She couldn’t deal with that. There was no place in her head to put that piece of information. She tried to think of something else, something that would fix things. Kania sat in silence, her hands folded, looking at the coffin of the daughter she had not been allowed to love.
“If … if you had an heir,” said Marra, “if you bore him an heir, would he let go? You could go away. Somewhere else. A separate estate, or back home? Something. He wouldn’t need you anymore.”
“He would not need me anymore,” agreed her sister. “And the moment he does not need me, the moment that he has a son that will rule both our kingdom and his, then my life will be worth less than the lowest peasant. I will not die quickly, but I will die.”
“Then you can’t have any more children!” said Marra hopelessly. Her mind was full of horses with black bridles, a funeral procession of mourners, the wrapped body that must be Damia’s. “You can’t! One could be a boy!”
And if she does not bear children, she will no longer be useful to him. He will kill her and marry the next sister in line, to get that son.
The next sister.
Kania gazed at her steadily and Marra realized that her knowledge must be written across her face.
“You see how it must be,” said Kania softly. “If there is a way out, I cannot find it.” She drew herself up, every inch a queen. “But I endure. For the sake of our people, I will endure.”
* * *
The next three days were nauseating in the dullness of their horror. Marra did not dare speak to anyone about what she had learned. The prince would hear. He must. Kania had not dared to speak of it except in the chapel, to her sister and the body of her daughter. I do not dare speak of it to anyone. He will know. He will know.
But just as there was no speaking, there was no way to stop thinking about it. There was no moment, waking or sleeping, when it was not burning in Marra’s brain. She choked down dry toast and dreamed about the marks on Kania’s arms, and the only mercy was that everyone took her horror for grief.
Her niece’s coffin was interred in the crypts below the palace. All Marra could remember was great iron doors opening, then a procession through a maze of cold stone corridors. She walked behind Kania with her hands tucked into her sleeves and watched Vorling’s face and realized that she had never hated before now. This must be what this new feeling was. It took up so much space in her chest that she did not know if she could breathe around it.
When she and her mother left the Northern Kingdom, relief took her so strongly that it felt like joy, as if she might fling herself out of the carriage and dance in the road. I cannot be relieved. Kania is still trapped. I was never the one in danger. I do not deserve to feel this way. But she felt it anyway and the shame of it struck her in waves, but when they ebbed, the wild joy of being away from Vorling’s palace was still there.
She stayed only one night in her father’s palace. Her old room was still kept for her. Even a small, poor kingdom can usually afford to keep a princess’s room for her. It was much too young, filled with stuffed toys, and Marra was thirty years old now. But I can hardly ask them to change it, for a room I use one night in a decade. That would be wasteful. The abbess would have looked down her nose at the extravagance, which might have gone to feed the poor, and the Sister Apothecary would have shaken her head and laughed.
There was one thing that she could do, though, in her father’s house, and one thing only. Marra took her courage in both hands. It had not occurred to her that living as a nun might have robbed her of bravery, and yet facing her mother seemed far more alarming than it ever had when she was a child. She was too aware that the other woman was the queen first and her mother second, and that Marra herself was a small, insignificant piece in the game.
“I need to talk to you,” she said, when her mother looked up at her. “Uh, Your Majesty. Mother. Please.”
Well, that was even worse than I expected, she thought. She had never been terribly clever with words, but apparently she had lost what little skill she’d ever possessed.
A line formed between the queen’s eyebrows. “Leave us,” she commanded the waiting women, and they filed out, glancing curiously back over their shoulders.
“Kania’s in trouble,” said Marra, as soon as the door closed behind them.
The queen cocked her head to one side. “How so?”
“It’s the prince.” Marra swallowed. Her throat felt very dry. She’s listening—that’s something. “Prince Vorling. She’s scared. She’s very scared. I think … I’m pretty sure…”