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And Ares had been schooled repeatedly not to ht, keep his eyes averted, and refrain fro At ten, he found this to be a kind of torture

“He likes a et, child,” hisas she sat with hiainst his face and her eyes kind “Youyour posture perfect, and never betray your emotions by so much as a flick of an eyelash”

“What would happen if I threw so at the wall?”

The queen’s smile was always so sad “Don’t do that, Ares Please”

Ares caame He pretended to be a statue, like the ones that would be ’s Gallery that had stood in the Grand Hall of the Northern Palace since—or so the story went—the islands that doold, with a fancy plaque listing his accomplishments

“Our line has held the crown of Atilia for centuries,” his father would thunder, while Ares would think, I am stone “And now it rests entirely in your hands You, a weakling, who I can hardly credit sprung from my own loins”

Stone straight through, Ares would tell himself, his eyes on the s and the sea outside

By the ti deathly still in his father’s presence Perfected it and also complicated it, because he was an adolescent and more certain by the day that he had not one drop of the old king’s blood in him—because he hated him too much to be related to him

“You s out loud,” his aze was serious “You ive anyone in your father’s court leave to doubt your parentage, Ares Promise me”

He had pro

Still, sometimes the crown prince was not in a mood to play statues Sometimes he preferred to stare back at his father with asthe increasingly old and stooped king to throw so at him Instead of at the stone walls of the palace, as he usually did

“You are nothing but a disappoint thundered at every appointment—which, thankfully, occurred only a handful of ti schools all over Europe “Why should I be cursed with such a weak and insolent heir?”

Which, naturally, only encouraged Ares to live down to the worst expectations his father had of him