There was nothing that frightened her about a life without the safety of a title or a castle, about the wrath of her mother or the disappointment of her father. She would live as a witch in a hedge, stitching wounds and delivering newborns, if she had to. She would beg on the streets, work as a maid, sail to the Continent. The change was astonishing—a spark in her brain, a miracle of fluids or electricity, and now her life felt completely different. For the first time in her seventeen years, her life was her own.
