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Someone lightly pushed her, and she stumbled.

Giggles followed—that had to be Malgosia.

Helena focused on light footsteps around her.

One of them must be Prince Kazimierz. There!

Someone was sneaking close behind and to her right.

She whirled and lunged . . . but misjudged, tripped, and sprawled on her face, even scraping her chin in the grass.

Did someone push me? She rolled over and sat upright, stinging and humiliated.

Hearing laughter all around, she ripped off the blindfold and scrambled to her feet with fire in her soul, determined to punish that annoying pest of a boy. Her legs were longer than his, and she was taller. Ignoring everyone else in the game, she targeted him with malevolent intent.

Twardo said, “Cheater!”

Even without the blindfold, she still couldn’t catch Kazik. He darted and dodged, laughing all the while. Then Malgosia chanted, “Helena is a boy chaser!” and the other girls joined in like a chorus.

Enraged to the point of tears, Helena pursued her enemy even harder but could not catch that red-haired, freckle-faced, utterly horrid boy!

When she finally curled over with her hands propped on her knees, gasping for air, Kazik faced her in the same position, grinning from ear to ear.

At least he was panting hard too, and so flushed that his freckles hardly showed.

She couldn’t speak for lack of breath, so she did her best to sneer.

His evil grin faded. “You’re not really angry, are you?”

Between gasps, she snarled, “I could beat you in a fair footrace, like . . .” She glanced around, then pointed. “Straight from that holly bush to the tallest pine tree there on the knoll.”

Kazik’s eyes lit up. “Sure. Let’s race. You’re really fast.”

She knew he didn’t mean that. Not a chance! The stinker prince never complimented anyone.

Helena would have asked for a few minutes to catch her breath, but Kazik was panting just as hard. He was shorter than her and soft around the middle. Maybe she would have some advantage?

Prince Czwarty took charge and announced: “It’s a match race. You can’t start until I say ‘go.’ No cheating or interfering with the opponent in any way, and the winner must touch the pine tree’s trunk first.”

Twardo jogged away across the field to stand beside the pine Helena had pointed out. He was the judge.

“Shouldn’t there be a girl judge too?” Kazik asked the Chelm Castle sisters.

Why would he ask that? Helena wondered.

“I’m not walking all that way,” Kornelia stated, and Malgosia shook her head.

The Plock Castle sisters were already shaking their heads when Kazik glanced their way.

“Looks like there’s only one judge,” Czwarty said. “Ready?”

Both contestants prepared to run.

Czwarty counted down from three and shouted, “Go!”

Kazik bolted to an early lead, but Helena’s long legs soon caught up. Pumping her arms with each stride, focused on the tallest pine, she was aware of Kazik running somewhere to her right. Her skirts flapped annoyingly around her legs, but she kept her eyes on the goal.

The tree loomed ahead. Her breath felt like fire in her chest. With a burst of speed, she passed Kazik, then “Oof!” The next thing she knew, she was face down in the dirt and brush, and her hands hurt.

Groaning, she rolled over to squint at the spinning sky, feeling only confusion, pain, and dizziness.

Once her breath returned, humiliation and anger came roaring back. She pushed upright with her stinging hands but remained sitting with hunched shoulders, fighting tears and heaving for breath. I can’t let him see me cry!

Someone in trousers dropped to his knees beside her, and she looked up into wide brown eyes. “Are you hurt bad?” Kazik was panting hard too.

“No.” She hoped he didn’t hear the waver in her voice. Her cap was gone, and one of her braids had come loose. Hair straggled over her shoulder, decorated with dead leaves and pine needles. Her skirt had hiked up halfway to her knees, but she couldn’t seem to care.

He puffed out a relieved “Whew” and “What happened?”

“I stepped in a hole.” She tried to sound nonchalant, but her voice quivered again.

“Rabbits.” He scowled, pointing at a gaping hole that must have been hidden by brush until she stepped in it. “You could have broken a leg.” He sounded almost angry. “I should’ve had sense enough to check for holes before we raced.”

“I’ll be all right.” She came to her senses enough to tug her skirt down to hide her ankles as the other children caught up and gathered to stare.

“Helena would have won that race, no doubt.” Kazik said for all to hear.

Why would he say that?

She spoke through her teeth: “Don’t mock me.”

He blinked, and she glimpsed something like hurt in his eyes before he declared, “You ran faster than I did. You’re the fastest girl I know.” He looked up and around at their audience. “We’ll call it a draw.”

Czwarty and Twardo agreed and even awkwardly complimented Helena on her speed before wandering off to find new entertainment.

But the four girls stayed, and Helena recognized judgment in their expressions even before Jadwiga said, “Ladies don’t race.

Especially not against a boy. That’s why you fell. ”

Her younger sister Ludmila added, “Mama says we’re too old for wild games. She says Princess Helena doesn’t know better because she has no mother.”

Helena clenched her teeth in fury, fighting stupid tears.

Kazik scowled. “If any of you tells anyone about this, we’ll never get to play outside again without supervision. Our freedom will end, and it’ll be your fault.”

The girls didn’t answer, but their expressions were clear enough.

When they all flounced off, Kazik muttered after them, “You were never any fun anyway.” Turning back to Helena, he said, “I wish you’d be my friend, Helena. You’re the best girl I’ve ever met.” He scrambled to his feet and offered his hand.

Helena’s mind went blank. The boy she despised, he . . . he liked her?

“But girls and boys can’t be friends.” Ignoring his offer, she scrambled to her feet.

He frowned. “Who says?”

That stumped her. “Uh. Well. I mean . . . We . . . we like different things. I mean, we’re just . . . different.”

He shrugged. “I like how we’re different. You’re pretty, and I’m”— he indicated himself—“not.” He grinned, and Helena’s lips twitched without permission.

“We’re alike too,” he continued. “You like animals, you like to run fast, and you’re brave. I bet you’d be good at archery too. Anyway, life would be dull if we were exactly alike.”

How did he know all that about her? Every word he spoke went straight to her heart, which still pounded from the run, and some traitorous part of her observed that he had the thickest black lashes she’d ever seen.

Nothing would ever be the same. She knew it. And she liked it. She didn’t even mind when Czwarty and Twardo made mocking ooh and ahh noises when she and Kazik walked past the trees they were climbing.

Hate had turned to love, and “plump” had turned to “stocky.”

Princess Helena adored brown eyes and freckles.

But their little idyll came to a quick end.

The other girls must have reported on her as soon as they rejoined their parents in the castle.

By the time she and Kazik arrived, the sky had already fallen.

Still walking on clouds, Helena hardly cared even when her father practically dragged her off to their guest suite to scold his only child.

“Helena, you have shamed your name— our name—with your wild ways. No proper young lady behaves in such fashion, let alone a royal princess! You may well have ruined not only your new gown but also your future. Oh! If only your mother were still with us . . .”

His anger and disappointment made her heart ache, especially when he brought up the mother she barely remembered, if at all.

After her papa stormed out of her rooms, her old niania sighed.

“Your Highness, you must learn to behave like a lady, not a child. Remember, your father is the grand duke’s top advisor, and you mustn’t do or say anything that might diminish His Grace’s goodwill toward us or our kingdom. ”

“I don’t think one footrace will destroy Papa’s kingdom,” Helena grumbled after Niania left to order her bath. Which she badly needed. Her scraped chin and hands stung, and she felt bruised in unmentionable places.

Although her social circle had known each other for as long as Helena could remember, some of the other children—mostly the girls, but even Czwarty sometimes—spoke ill of Kazik’s father, the grand duke.

They never said anything when Kazik was around, but Helena had heard them talk when he wasn’t.

They also judged her father for being the grand duke’s advisor, and sometimes they made snide remarks right to her face.

Small wonder the friendships in her circle were strained.

But even if Kazik’s father was wicked, she knew Kazik wasn’t. He didn’t look down on her, as she’d always thought. He wanted to be her friend! He liked her.

She didn’t know why the knowledge filled her with such happiness, but it was real.

A fter that wonderfully disastrous race, Helena scarcely even glimpsed Kazik for the rest of her visit.

Her eagle-eyed nanny hovered, and the parents and chaperones kept arranging proper activities for the young ladies to occupy their time.

Even a picnic outing in the hills behind Mnisztwo Castle turned out dull, since only the youngest boys were allowed to join the party, and the older girls were expected to entertain them.

Those three Plock Castle boys—ages five, seven, and eight—intimidated Helena, and she suspected their own sisters felt much the same.

Currently the Plock Castle girls were “not speaking” with the Chelm Castle sisters—and when they did speak, it was worse.

Helena kept hoping for an opportunity to at least exchange smiles with Kazik, but since his birthday-party fiasco, the adults seemed determined to keep the older boys apart from the girls.

On the final morning of their holiday, Helena and King Ryszard waited in the castle’s entry hall for their coach to arrive.

Sensing a presence behind her, she stiffened when a voice spoke inside her head.

“Don’t turn around or speak,” it warned.

“I really like you, Helena, so I made this for you.” A solid object pressed into her palm, and her fingers curled around it.

She tipped her chin down and peered over her shoulder but saw no one.

“Please don’t forget me.”

Then, he was gone.

Magic! Her heart raced in excitement while on the outside she stood still, trying to look bored and impatient. She carefully slipped whatever-it-was—a toy?—into the pocket of her kirtle. Kazik is a mage! He spoke to me, and no one else heard or saw him!

All during the long ride back to Castle Valga, Helena’s thoughts ran wild.

Her father had once told her that countries throughout the known world agreed long ago that mages should never hold political positions, since magical power in a ruler could so easily become tyrannical and abusive.

No royal was supposed to have magic. Did anyone else know about Kazik’s magic?

Did his parents know? He could be in big trouble if anyone found out.

Her father had no magic, of course.

But a few years ago, Helena’s niania —who’d also been her mother’s nanny—had told her that her mother’s mother had been a burva . Helena knew this meant that her grandmother had possessed magic, but how powerful that family magic was, she didn’t know.

Throughout their long ride home to Castle Valga, questions rattled through her mind, one after another.

Did her father know this secret? Should she tell him?

Was Kazik the same kind of mage as her grandmother had been?

What magic could he do? She now knew that he could make himself invisible! Did anyone else know that he had magic?

Did this mean that Kazik could never inherit the grand duchy from his father?

And what if she had magic? Even just a tiny bit. It would be so much fun . . . but then she couldn’t be queen someday. She probably ought to care, but she didn’t.

It was so much more fun to think about how Kazik trusted her with his secret! That thought made her squeeze her eyes shut, hug herself, and smile hugely into a dark corner of the coach where no one could possibly see.

She could barely wait for a moment alone to really look at Kazik’s gift.