Cosima's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Two days ago, Cosima pulled carrots from the dirt behind her mother's house. Now she stood on a crimson carpet in a stone hall the size of a barn, while a king told her to pick a husband or a wife by the end of the month. Stained glass threw colored light across her hands. The calluses on her palms looked wrong in that light. Her mother Eleanor was not beside her. Eleanor was in a cell beneath the floor, because the king had decided Eleanor was a thief who had stolen a princess nineteen years ago. King Dominic sat forward on his throne. His beard was trimmed close. His voice was patient, the way a man is patient with a child who has not yet learned the rules. He said her real name again. She had only heard the full version twice in her life. Once from the men at the farm door. Once here, an hour ago. He told her the alliance her birth-parents had broken would be sewn shut through her marriage. He told her his four eldest were waiting outside. He said she would meet them today and choose within thirty days. "I don't know them," Cosima said. "I don't know any of you." "Then learn," the king said. He lifted a hand. A steward set a heavy red book on a table beside her. Gold trim. Four names inked across the open page in a careful column: William. Severin. Bryce. Rosalie. A blank line waited under the last name. "You will sign here when you decide. Your mother stays where she is until you do." He let that sit. "Choose well, and she walks out. Choose badly, and that is also your answer." A guard walked Cosima out a side door into a courtyard. She kept her mouth shut, the way Eleanor had taught her around strangers who wanted something. At the center of the yard stood a tall wooden post with four carved arms. Each arm pointed toward a different path. A sword above one. Scales above another. A raven. A rose. Four siblings, four directions, and no way to tell which one would free her mother and which one would keep Eleanor underground forever. She could hear voices down at least two of the paths. Someone was laughing. Someone else was not. Cosima pictured the carrot rows. She pictured Eleanor's hand on her arm at the door, holding on. Then she let the picture go. She would not pick blind. She would walk every path before she signed that book. She would learn which sibling could be moved, which could be lied to, and which one would have shoved her mother into that cell with their own hands. Thirty days. Four strangers. One name at the bottom of a page that had not yet been written. She started down the path under the rose.