The Chosen One (The First Book)

Chapter 16

I slept for perhaps an hour.

I know exactly how long, because I watched the window go from black to grey to the particular thin color it turns before anyone in this building was awake. I counted the bells, and at some point after the fifth one, I stopped being conscious. Then the maid came in to build up the fire, and I was awake again.

I got dressed. I put my hair up. I looked at the wall once on my way out and then decided that was not a thing I was going to keep doing for the rest of my life.

⸻

Eliza came down to breakfast glowing.

There was no other word for it. Her hair was pinned differently. Her cheeks were flushed. She kept smiling at nothing.

She sat beside me and reached for a roll.

"Something happened to you."

"Nothing happened."

"Your face is doing something."

"What is it doing?"

"Being extremely pleased with itself."

She tried not to smile. She failed.

"Eliza."

"What?"

"You disappeared with Julian."

Her hand stopped halfway to the plate.

"Who told you?"

"No one."

She looked at me. I looked at her.

Then she laughed quietly.

"Oh."

"Yes."

She glanced around the table. Nobody appeared to be listening. She leaned closer.

"I think I finally did something right."

"What does that mean?"

She looked at me for a moment. Then, quietly,

"Julian."

I already knew. Hearing his name out of her mouth still made something in my stomach turn over.

"Was it your first?"

Her cheeks went red. She nodded.

For a moment she said nothing. Then,

"He knew."

I waited.

"He was kind."

That seemed to matter to her more than anything else.

"I think he liked me."

"Did he tell you that?"

"No."

"Then how do you know?" She smiled.

"You weren't there."

I nearly choked on my tea.

She laughed.

"I'm serious."

"I know."

"He didn't rush me." Her smile went softer. "He made me feel like he wanted me there."

I looked at her.

She was happy. Geniuenly. For the first time since we'd arrived, Eliza looked as though she had stopped counting what her family needed from her.

"He's never done this with anyone here," she said.

"Not with any of them. I asked."

There it was.

"Are you happy?"

She looked at me as though the answer was obvious.

"Very."

"Then I suppose you did something right."

She nudged my shoulder. "Don't make fun of me."

"I'm not."

"Then what's that look?"

I took a sip of tea.

"Maybe I'm still tired."

She watched me for a moment.

"You heard us, didn't you?"

I nearly choked.

"What?"

Her eyes widened.

"Oh my God. You did."

"Eat your breakfast."

She started laughing.

"Aurelia."

"I said eat."

"You heard everything."

"I heard enough."

She covered her mouth, laughing harder.

"I'm never looking at you the same way again."

"I'd prefer it if you didn't look at me at all."

Across the room, the doors opened.

Julian came in, greeted his mother, took his seat, and began eating as though the previous night had contained nothing worth mentioning.

Eliza went still beside me.

He looked up. He found her. A small smile went between them, and it lasted about as long as it takes to set down a cup.

Then he turned back to his breakfast. No hesitation. No embarrassment. No explanation.

He was sitting exactly where he had sat four days ago, next to exactly the same chair.

I kept my eyes on my plate.

I have never in my life wanted less to look under a table.

⸻

They put us in the winter garden that afternoon.

It is a glass room, all of it built out from the west side so the cold stays on the other side of the panes. You can sit among things that have no business growing here in autumn. There are lemon trees. Actual lemon trees, indoors, in a country where nothing citrus survives a night outside.

I was looking at one of them when Celeste sat down across from me.

"May I ask you something, Miss Vale?"

The room did not go quiet. It did something worse. It stayed exactly as loud as it had been while every person in it stopped listening to whatever they had been listening to.

"You can ask."

"You told His Highness this Selection was a scheme." She said pleasantly, hands folded. "That we were dolls, being dressed and taught to smile. Do I have that right?"

I had said it at a breakfast table in my second week, in front of eleven people.

"You have it right."

"You also said you only came because you'd promised your mother. And that you expected to be eliminated."

"I did say that."

"So which is it?"

I waited.

"You danced a full set with the Crown Prince."

"He asked me."

"Yes." Her voice did not rise once. That was the craft of it. "I have been preparing for this since I was four years old. My mother used to test me on the line of succession at supper. Every woman in this room has spent something to be here."

She let that sit.

"You are the only one of us who claims not to want any of this."

"That isn't a claim."

"It doesn't have to be." Celeste stood. She smoothed her skirt, unhurried. "It is simply a very effective thing to say."

Rosalie laughed. Just enough to be in the room.

"Some of us said what we wanted from the start," she said. "Apparently that's a great deal less charming."

She went to sit with Vivienne by the far windows. Nobody followed me with their eyes when I got up. They didn't have to.

⸻

I left through the first door I found, which is how I ended up on the wrong side of the palace entirely.

I was not crying. I want that on the record. I was doing the other thing, where you walk fast enough that your body has an opinion about something other than your head, and I went through two corridors and up a half stair before I stopped caring where I was going.

The door I opened was heavy, and it was not the library.

There was one table in the middle of the room, longer than our whole kitchen at home, and painted onto it was a map of the entire kingdom.

Julian was sitting on the edge of it.

Not at it. On it. Boots hanging, a handful of little painted soldiers in one hand.

We looked at each other.

"Shut the door," he said.