Far away in Ammar, the kingdom still grieved.

Queen Beatrice sat at the head of the feasting table for her birthday celebration and tried not to fret at the dark mood that hovered over the great hall. At nineteen, she was old enough to understand that grief moved in its own time, but still young enough to chafe with impatience over it. She brushed back the ash-black netting of her veil from her face and smiled graciously at the Lord and Lady who approached with a brightly wrapped gift to place on the table before her.

“Best tidings on your name day, Your Majesty,” Lord Kenon offered with a bow from the waist. His lady, Helena, sank down lower at the knees in deference. Beatrice was pleased to see the matron had adopted her fashion of parting her veil at the hairline so that all could see her face. Though it looked as though the fashion of eyeliner and lip stain had not quite caught on with Ammar’s older set.

“My dear Kenon, Lady Kenon, welcome,” said Beatrice. “I am so glad that you could come. The winter storms made such a mess of the western roads! Are you still digging out?”

From the stiff, awkward way Lord Kenon looked at his wife, Beatrice guessed that she’d made an error asking such a friendly question. With a pang, she realized she’d addressed herself to the husband when it would have been more proper to say it to Helena. Ammar’s strict court etiquette did not permit the Lady to answer unless her husband had invited her to speak.

Beatrice covered her lapse by offering a bowl of party favors to Lord Kenon to choose from. Black ribbons like the one in her hair adorned little stick figure dolls with glittering eyes. Ammar’s Winze Dolls were a mourning custom Beatrice quickly learned to adopt in the days following the Witch Massacre. After the late king was slain in his own throne room by the witch Maertyn Blackfire, the charms appeared on every doorway all across the kingdom to ward off bad luck and evil.

Kenon took just one from the bowl and pinned it to his lapel. Beatrice breathed a small sigh of relief as the Lord and Lady moved on from the line and hoped that nobody had overheard her small lapse. As the new young Queen of Ammar, she felt more eyes on her now than ever. Tales of her bravery and compassion the night of Massacre had established her as a worthy successor to Queen Eva, the pious widow of the late Lightning King. She did not want to fuck up her reputation with lapses in presentation.

This was not how she imagined becoming queen. When she’d first arrived in Ammar at her brother’s side, she’d imagined a few years as a glittering princess like the ones in the fairytales she still guilty read whenever she was homesick. In her home country, Sanchia, she’d been the very first princess named in a hundred years when King Anathas of Ammar chose a daughter of Sanchia’s Duke to wed to his only son. The fantasy of a princess’s life lasted just six weeks.

Then Beatrice met her husband for the first time.

“Are you wishing to dance, my queen?” asked a low, gentle voice.

Beatrice turned and met a pair of bright blue eyes, widened by a delicate lining of gold paint on the lids. At first glance, you’d never know King Anryniel was cursed, Beatrice thought. Sometimes she still thought of her as the gawky blonde boy who’d shown up late to their wedding and pointed a sword at her. Head-on, though, and with the makeup Beatrice applied to her heart-shaped face, it was impossible not to see the woman hidden behind the cursed flesh.

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“Is it wrong if I say yes? Father Lawson said that it was still too soon to have a proper ball,” Beatrice said.

Anryn’s mouth twitched. “You don’t have to call him ‘Father,’ Bea. ‘Professor’ is our word for men of the church who practice instead of preach.”

Beatrice rested her hand over Anryn’s, grateful for the gentle correction. It wasn’t her way to yell or insult the way the Lightning King had done. For the brief period Beatrice had known her father-in-law, she’d summed him up as a mean old man who liked to hit and to hurt. What more could be expected from a king who burned witches at the stake? It was a miracle in itself Anryn wasn’t a shrieking tyrant, nevermind the flesh-curse.

“Will you dance with me later, when we’re alone?” Beatrice asked shyly.

Small spots of color bloomed on Anryn’s cheeks. The king turned away and lifted her wineglass to her lips. “Maybe.”

Impatience flared within her. They’d been married almost three years now, and Beatrice could count on one hand the number of times Anryn had done more than kiss her in their bed. She kissed well, and everywhere, for as long as Beatrice asked her to. But anything more than this required Anryn to be in just the right mood at just the right time -- and usually with more than a glass of wine to ease her.

Is it the curse, or is it me?

Beatrice brushed her hands down her embroidered bodice. She knew very well that she was beautiful -- she was raised to be and favored with her mother’s bloodline to have the round hips and shapely legs prized by dancing masters, and the lush black hair and dark eyes praised by poets and easily rendered on canvas with paint and charcoal. She worked at her manners daily, with letters from her mother back in Sanchia arriving each month to offer more guidance on how to dress and behave to inspire sexual passion in her husband.

None of it worked. Duchess Sofia couldn’t know about Anryn’s curse -- no one could know. It was bad enough that Anryn’s own father had accused her of witchcraft just before his death. If the court suspected she was cursed as well, Beatrice thought they might outright execute her as the mages of Nynomath had once done to their own king a thousand years ago.

No, no. Don’t think about that. Beatrice banished the troubling thoughts by touching the heavy silver-and-gold belt at her hips. A chatelaine with keys to the castle, a psalter that had once been her mother-in-laws, two decorative throwing knives from her collection -- and a secret pocket that hid nine silver coins. Don’t think about him…

But it was too late. Beatrice couldn’t keep herself from searching every room for his green-brown eyes with the tiny white scars in the brows. Ciamon Caelt might be anywhere, she told herself, but he was too smart to return to Ammar right after the massacre. Certainly not to her side when she knew now that he was a mage.

But if I said his name three times… It had worked, once. It had saved Anryn’s life when she had. Sometimes Beatrice thought of trying it again, if only to see whether he’d come. She worried the spell he placed on her coins might work only once, and she’d already used the magic in them up.

But if she believed that, she would have stopped carrying them long ago.