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Then Tressalara recognized their leader: the smooth-talking chief councillor, Lord Lector. No mistaking that mane of dark hair with its single silver streak, the jutting profile, and the silver scorpion emblem on his shield. A crafty and dangerous man. There was no time to lose.

As Tressalara ducked inside, the courtyard rang with fierce cries: “Death to the tyrant! Death to King Varro!”

Elani came to the head of the stairs and looked down, her usually pretty face pale as lard. “What is it?”

“Lector has turned traitor, and we are besieged. I must find my father.” Tressalara was halfway down the stairs. “The enemy are within the walls. Save yourself, Elani. Hide in my chambers. You know where.” She saw her friend hesitate. “That is an order from your princess! I command you!”

Then she was on the last step, plunging into the shadows along the corridor.

She must reach her father in time. She must!

Tressalara’s heart beat so hard it seemed about to jolt out of her chest. The invaders had timed their coup well, waiting until the king had retired to the isolated chapel for his daily meditations—alone and unarmed.

Oh, the cowards! she thought, sliding back the secret panel that led to a shortcut.

The castle was riddled with many such passageways, a legacy of her great-grandfather’s madness.

Trusting no one and fearing assassination, he had built a maze inside these walls.

She knew every secret way and in the past had gotten her britches dusted a few times for hiding in them overlong and setting the castle on its ear.

But now the knowledge of these places, where she and Elani had played as children, would serve her well. If only she could get to her father in time to warn him, she could spirit him away to safety through the secret door in the chapel.

She slipped the catch that opened behind the altar. Before it had always amused her that the icon of Saint Ethelred the Dragonmaster hung upon the doorway to the heart of the secret maze. At the moment she had no thought for it.

Her father was on his knees at the altar, looking old and frail in his simple robe and without his emblems of kingship. As he humbled himself before God, his gray head bent almost to the floor, and his coronet caught the light of the tall candelabra.

At any other time Tressalara would have told herself that he was no doubt praying for a virile son-in-law to sire a male grandchild in the years to come. But now was no time to nurture old grievances.

“Father!”

“Tressalara! By all the saints!” Varro roared, taking in her boy’s garb and her unorthodox arrival in one heated glance. “Do you have no sense of what is fitting in this holy…”

“Father, we are under attack! Lector and his men have taken the courtyard and the great hall. Jeday—“She strengthened her faltering voice. “Jeday is dead by an assassin’s hand. Come this way. Hurry!”

Already they could hear the first sounds of tumult from just beyond the thick chapel walls. Voices raised in anger and fear. The clash of steel on steel. Cries of mortal agony.

“Father, come!”

He hesitated as the locked chapel door shuddered from the onslaught. The brass key fell to the stone flags with an ominous clang. The wood cracked and splintered. The king hurried to Tressalara’s side, and she turned down the secret passage, assuming that he meant to follow.

Instead, he wrested her drawn dagger from her hand, then shoved her forward into the darkness with what frail strength he could muster. She fell heavily, skinning her hands on the rough stone floor. The door to the passageway thudded shut behind her.

Jumping up, Tressalara threw herself at the latch, but it refused to give.

She pressed her shoulder against the panel, tears of rage and fear for her father running down her cheeks.

She knew why she couldn’t open it. Her father had his back firmly to the door, holding it shut so that she could not open it from the inside and reveal her hiding place. He had chosen her life over his.

Tears streaming, she could do nothing but stifle her own sobs and pray. The scuffle of feet and the shriek of metal against stone were plainly audible through the heavy wood, although the assassins’ voices were muffled.

An eternity passed while she waited, hoping in vain that her father would escape yet knowing that he had no chance at all. Vowing, through her anguish, that she would have revenge upon Lector and save the kingdom.

All was suddenly quiet. Tressalara’s blood chilled.

She scrabbled at the edges of the wood, trying with all her might to open the panel.

It wobbled slightly but did not give. Eons passed while she tried to work it free, and there was nothing but silence from the other side.

Then the hidden catch gave, and the panel slowly rolled back.

The chapel was dim. The great candelabra lay on their sides, flames extinguished, among the holy icons broken on the floor. Only the ruby glow of the altar lamp illumined the chamber. “Father?”

Silence. She moved cautiously around the altar. Something skittered beneath her foot. She stooped and picked up a stone. No, a small green jewel winking at her in the half light, its center carved in the shape of an eye. She had seen it somewhere before.

Tucking it in the leather bag she wore inside her smock, she looked around. In the faint red glow, she spied the painted panel of Saint Ethelred propped against the altar. Blood dripped from the saint’s painted breast. It ran in a thin diagonal line toward a dark piece of cloth on the ground.

Tressalara’s breath caught. Not cloth, but a pool of blood, widening as she watched. She pushed the panel aside. “Ah, no! Father!”

How small he looked, how diminished in his bloodied robe. Cradling him in her arms, she felt for a pulse. His eyes, so like her own, flickered open.

“Foul…treachery,” he whispered faintly. “I had been warned but I thought…I could not believe the reports…thank God and Saint Ethelred…I had the foresight to hide…the Andun Crystal.”

She refused to see that he was dying before her eyes. “Save your strength. I’ll hide you in the passageway…seek out help from our loyal soldiers…. You can send a messenger to Morania, asking for the duke’s assistance…”

His voice came out in a harsh, choking whisper.

“Child, I waited too long to find you a husband. You must take the Andun Stone, daughter, and flee to Morania. The duke has…several sons. Even without a kingdom you are…beautiful. One of them will surely…take you to wife.”

“I will not flee! Nor will you. We will stay and fight for our people!”

Varro gave a liquid cough, and the blood seeped through the fingers that Tressalara held to his chest to cover his wound. She put her cheek against her father’s and was shocked to feel how icy it was. Her tears mingled with his.

“So…cold…” he whispered, as if talking to himself.

Tressalara could fool herself no longer.

She rose slowly and found a cushion to put beneath his head, a piece of fallen tapestry to cover him and hold the last bit of warmth in his bones.

Her grief and the enormous responsibility of what it meant to be truly royal fell upon her shoulders like a cloak of lead.

She could scarcely bear the weight of it.

Her knees buckled, and she grasped at the panel for support, lowering herself to his side once more.

“You will be all right,” she lied. “Your loyal troops will overcome the enemy. I will stay here and guard you until they come.”

He clutched at her hand. His face was gray, and his eyes seemed focused on some distant sight. “You are brave, Tressalara. Too headstrong…but no one can fault you for your courage.”

His head sank upon his breast, and the ominous red stains on his tunic grew and coalesced. His breathing was ragged and irregular. “I must leave you now,” he said.

Tressalara cradled him in her arms. “No! Ah, saints!” She could see the life ebbing from him second by second. “Father, I swear to God Most High that your sacrifice will not be in vain. I will do anything that is necessary to rally the people and destroy Lector. I will avenge you!”

He looked at her and gave a little sigh: “Ah, Tressalara, If only you had been born a son…”

Silence filled the chapel. Tressalara was suddenly alone in the chapel with the dregs of her life around her and the taste of bitterness on her tongue.