“Ah, yes, I agree. You’ve a great deal of learning to do,” he says, only it’s more of a growl, a low, angry sound that roots my feet to the wooden planks. “Seems your teachers haven’t taught you half enough, little sister.”
“I—I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” He laughs, a single harsh huff that frightens me more than his words. What does he want from me? Does he mean to punish me?
“It’s far too late for sorry. It’s far too late for anything, you little fool. How could you do that to Valka? She was your friend. She was—” He shakes his head, his teeth showing between his lips. “Do you know what you need to learn?”
His eyes are as blue and cold as winter, cold as steel that knows no mercy. They are a color that promises pain without remorse.
“You need to learn what happens to traitors who think they’ve escaped punishment.”
He takes three quick steps forward, grasps my shoulders, and then shoves me. Hard. I stumble, teetering for a single, unending moment on the edge of the top step, and then I hurtle backwards, rolling and skidding down the stairs, terror locking my cries within my throat.
At the bottom, I lie curled on my side, my heart thundering in my ears as pain throbs through my legs and arms, across my back. At least I managed to protect my head. And they were wooden stairs, not stone. That is something to be grateful for, I tell myself. As if that might lessen the pain. Or stop my brother.
I lie still, listening for him. Just as my heart begins to calm, I hear the tread of his boots—terror flits through me, and then I realize he is moving away, along the hall at the top of the stairs. The breath I take is almost a sob.
I rest my cheek against the wood, trembling. He hates me now. Not that he ever cared for me. I’ve always known that. Just as I’ve always known of his penchant for cruelty, harsh games and tricks that hurt those around him, if only rarely me. But now it will be different. Now he will discriminate, because I robbed him of the girl he meant to marry, and he will never forgive me for that.
“Your Highness?” The voice is soft and hesitant, and distinctly boyish.
I lift my head to find a page hovering a few paces away, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot. He is the same young boy who stood in the hall upstairs under guard yesterday.
“Can I help you up, Your Highness?”
I nod, and he offers me his hand, and then supports me as I untangle myself from my skirt and cloak and stumble to my feet.
“Thank you,” I say as I release his arm.
“Thank you, Highness,” he says, as if correcting me, and with a dip of his head hurries off up the stairs.
I look after him, bemused. My whole body aches with a constellation of pain that will blossom into bruises. My brother has never attacked me like this before. Not this openly, this terribly.
I take a shuddering breath and start down the hall, limping slightly. My feet and ankles are all right, it is my back and legs that hurt most. I stop before my mother’s room. I know she is still angry with me, I know precisely what she said yesterday—but surely she will not allow this? No matter how furious she is, I am still her daughter, am I not?
I knock hesitantly at her door, my scraped knuckles making me wince. At her call, I step into her front sitting room. She stands in the doorway that connects to her bedchamber, and as our gazes meet, her features tighten. From behind her come the faint sounds of rustling: her maid, no doubt.
“What do you want?”
“S-someone pushed me down the stairs,” I stammer, not sure why I cannot quite admit it was my brother.
But she knows. She laughs, a short, unamused sound. “Someone? Your brother, I presume. No one else would dare.”
I nod, searching her expression for some gentling of emotion, some hint of kindness.
But she just laughs again, a sharper, more cutting sound. “Well, what did you expect? You’ve destroyed what he had hoped for with Valka. That’s your concern, not mine. Now get out; I’ve greater affairs to attend to than your clumsiness.”
My shaking has begun again, accompanied by a sick feeling in my stomach. I turn and let myself out of the room because there is no arguing with my mother, no salvaging her regard.
She has discarded it for the things she would not lose: Valka’s father’s support, my brother’s future. Politics and power.
I have never felt more alone in my life.
I reach the great wooden gates without incident, acknowledging the guards with a raised hand. They nod and go back to their conversations, used to my heading out for a solitary ramble now and then.
Outside, a wood warbler’s high twittering call carries across the cleared, grassy land from the surrounding forest. I turn toward it, taking a half-worn path through the grasses, ignoring the road down through the village. I want only to get away.
Walking is easier now that some of the sting from my fall down the stairs has faded. I know I could have stopped at the stables and asked the hostlers there to saddle Acorn, but I don’t want to see anyone right now. My mother’s words ring in my ears, my cheeks are damp, and there is a hollowness in my chest that threatens to swallow me.
As I reach the woods, I hear other birds—sparrows, a goldcrest’s distinctive chattering call, and further away, a woodpecker. At the edge of the forest, there is plenty of undergrowth, but as I follow the twisting trail into the deeper wood, the canopy blocks out the light. There are fewer low-growing bushes
