The Chosen One (The First Book)

Chapter 13

They taught us how to stand before they taught us how to move.

The woman they brought in for it had a voice like a ruler being laid flat on a desk, and she began with the curtsy, which I had assumed was one thing and turned out to be four.

There is a depth for the King. A shallower one for the Queen, which makes no sense to me and which nobody could explain. A different one for a prince. A fourth for anybody else who outranks you, which in my case was going to be everyone I met for the rest of my life.

"The knee, Miss Vale. Not the back."

I tried again.

"You are bowing. We do not bow."

"What's the difference?"

"A bow says you are lowering yourself." She demonstrated, and it was, I admit, a different thing entirely.

"A curtsy says you are already exactly where you belong, and are pleased about it."

I thought that was the single most useful sentence anyone had said to me since I arrived, and I have never been able to do it properly since.

Celeste did it without thinking, the way you'd shift your grip on a knife. Isabelle did it beautifully and then apologized. Eleanor did it like a man taking his hat off.

⸻

The dancing was worse.

We had no men, so we partnered each other, and half of us had to take the man's part. Eleanor and I both reached for it at the same time and then stood there, and the instructor separated us before it could develop.

I was put with Eliza, who has apparently been dancing at village fairs since she could walk and had the decency not to enjoy my situation too openly.

The steps were not the problem. The steps are counting, and I can count.

"You're leading," Eliza said.

"I'm not."

"You are. You've been leading for four minutes."

"You went where I went."

"That is what leading is, Aurelia."

The instructor came past, watched us for a moment, and put it more plainly.

"You are waiting to be told where to go, and then going there first."

That is a fair description of most of my life, so I didn't argue with it.

I tried it her way. It felt like walking backward across a frozen pond in the dark and letting someone else decide when the ice ended.

Twice I stopped without meaning to. Both times Eliza walked into me.

⸻

Amara arrived somewhere in the middle of the third attempt and sat on the edge of the orchestra platform without announcing herself, one leg swinging, watching us the way you watch weather from indoors.

We had all seen her by then. Across dinners, in corridors, once at the far end of the garden. Nobody had spoken to her. She had that effect, or the palace did.

She let it go on for a while. Then, in the gap between one piece and the next, she said, "You're all counting."

The room stopped.

"You are. I can see your mouths." She got down off the platform.

"I had this lesson for six years. She used to make my brothers stand in for the men. Cassian counted out loud until he was nineteen."

Somebody laughed before they could stop themselves. I think it was Clara.

Amara crossed the floor and stopped in front of me, which I had not expected and had no plan for.

"You're the worst one."

"Yes."

"That was quick."

"It saves time."

She put her hand out, palm up, and I looked at it long enough that she raised her eyebrows.

"I'm taking the man's part. It's the only good part. Don't tell my mother I said so."

She was easier to dance with than Eliza, which I understood to be a matter of practice rather than kindness. She also talked the entire time, which turned out to be the trick of it. I stopped counting because I was busy listening, and my feet carried on without asking me first.

"Where did you learn to stand like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like you're about to be handed something heavy."

"Northmarch."

"Right." She turned us, and I went.

"My mother keeps talking about how you told her that history book was badly written."

"It came up."

"She's mentioned it three times." A beat.

"She doesn't mention things three times."

The music stopped. Amara let go and stepped back and made the fourth curtsy, the one for anyone who outranks you, which she absolutely did not owe me. Two of the girls behind us made a small noise about it.

"Oh," she said, turning to the room.

"Tomorrow evening, there will be an informal ball."

Nobody moved. Celeste got there first.

"Informal, Your Highness?"

"No announcements. No seating plan. No receiving line." Amara counted them off like she was listing chores.

"And who will be attending?"

"Everyone. You'll each have a turn with my brothers."

She said it as though the question had been very stupid, which, to be fair, it had been.

"Consider it part of your lessons." Then she added, "Mother wants to see whether any of this took."

The room went quiet in a way it had not been quiet all morning.

Amara recognized it.

"I probably shouldn't have said that part," she chuckled.

I had learned what words like that meant in this palace. The last invitation I received had said customary but not required, and every one of us had gone.