The Skalia household was supposed to arrive at Castle Sangmere by the new moon, but a series of ued spring ice storms deyed them. The purple blush of dead le, the bright green bdes of new grass, and the budding berry es caught the waning moonlight, making the farms and fields glimmer like cut jewels, but the roads had turned into ugly mires, muddy beh the frosty veneer and littered with branches broken by the weight of the ice.

  It wasn’t unoher so far north so te in the year, but members of the pace staff making ready for the bride-to-be told one ahat holding a wedding with i the ground foretold a frigid marriage.

  Etian waited as long as he could stand on the night the Zinote delegation should arrive—about half an hour—then gave it up as a waste of time. He wasn’t going to spend all night staring toward the carriage gate when he could be studying the royal blood magic or attending the Hall of Law. Word came ter that the roads had held them up at least two nights away, but by theian had found something useful to occupy his time.

  Over the wihe Hall of Law had bee a fasating pce, and it was there that the prince spent a good portion of his st leisure time, the men he would one day rule. Lord cio of House Mattius had returned with the royal progress and taken up his family seat for the first time in four years. cio was half the age of most of the lords and their representatives, and as his family’s former allies had abandoned ship after his father’s execution, he had no votes to back him. This didn’t seem to deter the young lord in the least. He argued paradigms with the fidence of a man who knew his holdings did not rely on the approval of any other house, and put forth motions as if certain that one day he would not be alone in his vis.

  It became so that even the most negligent of lords began to grace the Hall of Law with their presence, ousting their representatives. The heads of the noble families had er luck taking the flainst cio than their clerks and sons had. The tap of his walking stid his uneven footfalls became a sound that set their teeth on edge.

  One or two lords had the ce to ask the king what he was thinking to allow this son of a traitor to speak freely, let aloake the flainst men who had staunchly supported Hazerial all along—though they never worded it quite so bluntly.

  “We value the active participation of our future son-in-w in the pursuits of our houses,” was all Hazerial would say.

  It was enough to keep the lords uain of how much authority House Mattius actually had. Etian watched them alternately plotting against cio and trying to attract his alliance.

  “I don’t know whether your father is setting me up for publiihition or waiting for an opportune moment to force my vote in some ued way,” cio told Etian one evening during the House’s lun hours. “But until it happens, I i every st bit of my own ends that I from these archaic blood clots.”

  “I think the archaic blood clots i your neck.” From what Etian was seeing, cio had set himself up for a war that demaotal victory or death. The prince approved of the gamble, but suspected the Lord of the ternds was going to lose on simple numbers. Only Josean could y waste to aire army himself and survive. “Or hire someone else t it for them.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me in the least.” cio winced as he took the first stair down toward the Hall’s exit, one hand firmly on the wall. “They could probably get it done cheap on the cim they were trying to protect the kingdom from another ternds Rebellion.”

  “Your friend shouldn’t joke,” Vorino told Etian while they sparred. “I know a handful of Royal Thorns who would cast lots for the job.”

  Of Keleian saw very little. When spring came, the princess was suddenly no longer allowed at meals with the rest of the family, and the mad queen would answer no questiarding the girl. Loath though Etian was to try this particur strategy, that his half-sister had been murdered by her iher eventually drove him to search the hidden passages for a viewing hole into the princess’s chambers.

  The slot was easy enough to find, as there was only one hidden passage iower, and only one member of the royal family resided therein. The rest of the rooms were jumbles of fotten furniture, outdated armor, and the unfinished, rat-chewed paintings of Etian’s Teikru-blessed aor Prince Farro. A lunatic, artist, poet, and walking disaster of a sedborn prince, Farro was the Thorn all other royal sed sons endeavored not to bee.

  Kelena’s rooms were furnished as Etian supposed young princesses liked: lots of frills and cushions, childish pinks and blues. The floor was covered in lush carpeting everywhere except for an obloion that looked as if it had been torn at random from the ter of the room, where portions of a few bare fgstones shohrough.

  No sign of violence, but no sigher, that the room had ever been inhabited. A yer of dust coated every book and toy and even the ly made bed. He knew Kelena lived there—or had lived there, if Jadarah had murdered her—but it looked for all the world as if the room had been furnished and fotten sometime around the beginning of his grandfather Ikarin.

  Then he saw the dark purple hair ribbon lying crumpled on carpeted floor near a rge chest. It was the only piece of sery out of pce. The chest was rge enough to ceal a small body if the body were positioned right—two bodies, if they were dismembered.

  Now that he was looking closer, he could see a small stain that had collected around one foot of the chest. No, not a stain. A puddle. The chest was leaking.

  His first thought was that he’d missed the ce to help the pirl. If he’d tried harder, he could have prevehis—there was nothing he couldually find a way to do—but the blessing of Josean had worked against Kelena this time. It had spurred Etian onward in his own s while ign everything else around him.

  His sed thought was what a blow this would be to Izakiel. The elder prince was likely the only friend Kelena had ever had.

  “Uh-oh, someo tired of watg their betrothed’s empty bedchamber.” The sudden appearance of Jadarah’s grating voi the silence made Etian’s heart thunder. “Do you find the view stimuting, blind prince?”

  Etian lifted his face from the viewing slot and scowled into the darkness. He couldn’t see the mad queen until his eyes adjusted, but he could smell her. In such a fined space, her stench was ing.

  He had to fight the urge to gag. “What’s in the chest down there?”

  Jadarah chuckled. “It’s not ready yet.”

  “When will it be? When Kelena’s body has pletely moldered away into dust?”

  “So the blind prince see but not hear? Should we call you the deaf prinstead?”

  Still ughing that maddening ugh, the queen draped herself over Etian, rubbing and wriggling. He shoved her off, but she grabbed him by the hair with surprising strength. She yanked him to the view slot again. The side of his head thumped against the stone, sending pain fring through his ear and knog his lenses askew.

  “Listeianiel. Listen!”

  The sileretched out. Finally, Etian heard it. A faint, high, wavering whihen a ragged breath.

  “You vile—” Etian straightened up and shoved Jadarah off, yankiwisted fingers out of his hair, tearing a good k out with them.

  The mad quee staggering back. She tripped on her skirt and sprawled in the narrow passage.

  She purred. “Oh, do it again.”

  The closest exit from the passage ast Jadarah. There was another exit a few floors dowian headed for the stairs.

  “By the time you reach her room, the chest will be gone,” Jadarah called after him. “Not even the blind prince will fihis time, no matter how many holes he looks through.”

  Rather than argue, he ged dires. Disgust was no reason to lose a battle. As he pushed past her crouched form, the mad queen hooked one arm around his waist and ed the fingers of her free hand around his ankle. He sprawled onto the floor as awkwardly as she had, half on his elbow and side, legs tangled with the ughing wench. His lenses slid to the end of his hen dropped away, king oone.

  “Why do you care, Etianiel?” she snarled. “Do you think she’ll reward you for resg her? Do you think you hold her out of my reach? I know what’s inside you, and it isn’t Josean-blessed. I smell it on you—on every man, no matter which strong god favors him.”

  Etian’s heart pounded against the back of his throat. A long-fotten childhood terror came ba: Jadarah standing over his bed with a knife and the deg head of his mother.

  Panic closed his throat. He kicked and shoved, feeling greasy skin and thick, animal-like hair. Part of him knew his lenses were probably being crushed by their filing, but he had to get her off, had to get away. He’d go blind for the rest of his life if he could just escape.

  “Hazerial doesn’t care what I do with her.” Jadarah dug in tighter. “He won’t care if you tell him she’s in there, and he’ll never make me give her up. I won’t! I’ll never give her up, no matter what anyone says! She’s mine! I made her! She belongs to me!” Her fists battered wildly against his legs. “Mine! Mine! Mine!”

  As Etian struggled, Jadarah cwed herself forward, heaving on top of his legs, no longer screaming words, just weird bestial grunts and growls.

  Sweat ran down his fad soaked his clothing. His hands raked greasy hair and burning flesh. In the blurred darkness, he couldn’t imagihe thing he was toug was human. What once had been a madwoman was now a svering, deadly beast.

  In the chaos, one of his boots slipped from the tangle of body and limbs. He p on her chest and straightened his leg, peeling her off and pushing himself farther up the passage. His other boot stayed wedged beh her, but he left it behind and scrambled forward on his hands and knees. A few paces away, he stumbled up to a running position.

  He burst onto the nding of the main stairwell, breathing hard.

  His lenses were gone. He was covered in dust and cobwebs. He had on one boot. He must look ridiculous. He felt ridiculous. A man running from a woman a head shorter than he was and nearly twice his age. The Josean-blessed Prince of Night terrified of the mad queen.

  He swallowed hard, f himself to breathe slowly, to think, and turoward Kelena’s chambers.

  The outer door was already open. Some panicked, irrational part of his mind was certain that the creature he’d left in the passage had snapped her gory fingers and made the chest disappear.

  He strode through the antechamber and swung the bedroom door inward. Through the lensless blur, he found the room exactly as he’d seen it from the viewing slot. The chest with its slow leak hadn’t been moved.

  But he couldn’t hear the whining or the ragged breathing anymore.

  He k in front of the chest. A wooden arm off some sort of doll had been jammed into the loop of the hasp to keep the lid from opening.

  His fingers were trembling so badly that he couldn’t twist the wooden arm free. In the end, he just s in half at the elbow and the splintered pieces fell out.

  When he lifted the lid, a wave of stench hit him, and for a heart-stopping moment, he actually saw Kelena’s deg body, death stretg her fato a toothy rictus, eyes milky, bed touffing her mouth like his mother’s had in that terror he’d vinced himself was a dream.

  Then the princess unched herself out of the chest, ughing and sobbing weakly and threw her arms arouian’s neck.

  “Izakiel,” she whimpered, shivering and shaking worse thaian was. “Don’t let her take you away! Don’t let her, don’t let her, don’t let her!”

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