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For the next few days, Ophele was a mouse.

It wasn’t so different from how she usually moved through the vast manor, unseen and unwanted.

The servants knew very well who the master was, and Ophele had never tried to contest it.

To be sure, on paper, Aldeburke and everything in it belonged to her, but it was only right that she give it to the Hurrells to make up for what her mother had done.

“You are a fool if you let them do this,”

said Azelma in the kitchen, slapping Ophele’s hands away from the sausage rolls she had just pulled out of the oven.

The day’s baking was done early in the morning, hours before dawn, and it was also the time Ophele felt safest to emerge from her hiding places and scavenge something to eat.

“I want a fig roll, too.”

Ophele dragged a wooden stool over to wait while the rolls cooled.

They smelled so good.

“You aren’t likely to get a better offer than His Grace, missy,”

the old lady said bluntly.

Azelma had no awe of Ophele, and she was very willing to offer advice whether Ophele wanted it or not.

“Why are you doing this? No, answer me and then you can have a fig roll.”

In the absence of the Hurrells, the fig rolls were really hers already.

The figs were hers.

The flour was hers.

Ophele met Azelma’s steely blue eyes and wondered what would happen if she snatched a fig roll and ran out of the kitchen.

Azelma was an old lady.

Her reflexes were slow.

“It’s for Lisabe,”

she said, looking down at her toes.

“Or Lady Hurrell said she would tell him what my mother did.”

Ophele had no idea what this was.

She had been too young to receive an explanation when her mother died, but she knew Lady Pavot had struck the decisive blow against Remin’s old House.

And it wasn’t just because Lady Hurrell said so, either.

From earliest memory, Ophele’s mother had warned her to be careful what she said, because there were some words that could never be called back.

And she had always sighed and said, that poor boy, afterward.

Treasonous words, filled with regret.

“Lady Hurrell wouldn’t tell the truth if she was strapped to a Catherine wheel and set alight,”

Azelma said tartly.

But she still turned away, because these were matters well beyond both of them.

Ophele hadn’t been born at the time of the Conspiracy, and Azelma was just an old lady who knew how to cook.

“Will you make cheese pastries tomorrow?”

“Your Highness’s wish is my command.”

Flour puffed under Azelma’s hands, stout and strong as a sawyer’s from decades of kneading dough.

She was rolling out more sausage rolls and set the pan to rise by the oven.

“It is not,”

Ophele objected.

“You put prunes in the sweetbread again yesterday.

You know I hate prunes.”

“Good for my lady’s bowels.”

“The etiquette books say you should never talk to a lady about her bowels,”

Ophele said primly.

“I will put prunes in your food every day if you let Her Ladyship have her way.

Princess.”

Azelma wiped the flour off her hands and deftly wrapped up a package of food, knotting the small bundle in a handkerchief.

“You’re a clever stitch.

If Lady Hurrell says yay, you know to say nay, loud and clear.

Here, now.

Best you get along with yourself, His Grace’s men wake up early and hungry.”

Subdued, Ophele took the food and slipped out the back door of the kitchen.

She had been haunting the library for the past few days, where she had a comfortable nest above one of the enormous bay windows, a space in the rafters wide enough that she could even sleep without worrying about rolling off.

Hurrying through the servants’ hallways, she pushed the heavy library door open and scampered up onto the shelves.

From the edge of the long row of bookshelves, it was a short leap to catch the rafter above the bay window, and she scrambled up with a kick of bare legs and a flurry of too-short skirts.

It was true, what Azelma had said.

Sitting cross-legged in her small, shadowy refuge, she kindled an oil lamp and unwrapped her breakfast, breaking the loaf of bread in half to save some for later.

Of course, she knew that Lady Hurrell was not helping her.

Lady Hurrell was helping herself and her family.

She wasn’t stupid.

And anyway, the lady’s motive wasn’t the issue.

The issue was: what would she do if Ophele defied her?

On paper, the Emperor had acknowledged Ophele as his daughter.

But as a practical matter, she doubted he had remembered she existed until there was an inconvenient marriage in the offing.

No matter what happened, whether she was sick or unhappy or if the Hurrells locked her up or beat her, there was no evidence that her father had the slightest interest.

She wasn’t just a bastard; she was the daughter of an accused traitor who had threatened the rightful succession.

Only the fact that Rache Pavot was pregnant with the Emperor’s sacred child had saved her from joining Remin’s parents on the block.

Ophele wanted to leave.

She would have contracted with a demon if it promised to help her escape.

She hated Aldeburke, and she was tired of being afraid all the time.

Lady Hurrell and her twisting, slippery words, her pinches and slaps and fingernails.

Lisabe with her mean, trilling laughter.

Julot, who kept trying to corner her in quiet places. And Lord Hurrell…well, most of the time, he ignored her. But Ophele had never forgotten the time he had not.

But Remin Grimjaw was worse than all of them put together.

Ophele rubbed her wrists, remembering the feel of his hard hands.

It was easy for Azelma to tell her to defy Lady Hurrell.

Azelma was safe in the kitchen, tucking prunes into sweetbread.

But who said Duke Andelin would believe her, or protect her? He wasn’t a knight from a tale.

He was a brutal conqueror who hated her father and had every reason to despise her, and Ophele had already made him angry.

Azelma was proposing that Ophele place herself in his hands and hope that he believed her instead of Lady Hurrell.

When House Hurrell had served his father, and fallen with him.

Ophele buried her face in her hands and drew a long, slow breath.

No, it was safest just to obey Lady Hurrell.

Ophele knew perfectly well what the lady’s plan was; they had probably made some excuse for her absence and were trying to convince him that she was too stupid to be his wife.

All she had to do was be quiet, be a mouse, and Lady Hurrell wouldn’t hurt her and Duke Andelin might go away, and then…

Ophele paged through her small, permanent collection of books.

Atlases, natural histories, a few favorite books of poetry and fiction.

The Habits of a Lady, a book she had nearly memorized, if only to understand her lost mother.

And there at the bottom of the stack, a book that described all the countries surrounding the Sea of Eskai.

Some of them had very liberal attitudes about women acting as scribes and merchants.

She could run away.

There were only a few guards left on the estate; most had left after her mother died.

If she set aside some food, and waited until all this fuss was over, she could likely make a good start before anyone noticed she was missing.

The Emperor would probably never even search for her.

Perhaps the Hurrells would; Ophele had long suspected that Lady Hurrell meant her for Julot, once she reached her majority.

Bastard or not, the speck of stardust in her blood was priceless, especially to a disgraced House.

For the same reason, the Duke of Andelin would never stop hunting her if she fled now.

But the Hurrells were fighting tooth and nail to get her out of it, so if he married Lisabe instead, then Ophele at least would have a sporting chance of evading whoever Lady Hurrell sent after her.

Should she play along, then? Act like a simpleton? Drool? Foam at the mouth? What was likely to impress him least?

Rummaging through her atlases, she found one with maps of Aldeburke and the surrounding areas.

The nearest country was Rendeva, a mountainous land about a hundred miles away.

She would need money.

Might there be things in Aldeburke she could sell? She didn’t have any real notion of what might be valuable, aside from jewelry; people in books were always selling jewelry.

But Ophele had never bought or sold anything in her life.

She would need food.

She would have to stay at inns, and be careful of rough men in taverns.

Transportation: she couldn’t possibly walk all that way unarmed, vulnerable to thieves and wild animals.

She had never gone past the gates of Aldeburke in her life, but she thought she had some idea of the danger, and Ophele’s precarious existence had made her both cautious and methodical.

It was possible.

The dream of escape, and a safe place.

But even as she imagined it, the words blurred on the page before her, because she knew that this was not what her mother would have wanted.

It wasn’t fair to the duke, was it?

Ophele knew a truth that was treason to the rest of the Empire: his family had been innocent.

They had been implicated in her mother’s treason, the Conspiracy that had shaken the Empire to its foundation and almost broke the Covenant of Stars.

By the time she was five, Ophele knew that she and her mother lived in this place because her mother had done something dreadful, and a boy named Remin had lost his whole family and his home and everything because of it.

It was the saddest story her mother had told her, arming six year-old Ophele with the truth.

Lady Hurrell had made sure to reinforce the lesson.

The boy Remin had gone on to become a knight, wage a war, defeat Valleth, and win an Imperial Princess for his wife, fair and square.

Ophele was sure that her mother would have wanted to help him, if she could.

Only…

She was afraid.

Duke Andelin probably wouldn’t kill her, even if he did learn what her mother had done.

Ophele was still a Daughter of the Stars, and no one would risk losing their blessing.

But Ophele knew she could be hurt very badly, and no one would care.

All he wanted from her was heirs, children with the sacred celestial blood of the House of Agnephus in their veins.

Even if he didn’t hurt her, what if he locked her up, or didn’t like to give her food?

And in the Andelin Valley, she would be alone.

Shifting deeper into her shadowy refuge, Ophele opened another travelogue.

She needed to learn how much she might expect to spend on inns on the way to Rendeva.

* * *

Azelma Bessin had, over the course of her long life, cooked for the highest tables in the Empire.

Of course, when she had begun her apprenticeship fifty years ago, she had never imagined she would end her days in exile.

But when disaster had befallen Lady Rache Pavot, she had chosen to follow her even to Aldeburke.

Rache Pavot had been the truest kind of lady, gracious to everyone down to the lowest scullery maid, keeping a harmonious home even with the contentious Hurrells.

That was the mark of a noblewoman, and there were plenty that had the title of Lady who were no such thing.

And there had been the princess to think of, too.

Azelma didn’t believe in wishing stories or magic.

But she did believe there was a natural order of things, that the world gave with one hand and took with the other.

Some people thought that things should always go their way even if they didn’t put in the work to deserve it, as if bread would rise without a good slap and a hard, muscular kneading.

And that just wasn’t so.

“Keep your fingers out of my black pudding,”

she snapped when the handsome knight appeared again, just before sunrise.

The duke’s men took it in turns to supervise the preparation of his food.

“The beasts in the field know to wait for breakfast.”

“I’ll still be hungry then,”

he said with a winning smile that revealed a dimple in his cheeks.

Azelma studied him, marking the blond hair and hazel eyes, which looked a little red-rimmed.

What had he said his name was? Miche? “Do you live in this kitchen, grandmother? I swear you’re here every time I come in.”

“How else would I save any food for the table, I’d like to know,”

she grumbled.

“Locusts.”

“I heard the princess is still ill,”

he said sympathetically.

“I have a remedy from my mother, a sovereign cure.”

“Do you, now?”

“Barley porridge with honey, and a few other things,”

he explained.

His eyes went over the pots and pans on the stove avidly, no doubt searching for the soft, bland food usually offered to the unwell.

“Have the maids already taken up Her Highness’s breakfast?”

“You’re a nosy fellow, aren’t you? Here.

Take these and be off with you.”

Azelma shoved an assortment of breads both sweet and savory into his hands.

“If His Grace grants permission, I’ll make that porridge.”

“His Grace?”

Sir Miche hesitated, his eyebrows pulling together.

“Are your ears full of wax? Go on, get out,”

she ordered, brandishing her spoon.

“But only if Duke Andelin tells me directly! I know young men.

You’re all frightful liars.”

* * *

The library was not the first place Remin would have searched for a simpleton.

Easing the door shut behind him, he paused to scan for danger.

The old lady in the kitchen had all but shoved him down the hallway, and he doubted that a crew of assassins were hiding among the encyclopedias.

It was a surprisingly large library for a modest estate; tall bookshelves lined every wall, and the room was broken up into sitting areas with deep couches and heavy worktables, generously supplied with oil lamps.

The whole place smelled agreeably of leather and old paper.

It had been almost a week since he had arrived at Aldeburke, and other than their short encounter in the forest, he hadn’t seen a hair of the princess.

Moving silently through long aisles of bookshelves, Remin searched, wondering why the cook couldn’t have just come out with it and told him where the girl was.

At the back of the library, he came to a wide bay window that looked out on the rose garden.

The last row of shelves was missing two bookcases, so as not to block the light, and his eyes drifted upward.

In the small space above the window, a light was glowing.

Remin eased back, peering into the nook.

In the depths, a light gleamed on long hair, and he heard the distinctive rustle of a page turning.

“Princess,”

he growled.

“Come out of there at once.”

The head jerked.

The light went out.

And a moment later a pair of eyes peeped out of the shadows, round with terror.

“Do you think you’re an owl?”

he asked impatiently.

“Get down here.”

How had she gotten up there in the first place? There was no sign of a ladder; the girl must be nimble as a squirrel.

But she accepted her fate.

Her eyes vanished and a pair of small bare feet emerged, and Remin hastened over as she lowered herself off the side of the rafter, dangling.

Her refuge was at least twelve feet off the ground.

“Drop,”

he ordered.

“I’ll catch you.”

Silently, she obeyed, turning her body in midair so that he caught her neatly as a cat.

She felt shockingly light, but then, Remin had never held a woman in his arms before; were all of them like this? More to the point, though her face was pale as paper and her tawny eyes absolutely enormous, she didn’t feel the least bit fevered.

“You don’t look sick,”

he observed, frowning down at her.

“You’ve been hiding in the library all this time? Can you read?”

Uneasily, she shifted in his arms as if she wanted to wiggle away, and he tightened them like iron bands.

He had no patience for any further games.

“Can you or not?”

he barked, and she nodded frantically, shrinking back.

“Can you talk?”

She nodded again.

That was ambiguous at best.

“Tell me what you were reading.

Don’t think, answer.”

“I—”

“The title of the book,”

he snarled, shoving his face into hers so they were nearly nose to nose.

“A Survey of the Nations of the Sea of Eskai!”

the princess squealed, giving up all pretense and struggling to escape.

“Please put me down, Your Grace!”

“Are you going to run if I do?”

“No!”

“You swear it?”

“I promise!”

The cry burst from her lips, and Remin set her down and snagged her wrist before she could take to her heels.

It was the first good look at her he’d gotten, without her face hidden in a hood.

Small.

On level ground, the top of her head barely reached the bottom of his breastbone, and the bones of the wrist in his hand felt as fragile as a bird’s.

Would she even be able to work? She didn’t look like much in a dress that even he could tell was old, simultaneously too large and too short, with masses of untidy brown hair.

She looked more hair than girl.

“This is the daughter of an Emperor?”

he asked scornfully.

“I guess I should be used to such gifts by now.”

It had occurred to him that her shameful appearance might be intentional.

She had already disgraced him once; was this some protest, a further humiliation? Her father loved such subtle insults.

Gripping her chin with iron fingers, he forced it upward, catching a glimpse of those eyes hidden behind her hair.

They were large and clear, flashing almost golden in the sunlight.

There was nothing dull in those eyes.

Maybe this whole charade had been an attempt to get him to relinquish his claim.

Remin was furious, because it had very nearly worked.

“Nine times nine.”

“Eighty-one.”

She was quivering like a rabbit.

Another trick.

“Sixteen times sixteen.”

She paused.

Blinked.

He could see the calculation running behind her eyes.

“Don’t dare to lie to me,”

he rumbled ominously, and she flinched, her head ducking.

“Two hundred fifty-six,”

she whispered.

“How many copper sens to a sovereign?”

“Twelve hundred.”

“Spell ballistae.”

She spelled it down to the tricky e.

“Good enough,”

said Remin Grimjaw, shifting his grip to her upper arm and thrusting her toward the library doors.

He had a wedding to plan.