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“Astridur?” comes Vil’s mild voice from across the table.

It takes me a second to remember that’s my name now. I look at him and he raises his brows. “All right?” he asks.

I force a smile. “Spicy,” I say brightly, nodding at the soup.

“You would do poorly in Aerona,” says Princess Aelia from her place on Vil’s right. “We eat porridge spicier than this for breakfast.”

I think she’s mocking me until I catch her genuine smile, the laughter dancing in her eyes. “I’m Aelia,” she says.

“Astridur,” I manage. “This is Vil—Prince Vilhjalmur Stjornu, I should say.”

Aelia’s smile deepens. “You’re the Skaandan ambassadors, then. I’m pleased to find you here! Some friendly faces.” She lowers her voice and leans in toward Vil and me. “Very welcome in this mountain full of snakes.”

I almost laugh. Vil grins. “The pleasure is ours, Your Imperial Highness.”

“Just Aelia, please,” she returns. “I introduced myself that way on purpose.”

This pulls a laugh from Vil.

“It isn’t polite to whisper at a public dinner,” says Lysandra, from my left. She frowns and stirs listlessly at her soup.

“Our apologies,” says Vil. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced?”

“I’m Princess Lysandra,” she tells him primly. “The king’s daughter. Soon to be the king’s heir.”

“Oh?” I say, intrigued. Suddenly her presence at the table, along with Zopyros, Theron, and Alcaeus, makes a lot of sense.

Kallias never chose a queen, and so the question of succession isn’t a straightforward one.

All of them are clamoring for his attention, his favor.

Vil isn’t the only one with his eyes on the Daerosian throne.

“Of course it will be me,” Lysandra snaps. “The boys are a great lot of fools.”

“And yet you were not present at the council meeting today, while your brothers were,” points out Aelia.

Lysandra scowls at her and waves an attendant over. “This soup is far too sweet. Take it away and bring me something else.”

The attendant removes her bowl without a word.

“If you cannot show some manners, Lysandra, I will not have you sully my dining hall again,” comes Kallias’s cold voice from the head of the table.

Lysandra’s eyes grow wide, and she stammers an apology to her father, staring at the vacant spot where her bowl was and visibly struggling not to cry.

Zopyros sneers at her while Theron and Alcaeus openly laugh. Kallias does not reprimand them.

“You are the Skaandan ambassadors, I suppose,” he says in a bored-sounding voice, mercifully addressing Vil.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Vil dips his head. “Crown Prince Vilhjalmur Stjornu and Princess Astridur Sindri. We are honored to be at your table.”

Kallias snaps his fingers above his head again, without his eyes ever leaving Vil’s.

Attendants take our soup bowls and replace them with scorching-hot plates of meat doused in a creamy white sauce.

“I would have thought you would harbor some ill will toward me,” Kallias tells Vil. He cuts off a piece of meat and chews it slowly. “For the death of your sister.”

Vil bristles but otherwise keeps himself in check.

It helps that Saga is alive and well, a few rooms away.

It was her double, Njala, who was killed in the skirmish with Daeros three years ago, but that news was never made public.

When Saga was captured on the battlefield, she didn’t reveal her true identity to Kallias—she sang for him instead.

That’s what saved her life; that’s how she ended up in Kallias’s Collection, shut in the glass cage bordered with orange trees.

For Saga’s continued safety, and to protect our current mission, her survival has remained a secret known to only a few.

“Peace between our nations is more important than anything, Your Majesty. It is what my sister would have wanted.”

Kallias shrugs, unimpressed.

I cut off a bite of meat, shove it in my mouth. I contemplate my dinner knife, the hidden blade in my headdress. The dinner knife would be faster, perhaps, but not as sharp. Either could kill Kallias in seconds.

Vil must read my mind, because he catches my eye, glances at the knife, and then shakes his head ever so slightly.

“And your companion?” says Kallias, nodding to me.

He seems to be bored with his meat already, having abandoned his plate after only two bites.

He snaps his fingers for the attendants to bring the next course, and they sweep away the meat that no one has had the chance to finish, replacing it with an artfully arranged selection of root vegetables and candied nuts.

“Allow me to formally present my cousin, Princess Astridur Sindri,” Vil says.

I attempt a little half bow from my seat, barely able to think around the pounding in my temple and the nausea twisting my gut. He knows he knows he knows.

“Are you not hungry, Princess Astridur?” asks Kallias, raising both dark brows.

I open my mouth to reply but nothing comes out. I glance at Vil with full panic.

“It’s been a tiring journey, Your Majesty,” says Vil smoothly. “The princess is exhausted.”

I grimace, meaning to smile and not managing it.

Kallias’s blue eyes are sharp as steel in the glittering light from the chandeliers. I hate that Ballast looks like him and I hate that I can’t stop thinking about Ballast. Is he still hiding, down there in the dark?

“We will have to find something that will tempt you, Princess,” Kallias is saying. And despite the vegetables and nuts having only just arrived, he snaps his fingers yet again. Those plates are whisked away, replaced with slabs of steaming fish and sour pickled apples.

I try to eat, I do, but I can hardly choke down a bite. Kallias’s eyes rarely leave mine as he sends course after course away, weirdly obsessed with finding something I will actually eat.

His children and wife vie for his attention, but he ignores all of them.

Finally, twelve courses in and two hours gone according to the violet time-glass, Kallias stands from the table, signaling an end to the awful dinner.

“I will call for you tomorrow,” he says to Vil. “We will discuss your treaty, with Princess Aelia to witness negotiations, if that is agreeable.”

“I would like nothing more,” Vil answers.

And then Kallias strides from the room, his general, his wife, and his children trailing him like the ragged tails of a kite.

“Well,” says Aelia. “ That’s over.”

“Damn right,” says Vil.

She laughs.

I make it all the way back to my chamber before being sick on the floor.