The Chosen One (The First Book)

Chapter 9

They made us wait.

Twenty of us, in two rows, standing on a long red carpet that ran the length of the Great Hall. They'd lined us up by candidate number, which put me near the back. Close enough to the doors that I spent ten minutes counting the steps it would take to reach them.

Thirty-one. Maybe thirty-two, in these shoes.

The hall was enormous. Whoever built it had clearly never worried about heating it.

Beside me, Eliza wouldn't stop moving. Weight on one foot, then the other. Fingers pressing flat against her skirt.

"You're going to wear a hole in the carpet," I said.

"You're not nervous?"

"No."

"Liar."

She wasn't wrong. Just wrong about why. She was afraid they wouldn't call her name.

I was afraid they would call mine.

⸻

The royal family came in from the side, and the hall went quiet.

The King sat. The Queen didn't. She stopped at the front of the platform with a folded sheet of parchment in one hand, holding it like she'd already read it and didn't need to again.

Julian leaned against a pillar with his arms crossed, looking down the rows of us the way men look at horses before a race. Cassian stood apart from the rest of them. Hands behind his back. Eyes on nothing in particular.

He didn't look at me. I noticed that I'd noticed, and decided to deal with it later.

"Twenty of you came to this palace," the Queen said.

She didn't raise her voice. The hall did it for her.

"Eight will remain."

Someone behind me exhaled.

"Those who are not named will be escorted to their rooms. Your belongings are already packed. You will be returned to your provinces with the Crown's gratitude and a stipend for your families." A pause. "This is not a failure. It is an outcome."

It was a very tidy way of saying go home. I would have loved to be on the receiving end of it.

She unfolded the parchment.

"Lady Celeste Armand."

Celeste moved before the name was finished. She curtsied to exactly the right depth and rose with her chin level. Whatever she felt, she'd been trained out of showing it years ago. It didn't look like relief. It looked like a schedule being kept.

"Lady Vivienne Rosier."

Vivienne didn't react at all. She was standing in one place, and then she was standing three paces further on. Her eyes went to the platform. Not to the Queen. To Cassian, and they stayed there a moment too long before she looked away.

I wondered what she'd been looking for. I wondered if he'd noticed.

"Lady Eleanor Whitmore."

Eleanor's shoulders dropped an inch. On her, that was a speech. She stepped forward like a soldier taking a post.

"Lady Rosalie Beaumont."

A small sound escaped her before the smile covered it. On her way forward she glanced down the row to see who was watching, and found me. The smile didn't move. It just stopped meaning the same thing.

"Lady Isabelle Laurent."

Isabelle didn't move until the girl next to her touched her elbow. Then she went in small apologetic steps, whispering thank you at the carpet.

"Lady Clara Ashford."

Clara went white. She mouthed the word me, like there was a mistake on that parchment and someone would catch it any second now.

Six. Two left, and the ladies had run out.

Oldest houses first, straight down the ranks until the titles ran out. Maybe that was just how names got read aloud in a room like this.

Maybe it was how the list was made. I couldn't tell which from where I was standing, and I didn't like that.

"Miss Eliza Hart."

Eliza made a sound I'd hear again in my sleep. Half a laugh, half something torn out of her. She grabbed my wrist hard enough to hurt, then remembered where she was and let go.

Her family would eat this winter. That was what that sound was.

One name left.

Twelve women in that hall weren't going to be named, and I wanted badly to be one of them. I thought about the roof over the east side of the house. I counted the steps to the door again. Still thirty-one.

The arithmetic didn't help this time. The Queen had already opened her mouth.

"Miss Aurelia Vale."

My legs took the instruction reluctantly. I walked forward and stopped in the line beside Eliza, and found my thumb moving over the scar on my forearm, the way it does when I have nowhere else to put my hands.

I looked up.

Julian was already smiling. There was no surprise in it at all, which annoyed me more than it should have.

Cassian was looking at the parchment in his mother's hand. Not at me. Not once.

⸻

The leaving was quieter than I expected. A few of them cried. One girl laughed out loud with relief and then covered her face, ashamed of it. Most of them just turned and walked, and the sound of twelve pairs of shoes on marble went on for a long time.

The girl I'd shared a carriage with went past. She'd asked me if Northmarch had roads. She didn't look at me now.

"Don't," Eliza said under her breath.

"Don't what?"

"Whatever you're doing with your face."

I stopped doing it.

⸻

When the doors closed, the Queen handed the parchment to an attendant without looking at him.

"You will remain at the palace as guests of the Crown. You will attend lessons, meals, and whatever occasions are arranged for you. You will be observed."

Isabelle glanced up at that last word.

"There will be no further eliminations."

I felt it land before I understood it.

"The Selection will proceed by choice now, not removal." The Queen said it the way other people read out accounts. "You will remain until my sons have made their decisions. However long that takes."

Down the line, Celeste's chin lifted slightly. Rosalie let out a slow, satisfied breath. Beside me, Eliza had gone completely still.

I stood there and did the only arithmetic that mattered.

Every plan I'd made since that parchment came through our kitchen door rested on one thing. Sooner or later, someone here would send me home. I'd been so sure of it that I packed one dress.

Nobody was going to send me home. There was no test left to fail, no line to fall below, no polite letter waiting at the end of it. There were two men who hadn't chosen yet, and a door that stayed shut until they did.

I came here to lose.

They'd just taken losing off the table.