The Ring and the Crown (The Ring and the Crown 1)

But that was not why she had asked him inside.

“Don’t say it,” he said, his brown eyes dark and angry. “Don’t apologize, Marie, I don’t think I can stand it.”

She sat next to him and looked down at her hands. Was it only last night that she had left the palace with no intent of ever returning? Was it only last night that she’d run out through the passageways, never to turn back? Was it only this morning that she’d put her gray dress on, thinking she would be a bride? She looked up at his sad, drawn face. If she had not left him, they would be married now; she would be his wife.

“You’re leaving me, aren’t you? You’re not coming with me to the Americas. You’re not leaving St. James,” he said.

“I’m so sorry.”

“You said you loved me.”

“I did, and I do.” She wanted to touch his face, wanted to hold his hands, wanted to reassure him nothing was different between them—but everything was different. Everything was wrong. There was no such thing as personal happiness. One hoped that it would come with duty, like a flower you stumbled upon in the wilderness. One could only hope—but one could not desire it, could not live for it. She lived for others. Her life was not her own, because it was everybody’s. She understood that now. As much as her heart was breaking, she had never felt as alive and as vital as she did that day.

She had fallen into her mother’s arms in the crown room, and she had told Eleanor she understood now. She understood so many things about her life. She had been a silly little girl before, but now she understood. Now she understood what it meant to be a princess. Royalty meant sacrifice and not privilege, and it would entail the hardest sacrifice of all. She felt a wrenching in her stomach, and she felt like crying but she had to be stronger than that. She had to do the right thing for everybody, including him.

Gill would never feel like he deserved her, she realized. He would work so hard, but it would never be enough for him to forget who she was and where she came from. He would have worked himself to death, trying to make it up to her, trying to make up for what she had sacrificed for him. The cottage she’d dreamed of was indeed a cottage in the sky. She was playing a child’s game, for fantasy and escape. She would have been happy with him, but she wondered if in her happiness she would have been depriving him of his. He would never have believed his love was enough for her. He had grown up in the palace as well—he had seen its splendor and grandeur—and for the rest of his life he would have blamed himself for taking it away from her.

“I do love you, Gill,” she said, because she did love this sweet boy who would have risked everything for her. He had loved her enough to try and make a new life for the two of them.

“But you are leaving, regardless.”

“It’s because no matter what happens, I can’t—I can’t change who I am. No matter how hard I want to be someone else, no matter how much magic is at my disposal, however many spells Aelwyn can cast, I can’t change the fact that I am Marie-Victoria of House Aquitaine.”

“You don’t think it was me, do you?” he said softly.

“What?”

“Your friend, Wolf—he grilled me earli

er. Did I tell anyone else that the wards would be down? Who else knew about the secret passageways? He thinks I betrayed you—that I would do that to you and the queen,” he said bitterly. “Because my damned brother is an Iron Knight, because of what happened during the coup—he thinks I set you up, that I was part of a conspiracy. They tried to recruit me once, but I told them to go to Hell.”

“I know it wasn’t you, Gill,” she said softly. “I know it wasn’t you.” She stroked his back, remembering how he had consoled her when she had discovered she would have to marry Leopold.

Gill hung his head and gripped her hands tightly in his. When he looked up again, she could see that tears were falling silently down his face. “You’re going to marry him now, aren’t you? That Prince Wolf. You have to. Now that his brother’s dead. Because that’s the way it works, isn’t it?”

Isabelle woke up in an unfamiliar room. She was covered in gauze, and everything hurt. She looked outside the window at the rolling hills, the rows of vines. The familiar smell of vinegar. Home? She was home? Why was she back in Orleans? She sat up with a start, suddenly remembering the attack on the road outside the city.

Louis? Where was Louis?

“Louis?” she called. But it was not Louis who was sitting across from her. It was Hugh. She recoiled. “Why am I here? Where is Louis?”

“You’re awake,” he said. “Good.”

“Why am I here? Where’s Louis?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer in her heart. “Louis!”

“Louis is dead,” Hugh said flatly. “You can call for him all you want, but he’s gone.”

“No,” Isabelle said and fell back, sobbing. “No, he can’t be dead. Not Louis. What did you do, Hugh?” She remembered the last words she’d heard before she blacked out.

Kill the boy, but keep her alive.

“You killed him,” she screeched. “You killed Louis. Oh my God, you killed him! Leave me! Leave this room! Leave me alone! Oh my God, Louis…my beautiful Louis…”

“You truly want to be alone, Isabelle? You cannot think only of yourself now—think of the child.”

“What child?” she said.

“Your child, of course. Do not tell me you don’t know you’re pregnant, Isabelle. The sisters confirmed it when they healed you.”