The Chosen One (The First Book)

Chapter 10

The schedule was waiting under my door when I woke.

Breakfast, seventh bell. Luncheon, twelfth. Dinner, sixth. Lessons will begin once the household is settled.

I read it twice looking for the part where I was supposed to do something useful. At home the day had a shape because things died if you ignored them. Here the day was three meals and whatever I could think of to put between them.

I sat on the edge of that enormous bed trying to work out what the catch was, and then I remembered the Queen's word from the day before.

Observed.

⸻

Nobody watched us at breakfast. That was the trick of it.

There was no one at the wall with a list. The royal family simply ate, and we simply ate, and I sat there slowly understanding that everything happening in that room was being written down somewhere by somebody, including the fact that Isabelle apologized to a servant for taking a plate off her own tray.

I ate three rolls. I have no idea what that told them about me.

⸻

They turned us loose in the west garden after lunch, and it took about a quarter of an hour for the eight of us to arrange ourselves.

I found this out by trying to find somewhere to sit.

The fountain was taken. Celeste had it, standing where the paths crossed so that anyone going anywhere had to pass her, and

Vivienne had arrived beside her not long after. They didn't seem to like each other. They stood together anyway.

The bench near the roses was Rosalie's. She'd been at the fountain first and hadn't stayed, and I couldn't tell you what was said, only that Celeste smiled at her and the smile ended the conversation instead of starting one, and Rosalie walked away with her chin up like the roses had been the plan all along.

The good spot by the wall had Isabelle and Clara in it. Clara was drawing. Isabelle was sitting beside her not talking, which I suspected was the most useful thing anyone had done for Clara in weeks.

Eleanor had the entire perimeter and was using all of it.

I ended up under an apple tree with a root in my back, which is roughly where I end up in most rooms.

Eliza came and sat with me, which she could have chosen not to do.

The garden changed when Julian came through the far gate.

Nobody announced him. Nobody stood. But Celeste's shoulders went back, and Isabelle stopped mid-sentence, and the whole afternoon quietly rearranged itself around a man walking across the grass with his hands in his pockets.

He didn't go to anyone. He sat down on the low wall by the fountain, tipped his face up into the sun, and waited.

He didn't wait long.

Rosalie got there first, which surprised nobody, least of all Rosalie. Celeste arrived without appearing to have moved. Within ten minutes there were five women around that fountain and one man sitting on a wall who had not taken a single step toward any of them.

At home, if you want a thing, you go and get it, and if you're slow about it somebody else gets there first. It had never once occurred to me that you could just be the thing everyone comes to.

Beside me, Eliza smoothed her skirt.

"I'm going over."

"I noticed."

She didn't move. Then, "Come with me."

"Why."

"Because I'm not walking into that on my own."

"You won't be on your own for more than three seconds."

"Aurelia."

So I went.

It was worse up close.

Not bad. Just loud, and very fast, and everyone in it was better at it than I was. Celeste said something to Julian in a language I was

fairly sure was Verrian and he answered in it, and Rosalie laughed before she could possibly have understood the joke, and Isabelle said almost nothing and looked delighted to be standing there.

Eliza was good. That was the thing I hadn't expected. She arrived in the conversation like she'd been in it the whole time, and she asked him questions instead of waiting for his, and within a minute he'd turned toward her instead of away.

I stood at the edge of it with my hands behind my back and worked out how long I had to stay before leaving became an event.

"You can go."

I looked up. Julian hadn't raised his voice and hadn't really stopped talking to Eliza.

"I'm sorry?"

"You've been counting minutes since you walked over." He glanced at me, entirely unbothered. "Go on. I'll manage."

Rosalie laughed. She'd have laughed at anything he said, which didn't make it better.

I went. He lifted two fingers off his knee as I passed, and he didn't look up.

I was halfway across the grass before I worked out what bothered me about it. It wasn't the dismissal. It was the not looking.

Cassian was on the outer path.

He wasn't in the garden. He was walking the far side of it with a clerk beside him, both of them clearly on their way somewhere that mattered more than this, and he had stopped.

He was looking at me. Not at the fountain, not at the eight of us, not at his brother holding court in the sun. At me, crossing the grass alone, away from all of it.

I met his eyes because I didn't have time to decide not to.

He didn't look away, and he didn't do anything else either. No nod. No acknowledgment. Just a moment of being seen exactly in the act of retreating, which was somehow worse than being caught doing something interesting.

Then the clerk said something and he turned and walked on.

I was nearly at the gate when Vivienne fell into step beside me. I hadn't heard her coming. I was starting to think nobody ever did.

"He let you leave."

"He was showing off."

"He was." She kept walking, eyes forward. "He usually doesn't."