Chapter 2

Adrian stopped with his hand on the door.

“What do you want, then?”

My mother's fingers tightened around her handkerchief.

I had spent the whole evening trying to find a price I could bear to pay for keeping my marriage. He'd offered me half a husband and expected thanks.

There was nothing left to bargain over.

“A dissolution,” I said. “I want to end the marriage.”

The drawing room became very quiet.

Adrian turned toward me fully.

“Do you know what you're saying?”

“Yes.”

“You're the Crown Princess.”

“I'm aware.”

“I've kept this household for you alone. No other woman has had a place here. For seven years, Elinor. Haven't I given you enough?”

I heard a maid draw in a breath by the wall. My mother shut her eyes.

“You have another household,” I said. “Apparently the distinction matters a great deal to you.”

“Because I need an heir.”

“Then you should have told me the truth before you married me.”

His face reddened.

“You couldn't have given me one.”

I'd been a sickly child. There had been whole winters when a walk in the garden left me coughing for the rest of the day. At nineteen, physicians had warned my parents that pregnancy might put me in danger.

Adrian had heard them. He'd been there when I asked whether he still wanted to marry me.

He'd said there was no one else.

By our first anniversary, the physicians thought my health had improved enough to discuss the risks again. I'd asked him to. He'd said there was no reason to revisit a promise he'd made for my sake.

“You said you could live without children,” I reminded him.

“And I have kept you from having to risk your life. You think that means nothing?”

“It means you found a way to do what you wanted and call it kindness to me.”

“Mira is your age. She's had none of your advantages. Her brother died serving me, and she's never used that to demand a crown or a palace. She's cared for our son quietly. Now you want to drag him away from her because you can't tolerate the fact that somebody else could give me what you couldn't.”

My mother began, “Adrian—”

He looked at her. She stopped.

He wasn't arguing about what he'd done. He was describing the person he needed me to be so he wouldn't have to regret it.

“I won't take her child,” I said. “Keep them together. I'll leave.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Why?”

He had no answer ready.

The anger shifted, just for a moment. He looked at my hands, locked together in my lap, and his expression softened.

“Ellie,” he said. “You're cold.”

He used to notice that before I did. In drafty rooms, he'd take my hand and tuck it under his arm, talking all the while so nobody would notice why he was standing close.

I didn't let him touch me now.

“It's better this way,” he said, more gently. “Father and Mother have stopped asking things of you. There's already a child. You don't have to be frightened anymore.”

I looked past him at my parents.

Neither of them said that I might be frightened of him.

“Did the queen know from the beginning?” I asked.

His silence told me enough.