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Like you The implication was clear, and somehow Coriane found she could not speak around the sudden lump in her throat She could only shake her head No, Jessamine, I do not want to stay here I don’t want to be you
"Very good," Jessain for the day"
Later that evening, Coriane sat down to write Her pen flew across the pages of Julian’s gift, spilling ink as a knife would blood She wrote of everything Jessa that her brother would abandon her to navigate the coht the to laugh, pretending to be pleased by their flushes and stuttered explanations, Coriane quietly despaired Sara was ed to er Just like Julian, Sara would drift away, until Coriane was left with only the dust of a forgotten hootten life
Because no matter what Jessamine said, how she preened and lied about Coriane’s so-called prospects, there was nothing to be done No one will marry me, at least no one I want to marry She despaired of it and accepted it in the saolden walls will be my tomb
TWO
Jared Jacos received two funerals
The first was at court in Archeon, on a spring day hazy with rain The second would be a week after, at the estate in Aderonack His body would join the family tomb and rest in a marble sepulcher paid for with one of the jewels froeed cousin looked on Jessareen stone passed from the new Lord Jacos’s hand to the Silver jeweler A common man, Coriane knew He wore no house colors to speak of, but he was richer than they were, with fine clothes and a good aht be noble, but this man could buy us all if he wanted
The faown for the occasion, one of Jessa frocks, for Jessamine had attended and overseen irl itched in the getup but kept still as they left the e that spanned the Capital River, connecting both sides of the city Jessa
It was not Coriane’s first visit to the capital, or even her tenth She’d been there , to show the so-called strength of House Jacos A foolish notion Not only were they poor, but their faone Nofamily trees of Houses Iral, Samos, Rhambos, and ht of their h Houses was firovernment Not so with Jacos, if Coriane’s father, Harrus, could not find a way to prove his worth to his peers and his king For her part, Coriane saay through it Aderonack was on the Lakelander border, a land of few people and deep forest no one needed to log They could not clai of use in their corner of the world
She had tied a golden sash around her waist, cinching in the ill-fitting, high-collared dress in an attempt to look a bit more presentable, if not in fashion Coriane told herself she didn’tladies atched her like she was a bug, or worse, a Red They were all cruel girls, silly girls, waiting with bated breath for any news of Queenstrial But of course that wasn’t true Sara was one of the to be a healer, showing great proh to service the royal fa, Sara said once, confiding in Corianea visit It will be a waste if I spendpaper cuts and crow’s-feet My skills would be of better use in trenches of the Choke or the hospitals of Corvium Soldiers die there every day, you know Reds and Silvers both, killed by Lakelander bo to death because people like me stay here
She would never say so to anyone else, least of all her lord father Such words were better suited to irls could whisper their dreas," Coriane told her best friend on such an occasion