Averifa needed a convincing excuse, and she needed it fast.
She could hardly say that this engagement had ended with her kneeling on the stone floor of a northern prison while her husband drew his sword. She could hardly say that she had already been that man's wife, and had already been buried by him, in a life her mother had not lived through.
So she put on a comical expression and offered the simplest lie she could think of.
"I got tired of him."
Her mother's eyebrows climbed. "Tired. Of Ares."
"A man who's too perfect is just boring," Averifa said.
To her complete surprise, her mother burst out laughing.
"Well," she said, wiping her eye, "that's a perfectly good reason." She looked thoroughly pleased about it. "In that case, hurry up and find yourself a new man."
When she had gone, Averifa let out a long breath and sat back. The most difficult conversation of her second life, navigated. She renewed her vow silently, for the pleasure of hearing it again: never, ever again would she lose her head over a man like Ares.
The peace lasted rather less than an hour.
An attendant came in and announced that a messenger had arrived from the Duke of Nozenleaf.
The man waited in the receiving room in a stiff uniform. Averifa came in and was all business.
"I don't have much time," she said. "Why are you here?"
He held out a letter. "On my lord's behalf, my lady."
She broke the seal and read it with an unreadable face.
The Duke's response was not what she had prepared for. He understood her feelings, he wrote. He had considered them carefully. But rather than cancel the engagement outright, he proposed that they simply postpone it — and to make amends for any rudeness on his family's part, he formally invited her to attend Ares's eighteenth birthday party.
The messenger waited, visibly nervous.
After a tense moment a cool, confident smile shaped itself on Averifa's lips.
"I shall humbly accept," she said.
Inside, her resolve hardened around the thing like a hand closing. This was the perfect chance. She would go to that party, and she would settle the matter once and for all, in front of every noble in the empire, so that it was perfectly clear to everyone that no bond of any kind remained between her and that man.
On the day of the party she arrived at the snowy Nozenleaf castle in stunning fashion, stepping down from the back of a magnificent golden dragon.
Murmurs spread through the crowd at the gates. The rumors had reached everyone, of course; they always did. The guests had come thinking this was their chance to get closer to the future Duke of the north. But all eyes, in the end, were on Averifa, and on a beauty that no one in that courtyard could match.
As she made her entrance, a man in a crisp white uniform snapped a sharp salute.
"Welcome, Lady Sheram. We have been expecting you." He straightened. "Colonel Leonard Finareo. I serve directly under Marshal Nozenleaf."
She knew him instantly. Ares's right hand, in the life she had already finished living. She kept her composure, returned the greeting politely, and let him escort her toward the throne room.
The opulent hall opened in front of her and brought a flood of memories with it.
She had never imagined she would see this place a second time. In her previous life, this very party was where her engagement to Ares had been announced. She had stood under these lights in a beautiful gown and thought that nothing in her whole existence would ever be better; she remembered it as pure bliss, and the memory of that bliss was now the most humiliating thing she owned. The ballroom was as lovely as it had ever been. It simply happened to be the gateway to her death.
The Colonel's voice pulled her out of it.
"The Duke of Nozenleaf is just there, my lady."
She thanked him, crossed to the Duke with a practiced smile, and accepted his welcome graciously. She offered her formal congratulations on his son's birthday. Then she began, just as gracefully, to leave.
The Duke stopped her.
"You won't stay to see him?"
She looked past his shoulder at the crowded hall, full of people she had known in another life, full of ghosts she wanted nothing more than to forget, and the air in it seemed to have gone thick and unbreathable.
"Forgive me," she said politely, and excused herself, and slipped outside into the cold night.
Her magnificent golden dragon was waiting where she had left it, patient in the falling snow. She went toward it. In another few minutes she would be in the sky and this entire ordeal would be behind her for good.
Then a voice cut through the silence.
"And what do you think you're doing?"
The tone was icy, and it was unmistakable, and she knew it far better than she had ever wanted to.
Averifa froze, her breath catching in her chest.
Standing in front of her in the falling snow was Ares, and his imposing figure was directly between her and the only path she had out.