The Golden Queen (#5 in the GOLDEN series) ✔

•F I F T Y - T H R E E•

A familiar pine scent had greeted Marguerite when she snuck out of her carriage.

The closer she got to the castle, wading through dewy grass and over slick pebbles, the more she smiled under her hood.

Navigating the building without being noticed was hard, but she made it to her destination. Cozy in the comfortable warmth before the hearth, in the Reading Room, at Torrinni Castle.

She hadn't been sure she'd ever return, but now, she worried she might never leave. After all she'd dealt with in Westten—and what remained to handle—she preferred the haunting memories of her childhood over the terrifying images of the past few months.

In the long run, even after everything, she chose not to regret her decision. Finally, the threat looming over her head was gone. The weeks of Cornelius banging on the city's gates, mounting his attack, buying people to rise against her were over, at last.

Her first visitor, while she sipped on coffee and munched on biscuits, was Clémentine. To Marguerite's shock, she respected her rank, curtsied for her, called her Majesty. Her eyes had sparkled with an eerie sort of pride she'd never pictured seeing in Clémentine—at least not directed towards her.

Marguerite remembered how the Duchess had ripped the coffee cup from her hands, screaming that such a beverage was detrimental to her baby.

"So Antoine told you?" Marguerite had asked, as the elder woman beckoned for someone to bring tea instead.

"Marguerite, my flower, tell me everything," said Clémentine, sitting beside the Queen of Giroma. She rubbed her hand as if they were old friends reuniting after years of separation. "Much has happened, and I only trust your tale of it all."

Clémentine later described her rage at Philippe's death, and Edouard's decision to erase it, and his choice to forge alliances that prompted her to team up with Avignon, to settle treaties with Terter, to broker agreements with Thatcher and Geitz. She assured Marguerite she had no clue how involved Charlotte was with all the schemes, and took responsibility for letting her—and her cowardly father—into court. From the bottom of her once blackened and now semi-soft heart, she regretted all of it.

Could Marguerite forgive her? The woman's taut expression still haunted her, and though her gaze had tamed, and her posture was more relaxed, she was still Clémentine. Yet for the first time since Cordelia's birth, she'd showed herself kind, caring. Her improved behavior woke in Marguerite feelings she hadn't had since she was five.

I will never forgive her, not fully.

After the pot she'd stirred and the schemes she'd brewed and the blood she'd helped to spill, Clémentine had decades of groveling ahead of her. But the woman was soon to be her mother-in-law, so Marguerite chose to remain neutral.

Clémentine accepted the engagement—not that her approval mattered, but Antoine insisted—and agreed that a union of the countries through marriage would be beneficial to all. She wished she'd let it happen all those years ago, before meddling with the French and the foul Giromians. It was too late to correct that, but Marguerite appreciated her words, nonetheless.