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and Leopold leave the Etheldaisy Inn as the first hints of the sun’s rays are cresting over the mountaintops, and they don’t make it to noon before is missing Ambrose’s presence, if only because he had a way of filling the heavy silences that always stretch between and Leopold when they’re alone.

At first, she suspected it had something to do with the fact that she was a servant and he was a deposed king who in all likelihood had little experience talking to servants more than strictly necessary. But he’s acted as a servant himself now, back at the inn, and though the innkeeper was beneath him in status, he had no issue conversing with her.

Which means the issue is with , and it likely goes much deeper than the difference in their classes.

“Has it been long since you’ve seen your cousin?” she asks him when the sun is high overhead and the silence becomes unbearable. They should reach the harbor by dusk if they take minimal breaks to rest.

For a long moment, Leopold stays silent and she thinks he’ll actually ignore her, but eventually he sighs. “About a decade,” he says.

“A long time,” says, casting a sidelong glance, but his expression gives nothing away.

“Yes,” he says, and silence envelops them once more. has just about given up altogether when he speaks again. “What happened to your nose?”

’s hand flies up to touch the appendage in question. It’s still tender, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it did yesterday, or even this morning. Leopold didn’t mention it when they woke up and she assumed that in typical male fashion he hadn’t even noticed something was different, just as he didn’t notice when her eyes went from blue to star-touched silver the day after he arrived in the cave.

“Princess Beatriz healed it with stardust,” she says. “When she gave me the asters.” The asters, at least, he knows about, though not because he asked. explained the plan to buy passage on a boat bound for Friv before they left the inn.

“Kind of her, considering she’s the one who did it,” he says, and thinks she hears a hint of amusement color his voice.

“I don’t hold that against her,” says with a shrug, and though it’s the truth, it doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have ducked if she’d known Beatriz’s aim, or how hard the princess could hit. “Don’t tell me you didn’t think of doing the same thing when I told you the truth about my employment with the empress.”

At that, Leopold looks at her with wide eyes. “I would never hit a lady,” he says, horrified.

“Lucky for you, I’m not one,” she points out. “But the fact of the matter is, I’m responsible for Sophronia’s death. I know that, you know that, and now Princess Beatriz knows that. I’m sure Princess Daphne will deal me a blow of her own when we meet.”

Leopold goes quiet again and thinks that will be the end of that. She focuses on the path ahead. If she squints into the distance, she can just make out the Iliven River on the horizon, a ribbon of blue cutting against the gray mountains.

“I don’t know that,” Leopold says, so quietly she almost doesn’t hear him. Puzzled, she glances sideways at him. He clears his throat. “I don’t know that it is your fault. No more than it’s mine, at least. If I hadn’t been such a terrible king, the rebellion never would have flourished like it did; if I hadn’t trusted my mother, she wouldn’t have been able to betray Sophie and me so devastatingly; if I’d somehow stopped Sophie before she…” He trails off, shaking his head. “The lion’s share of the blame is mine, .”

doesn’t speak for a moment, but when she does, her voice is soft.

“You couldn’t have stopped her, Leopold,” she says, realizing belatedly that it’s the first time she’s called him that. “Sophie knew when we hatched our plan that she was going to sacrifice herself to save you. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment choice, and if there is one thing I’ve learned about Sophie and her sisters it’s this: when they hatch a plan, the stars themselves aren’t enough to stand in their way.”

Leopold considers this for a moment. “If you had refused to assist the empress, at the beginning or when she ordered you to forge the declaration of war, do you imagine she would have simply given up?”

It’s a question has never considered before. She opens her mouth, then closes it again. She doesn’t have an answer, she realizes, though Leopold doesn’t seem to expect one.

“If you were her secret weapon, I’d wager she had more. We know she had my mother on her side. How many others do you think there were?”

Again, doesn’t answer, though the question raises the hairs on the back of her neck. Leopold continues.

“From what Sophie told me before she…well, before, the empress has been planning her attacks since before they were even conceived. That’s seventeen years. Seventeen years of looking at things from every angle, of plotting and arranging pieces on a chessboard. Do you think she would leave anything to chance? Even you?”

swallows. “I hadn’t thought about it that way,” she says.

“You said it yourself—if Sophie and her sisters hatch a plan, the stars themselves can’t stand in their way. Where, exactly, do you think they learned that from?” he asks.

That, at least, is a question knows the answer to, though she suspects it’s a rhetorical one. She would be lying if she said Leopold’s words didn’t ease her guilt, if only a fraction, but they unsettle her even more. She never expected that going against the empress would be an easy task, but as they make their way closer and closer to the harbor, closer and closer to Princess Daphne and Friv, suspects it just might be an impossible one.

—

and Leopold make good time to the harbor, in large part thanks to a farmer they meet on the road who offers them a ride along with the bushels of wheat he’s bringing to sell to a merchant ship. is ready to give the man payment, but when he doesn’t ask for any, she holds her tongue. The journey to Friv won’t be easy, and they will need every last aster Beatriz gave them.

Leopold lets take charge of finding them passage to Friv, which is grateful for. She doubts Leopold knows the first thing about bargaining, or even what an aster is worth, and she doesn’t need his high-born accent to complicate matters.

After they ask around for a Frivian ship, the name everyone gives her is Captain Lehigh of the Astral, a cargo ship that ferries various goods among Cellaria, Temarin, Bessemia, and Friv. She and Leopold find Captain Lehigh at one of the pubs near the harbor, already several pints of ale deep. He’s in his fifties, with a round, ruddy face and a full red beard. When asks him about passage, he narrows his eyes, his gaze darting between her and Leopold.

“And what business do you have traveling to Friv?” he asks, his accent Frivian, but worn down by his travels.

shrugs. “Family,” she says, which she supposes is close enough to the truth. It simply isn’t her family. It is technically Leopold’s, she supposes, if only through marriage.

“You don’t sound Frivian to me,” Captain Lehigh points out.

“I’m Bessemian,” she admits. “My husband is Temarinian,” she adds, nodding toward Leopold. “But neither of us is keen on risking our necks or livelihood staying in a country in such tumult. My sister married a Frivian farmer, near the Ester River,” she adds, remembering the maps she was forced to study. “It seems as good a place to start over as any.”

Captain Lehigh considers her for a long moment, his eyesa little too glassy from the ale to be called shrewd. “Fifteen asters,” he tells her. “Each.”

Beatriz gave her fifty asters, which means they’d have twenty asters to get them from the Frivian harbor to the castle. Doable, maybe, but isn’t keen on risking it. She decides to bluff.

She shakes her head. “Never mind,” she tells him, pushing back from the table. “Another ship offered to take us for fifteen total. Not as nice a ship as I’ve heard the Astral is,but—”

Captain Lehigh grabs her wrist and freezes. Next to her, Leopold stiffens. “Twenty total,” he says. “That’s my final offer.”

wrenches her arm out of Captain Lehigh’s grip—an easier feat than she’d expected. He releases her readily enough. She pretends to consider it for a moment before she nods. “Deal,” she says.

“I’ll take the payment now,” he says, holding his hand out, palm up. He has a tattoo of an anchor on the side of his thumb, a tradition has heard of for captains who believe it keeps their ships from sinking.

reaches into the pocket of her dress, pulling out a single ten-aster coin and dropping it into his hand. “Ten now, the other ten when we reach Friv safely.”

Captain Lehigh looks ready to argue, but seems to think better of it. “We leave at dawn—if you aren’t on the boat by then, we leave without you.” He doesn’t wait for to reply, instead waving over the barmaid and ordering another drink, effectively dismissing them.