Footsteps and men’s voices grow rapidly louder, interspersed with laughter.

  Skies above, has Maurus already returned? I tuck the little book under my arm, stuff the other books back onto the shelf, and slide down the ladder.

  “Hurry,” Farnell hisses.

  The nobles are usually gone to their city houses for at least a few days before and after High Court. There are dinners and parties and all sorts of socializing to be had in the city for days—socializing that I am, of course, not allowed to partake in until I’ve been presented to society at a First Season ball.

  Farnell grabs my arm and drags me back into the fireplace. I scramble after him, knees knocking painfully with the pronged bottom grate. Shadows engulf us in a chilling draft that raises the hairs on my arms.

  The double doors to the library burst open. Farnell pulls on my arm, trying to drag me down the passage, but I hesitate. Tucked at the edge of the passage, I can’t help but glance out from the fireplace’s shadows.

  Maurus Venon strides in from the hall, followed by Arthur Vale, first heir to the Vale House. Behind him saunters in the Prince himself.

  My heart leaps in a vicious twist of hope. I’ve only seen the Prince from the back of the High Court auditorium a few times a year and only for the brief few hours Court is in session. Never like this. This close, I can actually see details.

  My gaze seeks changes from when we were kids. The broadening of Emory’s jaw, the sophisticated flop of his hair, the easy set of his shoulders. A grown man now, a Prince, and with both come the power I so desperately need to save the estate, to gain my freedom from Clara, to give Lilianna and Farnell a safe future. To honor Father’s legacy—the one I cut short.

  Prince Emory is perfect.

  And then the last man walks in, and my breath catches in my throat.

  That armor—red shoulders, the royal family crest on a silver breastplate, and under his arm an angular helmet rimmed with wyvern fangs. Same as my father’s armor.

  The High Guard—the King’s right-hand man and highest rank of the military.

  It’s like a punch to the gut. Father’s been dead for eight years, but still it’s like a scab ripped raw and bloody.

  My gaze trails up to the man’s face, and my stomach turns over. Thickly corded scars marred the smoky taupe skin of his jaw, both brows, his left cheek, and across his forehead. I’ve never seen anyone so disfigured. His face holds no expression at all as he scans the room with cold, dark eyes.

  That gaze flashes across the fireplace.

  I freeze.

  Maurus crosses to the carved rosewood desk in the center of the room and pushes back his stringy, mud-colored hair. “That old bastard kept a bottle of whiskey in here somewhere. He used to brag it was made by the wyverns’ stewards, way back when.”

  “What a preposterous claim,” the Prince says. Compared to Maurus and the High Guard, the Prince is like a ray of sunshine. His blond hair falls in soft waves, his nose straight, face smooth and flawless.

  Farnell tugs the back of my shirt, but I can’t just leave. Here I have a tiny window into who the Prince really is. I might even learn something about him that will help me if this truly is the season and I have the opportunity to court him. Skies, we certainly have nothing in common anymore. He won’t have any interest in dresses, memorization, or the occasional book thievery.

  “Didn’t we just deliver you a whole crate of our whiskey a week ago?” Arthur Vale says, from beside the bar cart where he begins opening and sniffing each of the decanters.

  “You did.” Maurus tugs at a desk drawer that rattles but refuses to open. “But that bastard loved this bottle—cherished it. He was saving it for something special. His next wedding, last he claimed. Today we’ll drink it to celebrate my future. If I can get this damned thing open, that sneaky bastard. Rahiid, be useful. Give me something to pry this apart.”

  His future? What in Skies does that mean? Maurus’s father hadn’t died, had he? I glance over my shoulder at Farnell. Even in the shadows, I can make out his shrug. Not dead then.

  The High Guard doesn’t so much as flinch. Rahiid. I rack my brain for where I’ve heard that name before. Clara wouldn’t waste time teaching me the names of guards, even the High Guard—maybe especially the High Guard. No way Clara wants me following in my mother’s footsteps and marrying ‘beneath’ me.

  “As I was saying,” the Prince says with an air of irritation, “it’s a damn fine sword. If he wastes it, I know someone who can reforge it properly. Father’s used Lord Rael’s blacksmith a few times now. He’s quite talented. And not the regular Rael weaponsmiths—I mean his personal one.”

  “That lunatic will, I know it. We got it from the best swordsmith in Pachuate. Cost a damn fortune.” Maurus snaps his fingers in the High Guard’s direction. “Hey, hidewipe, I was talking to you.”

  “The High Guard does not take orders from you, Heir Venon.” The man remains a stone as he speaks, his voice flat and so cold it sends a shiver down my spine.

  Maurus turns a slow, scathing glare upon him.

  “But you do from me,” Prince Emory interrupts. “Try to be useful.”

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  The High Guard hesitates and I swear his sword-hand twitches. Then he steps forward with slow, powerful strides toward the fireplace.

  Farnell tugs sharply on my shirt again and I ease back, trying to convince my body to leave now, before the High Guard draws any closer.

  Vale, having exhausted his explorations of the decanters, pulls a flask from his pocket and pours amber liquid into two of the glasses. “We’ve used Lord Rael’s weaponsmith, too. He’s good. A little of the Private Reserve, Em?”

  I’ve just turned to leave when the Prince accepts the whiskey glass from Vale and says, “Hey, what do you think of that neighbor of yours? The Gallant daughter?”

  I still, even though the thud of boots draws closer.

  “Aubrey?” Maurus stiffens. “I haven’t seen her since her old man died, except at Court. Same as you. That witch of a stepmother keeps her locked away. Why would you care anything about her?”

  Prince Emory takes a swallow of his drink. “Father has it in his head that I should marry her. Something about her being the daughter of his dead friend. A legacy or something. I don’t know. I try to ignore most of what he says, but he keeps bringing it up. She did have a lot of gold markings when we were kids, didn’t she?”

  I can’t breathe. The King wants his son to marry me?

  The High Guard’s boots step across my line of sight. Oh Skies, if he sees me, it’ll devastate my reputation. No Prince or respectable noble will want a half-peasantborn thief that crawls through firewood tunnels.

  The black poker at the edge of the fireplace rattles as if he’s gripped the handle. But when he tries to lift it, the hook at the end catches on the shovel. He kicks it once. It doesn’t break free.

  Leather creaks as his massive legs bend into a crouch and his hideously scarred face comes into view, only an arm’s length away.

  My heart hammers in my chest and something flickers in the recesses of my memory. I drop my gaze to his leather-gloved hand curled around the poker. All five fingers. Not Ray.

  Scarred lips press into a thin line as he glares at the poker, jaw muscle twitching dangerously. Up close he’s even more grotesque, his nose so mutilated it lays nearly flat with his cheeks.

  Tension coils in my gut and I shrink back against the rough wall, praying the shadows are enough.

  The High Guard glances up.

  Every fiber in my body seizes.

  His gaze meets mine, cruel and dark as the night.

  “Rahiid, damnit, what are you doing over there? Have you had a stroke?” Maurus hurls a book across the room.

  It crashes into the fireplace tool set with a piercing clang of metal. With lightning speed, the High Guard catches the tools before they fall over. Then he turns away and sweeps across the room like a violent storm and thrusts the poker into Maurus’s hands. “Watch yourself, Maurus. I am the King’s High Guard.”

  I sag back against the wall. He can’t have seen me. Someone tasked with the Prince’s security surely would’ve dragged out a peasant-dressed spy and made a spectacle of me.

  “You’re a nursemaid. That’s what you are.” The Prince laughs.

  The High Guard wordlessly returns to his post by the door and makes no move to return to my hiding place.

  Maurus snorts and turns back to the desk with the poker. “My father’s a fool. Too lenient, too distracted. Mark my words, I’ll tear this place apart until these coffers are overflowing again. Starting with this Skies-damned desk.”

  The crack of wood splintering rings out.

  Maurus whoops and holds aloft a dusty dark bottle. “Come, boys, let’s go enjoy this in my…” He stares at something in the drawer.

  “What is it?” Prince Emory asks, creeping closer.

  Maurus knees the drawer shut. “Just a note about some stupid book. I’ll look at it later. Let’s go. Em, you’ll need to put me in contact with that blacksmith of Rael’s—since we never see Rael himself anymore.”

  The group traipses out, but the High Guard pauses in the doorway. His gaze lingers on the fireplace where I hide. Again, a strange sense of familiarity washes over me, like I know him from somewhere.

  Then he storms out of the library after the others.

  This time, when Farnell nudges my shoulder, I follow him down the narrow passage. “Well, that was exciting,” I whisper under my breath, trying to hide the waver in my voice.

  Farnell pushes open a door and the bright midday sun blinds me.

  “Exciting?” Farnell snaps as soon as the stone-facade firewood access door shuts. Its edges are hardly discernible from the rest of the building’s exterior. “You nearly got us both caught. Do you have any idea what might’ve happened if they saw you? What it would’ve done for your reputation? What would’ve happened to me?”

  I flush and toy with my shirt’s sleeves. “I know, I’m sorry. I just wanted to hear what they had to say about me.”

  Farnell throws his arms into the air. “Do you ever think about anyone else but yourself? If they caught me, I’d have been killed! Do you really think you’re the only one who’s angry at being a slave to what someone else wants? Everything isn’t about you, Aubrey! The rest of us want to better our lives too!”

  I flinch. I know that, of course I do. I squeeze my eyes shut against the wrongness of it all, against the powerlessness. I should’ve given up this stupid sport ages ago, quit using Lilianna’s books as an excuse to thrill-seek.

  He stares out at the crop fields, chest rising and falling heavily.

  I twist my fingers together. “I’m sorry, Farnell.”

  He swears again and shoves a hand into his matted hair. “Hey, maybe Maurus’ll propose. Then we’d all live at the same place again, like old times. You could promote me to carriage driver.”

  My stomach knots, but I shove his shoulder and force my voice lighthearted. “Maurus hates me and you hate horses. Besides, I’d rather die than marry a Venon.”

  He casts me a strange look, his eyes not quite meeting mine. “Don’t say that.”

  “I’ll swear to it if you like. On the skies or the moon. I will never marry a Venon. I’ll do almost anything to get away from my stepmother, Farnell, but I won’t do that.”

  He falls quiet, fiddling with Lilianna’s old book in his hands. Talking about the future always makes Farnell angry.

  I can’t relate. The future is all I have to hold on to. It brings me comfort and eases the monotony of incessant memorization, study, and practice. Eases the bite of Clara’s constant disapproval, her punishments. With the future comes the possibility that I can change not only my own life, but Farnell’s too. “You want me to take that back with me?” I point at the book he still holds.

  He shakes his head. “I’ll return it later when everyone is asleep.” He sighs and turns his face up to the sun. “I just… don’t want to be a burden,” he whispers, eyes closed. “Not yours. Not anyone’s.”

  I don’t know what to say. Farnell might’ve been anything, had he been born to a different station. He’s smart, hardworking, and great with his hands. He’d make a talented carpenter, or maybe even an artist. But those are professions for the lower nobility, not peasants, and there’s nothing either of us can do to change that. Unless I marry someone with money and power.

  “We could run away,” he says, lowering his gaze to the treeline.

  I let out a strangled little breath. He’s not brought up running away in a long time. Not since his father ran off to join the rebels, got caught, hanged, and forced Clara to cut ties with Farnell’s entire family. It’s the entire reason Farnell now works for the Venons, who’ll hire anyone and beat them into obedience. “There’s no future in running about as outcasts in the forest.”

  “What future is there here?”

  I cast my own gaze at the dark, tantalizing depths of the forest. Where peasants sometimes flee, only to starve to death or get rounded up by patrolling guards and hung. I dreamed of running away to those woods once, too, and perhaps I always will. But my father already paid the price for my venture too far into their depths. No, the forests promise nothing but destruction to those who seek so-called sanctuary there.

  I turn away and straighten my spine. “A future in which I marry the Prince.”