Nothing ever happened in the evening except for the occasional kiss or brush of his hand in my hair, and he never pushed for anything more. I was simply grateful for the company, and the more I saw of his human side, the more I hoped I was enough to make him want to stay.

It wasn’t a charade. I wasn’t returning his kisses to fool him into thinking I cared about him or because I pitied him. I was falling for him, a little more every day, even though a very large part of me knew that this was a bad idea. There was no guarantee I would pass and nothing that gave me reason to think that any kind of relationship would last more than the remainder of winter. But if I did somehow miraculously succeed, Henry would need a reason to stay, and I would be that reason. So for the first time in my life, I shoved aside the worries and the doubts, and I let my barriers down. The afternoons were a burden now, a time I had to endure in order to get to the evenings we spent together, and every time I saw him, no matter how short a time he’d been away, my heart raced. Now that I had survived Christmas, I dared to hope, and with that hope came possibilities.

When I woke up before him, I watched him sleep as the early morning rays filtered through the curtains, and I tried to picture waking up to him like this for the rest of eternity. It was strange to think that if the impossible happened and I managed to pass the tests without getting myself killed, he would be my future. My entire future, with no threat of death lurking around the corner any longer. My husband.

The word was foreign to my thoughts, let alone on my tongue, and I was sure I’d never get used to the idea. But as much as I resisted it—I was too young, too alone, too not even remotely ready for that sort of life—I began to see that it wouldn’t be so bad. Henry was broken, but so was I, and spending my life with him was hardly the hell I’d thought it would be in the weeks after he’d saved Ava’s life. And in time, maybe we would be able to fix each other. I could give him what he needed—a friend, a wife, a queen—and in return he could be my family.

As the days until spring grew fewer, my dreams with my mother grew more solemn. Every moment was precious, but most of the time I had no idea what to say. We walked hand in hand through the park most days, and she led the conversation as we talked about everything and nothing. She told me every night how proud she was of me, how much she loved me, and how badly she wanted for me to be happy without her, to not need her to continue as Henry needed me, but the most I could give her in return was a tight nod and a squeeze of the hand. The things I couldn’t say gathered in my throat, forming a knot I could never swallow. As the days passed and my chances to tell her dwindled, I knew I would have to force them out eventually, but not yet. As long as there was a tomorrow in the manor, I could pretend there was still hope she would never have to die.

The closer I got to Henry, the further removed from the real world I became. Even though it was beginning to feel like I would never go back, like those six months would somehow find a way to stretch into eternity, I knew they wouldn’t. There was an end, and we were rapidly approaching it.

Despite Henry’s company and constantly being shadowed, I was lonely. Ella spent all of her time with Theo now, and while Calliope stayed with me when Henry wasn’t there, even she seemed subdued after the incident at Christmas. And though James was the enemy now, I thought about him often. It couldn’t have all been fake, our friendship, and I missed being able to miss him without feeling angry. He wasn’t the one trying to kill me, I was sure of it now, and something about knowing he was on my side even though I wasn’t on his was comforting.

I missed Ava most of all. Every time I came across something I wanted to show her or thought of something I wanted to tell her, it took me a few seconds before I remembered that I would never see her again, at least not as friends. Occasionally I caught glimpses of her leaving a room as I entered or at the other end of a hallway I turned down, but she was never there for more than a moment.

Henry never made me talk about the pain and guilt I felt at the separation, even though it sometimes kept me up at night. He let me work my way through it on my own, and I wasn’t sure if I were grateful or resentful. Knowing that Ava must’ve felt as badly as I did only made me feel worse. Maybe she wasn’t the best friend in the world, and maybe she was a little too selfish sometimes, but I wasn’t perfect either. With each day that passed I regretted my judgment more and more. Ava was allowed to make mistakes—we all were. And what gave me the right to punish her for them when all she’d been trying to do was make the loneliness a little easier to bear?

To try to fill the empty hours, I spent more and more time in the stables with Phillip. It was quiet, and he didn’t press for conversation. He seemed to understand what I was going through, and he offered to let me spend as much time with the horses as I wanted. It was a generous offer, considering how protective he was of them, but it wasn’t enough to make me forget what I was losing.

It was near the end of January when one afternoon, Henry found me in the garden, wrapped in a cloak and kneeling next to a dormant, snow-covered rosebush. The memory of how I’d gotten there was hazy at best, but I didn’t particularly care. Once Irene had told me the date in the middle of our tutoring session, everything became fuzzy, and it was Henry’s voice that brought me crashing back down to reality.

“Kate?” Dressed in a heavy black coat, he stood a few feet away, sticking out like a sore thumb against the snow. I didn’t look up.

“It’s my mother’s last birthday.”