Caliza’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Do you have anything productive planned for today?” My eyes cut to her, narrowing. She sighed. “It’s a fair question, Thia. You hardly talk to anyone, and you spend so much time in your room. If you’d try a little—”

“If this is what you wanted to talk about, I’m leaving.” I didn’t need this lecture again. Feeling this way—it wasn’t my choice. I couldn’t make it stop. I’d tried.

A vein in Caliza’s forehead twitched. She looked so much like our mother when that happened, an impression aided by the thin oval face and high cheekbones they’d once shared.

I looked like her too, except my black hair was curly where Caliza’s was wavy. The brown freckles speckling my face were absent from hers, and where she was tall and willowy, my body was hardened by years of rider training. Or at least it had been. Now my figure was a little less muscle, a little more curve.

We had the same eyes though, our mother’s eyes. Not the typical dark Rhodairen umber, but bright gray like storm clouds lit by lightning.

“You’re seventeen; you’re an adult,” she said. “You have to pull yourself together. You can’t spend the rest of your life in your room.”

“Pull myself together?” My voice broke. How could three simple words make me feel so small?

Her hand fell atop my unscarred one. I stared at it, feeling as though mine were someone else’s hand. “You’re alive, Anthia. Be thankful. Move forward.”

I flinched, jerking my hand away. “You don’t understand. I can’t—I don’t—” My throat tightened, locking the words inside. How did I explain something I didn’t even understand myself? This was just like Caliza, to think a problem could be solved with only logic.

This was why I’d hidden in my room, why I wanted to run there now. Alone, no one could make me feel like an ungrateful little girl, rejected and inferior. No one could look at me like Caliza was now: disappointed, impatient, accusatory. As if this were all in my head and it’d go away if only I tried hard enough.

Didn’t she understand that I would if I could?

I swallowed hard. “What do you want from me, Caliza? To marry some foreign prince and pretend to like him so our countries can get along?” She stiffened, and I regretted the words instantly.

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair,” I said. Caliza had married Kuren because Trendell’s support was helping keep Rhodaire alive without the crows. He was the second oldest prince of the eastern kingdom, a good man. Even now, he was in Trendell coordinating aid on Rhodaire’s behalf. “Have you heard from him?”

“This morning.”