a princess in her own right, and Arthur was just the king’s bastard, whom everyone said was an unimportant spare barely worth the title of prince.

That summer, Queen Igraine had been expecting, and the courtiers whispered that the baby, when it was born, would be the heir to the kingdom. So Guin had spent her visit playing in the gardens, and thought nothing of it—or of Arthur—for years. Instead, she’d dreamed of finding love on her own terms. Of winning the hand of a handsome foreign prince. One whom she would dazzle instantly with her beauty and her charm, and who didn’t remember her as a bratty child who had shrieked over a skinned knee.

And then Arthur had pulled the sword from the stone, and suddenly an alliance with Camelot was all her parents could talk about.

Yet somehow, her father’s plan to pack her off to London with her wedding date all but set had still caught her by surprise. She didn’t feel ready. And she was afraid she never would.

She wanted to be young and unburdened forever, racing through Cameliard Keep late at night with wine stolen from her father’s vault, and laughing with her friends as they dared each other to jump naked into the lake. She wanted to dance with the silly, eager boys who worshipped her beauty and her title, and order them to bring her impossible presents, and act unimpressed if they actually managed. She wanted to sneak sugared treats into the bath and order silk from Paris and have it made into a dress so scandalous that it gave her father heart palpitations.

Not smile politely and defer to some boy just because his kingdom was richer. Or because he’d pulled some dumb sword from a stupid stone. And the sword wasn’t even an important one. If he’d pulled Excalibur out of a stone, then she’d be impressed.

The carriage pulled to a stop, and Guin’s stomach fluttered with nerves. She wished her mother had let her come with ladies-in-waiting, so she wasn’t alone.