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By Root 961 0

precious and has been lost. There is a group of us who have been arguing for peace for a very, very long time. We even succeeded a few times.” He smiled, yet his face was more grave than she’d ever seen it. “Your father was ready to fight when your mother died, but I was able to reason with him. But the king is less and less willing to listen to those of us who caution him; he listens more and more to Pieter and his men. They’ve been replenishing the army for a long time, Marte, and now there is the excuse they have all been waiting for. Soon we will be back in battle. Maybe even within a fortnight, from the looks of it.”

“Gregor, I know what to do. There is not much I can do in this world, even as daughter of the king. But I can marry. That is what I can do.”

“I do not follow.”

She swallowed. “I want to marry the prince.”

“The prince?”

“I want to marry Prince Christopher.” She watched his surprise, and rushed on. “My father is planning war on the South for a crime they did not commit. The North and South have a peace treaty now. Which the South has honored, yes? Despite all the rumors that they were planning an attack?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding slowly. “Yes. The South is tired of war. Many of us doubt the legitimacy of those rumors that the South was preparing for battle. But even I believed that the prince’s arrival at the convent proved them to be true.”

“They’re not true,” she said. “It will be my father’s excuse, and they’re not true.”

“Yes.”

“But what if I offered to go there? What if I went there and married the prince? My father would have to acknowledge the marriage and agree to maintain peace, or else he would have to forsake me. Right?”

“Yes,” Gregor said once more, staring at her as if antlers were sprouting from her head. “It has even been mentioned before. A marriage alliance, to make our blood one again. But no one has ever dared suggest such a thing in earnest. There is too much hatred. And you are too important, Marte. You are this kingdom’s future.”

“But what do you think my father would do, if I defied him?”

“Your father loves you, more than you even know, and he believes in the prophecy. It is hard for me to think he would abandon you to the South. It is passion and grief that drive him to keep fighting. It may be that his love for you will make him stop.”

She nodded. “He would see it as a great betrayal, but …”

“It would be a great risk, Marte. There is no doubt. Even talking of this, as we are now, is high treason. Your father has put many people to death for less.”

“But it is right. You know that it is right.”

He watched her, refusing to answer. She could see his heart twisting inside of him. To her, it seemed simple. She was one girl. How could she weigh her own life against the lives of all her people? She knew what she meant to Gregor, to all of them, and she loved him for it. But it was this importance she carried, the meaning that was placed upon her at her birth, that made her the only person in the kingdom who could do what she was proposing now.

And beyond all of this, of course, she loved him. Christopher.

“Can we do this, Gregor? Can we send a message to the Southern king? Can you help me? We can make this offer, and, if the South agrees, I will go.”

“You are a brave girl, my dear,” he said, shaking his head. But she knew he agreed with her.

“You would do the same thing if you were me.”

“You realize that your father must approve of this marriage before it takes place. You would have to put yourself under the South’s protection. If your father chose to forsake you, and continue the war, there would be no telling what the Southern king might do to you. You would be in his castle, his ward. I hate to think of what could happen to you if he decided to withdraw that protection. He would have the perfect way to attack your father, through you.”

She shrugged. “That is the risk, Gregor.”

He sighed. “I wish I could turn back time, Marte, back to when your mother was alive, when we were all happy. I wish I could force you to stay here, live the life you were supposed to live.