My weak, traitorous body shuddered, and Juridius laughed.

“So,” he pressed again. “When are they moving the grain wagons to Perma?”

I shook my head again.

“Pheris.” He lingered over my name. “Do you want them to know about Emtis?”

If not for the wall, I might have fallen. Emtis was the illegitimate son of one of my father’s cousins, a servant, but with a few tenuous privileges of family. He had come to the villa when I had recently lost Juridius’s companionship.

Juridius, less than a year younger than I was, had grown from an infant into a sturdy boy with no need of a nurse. My father had sent for him to join the rest of the family in the villa, to learn to ride and hunt and sit at the table as the heir to our father, a son to be proud of. Forlorn, I had tried to approach him in the house, to invite him back to our former games. At first Juridius had been puzzled by the way I was treated, then uncertain, and then, when it was clear to him that he could not be my companion and also the proud son of my father, he’d joined the others in chasing me off.

People are frequently cruel in just such an artless, unreflective way. Juridius was only doing what everyone expected of him. Not Emtis. He burned to pass along the humiliation he felt to someone else. Melisande could threaten the other servants, but she couldn’t protect me from him. She could only beg me to stay inside our home, the only place I was safe, and I had refused. I would not give up my freedom, so Emtis had followed me from the house to the stables, to the kitchen garden and anywhere I tried to hide from him. He was a grown man and I was a child, and eventually, driven to my wits’ end, I did something terrible. I became the monster people had called me all my life. Emtis lived, but he would never hurt me again.

Juridius was the only person who had suspected the truth of what happened, and he’d used it to rid himself of my company. He’d said, “I hate it when you try to sit next to me in the hall, and I am sick of seeing you looking at me from the doorway with your weepy eyes. I am the heir of my father. I am the son who should be oldest.” He warned me to stay away from him or he would tell everyone what had caused our cousin’s accident.

He never had, though. He’d kept my secret and I’d thought he always would, that somewhere still inside him was the brother I’d played with on Melisande’s hearth, my beloved companion.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, standing in the passage outside the palace library. “You’re the one who is the monster,” he reminded me. “You’re the one who refuses to help his own brother.” He drove his elbow harder and harder into my chest. Afraid for myself, thinking of nothing else, I finally gave in. And when Juridius was gone, I staggered back to the king, telling myself over and over that nothing had changed. I had never been meant to live long.

The king was not an early riser. After a week of nightly banquets, he was moving particularly slowly the next day. He had promised to meet Sounis to spar, but he yawned and stretched and took so long to get up that in the end, he threw on his own clothes and raced out the door, moving too fast for me to follow. Wary of running into Juridius on my own, I went with Lamion and Sotis to prepare the breakfast room near the guest apartments.

Eddis and Attolia were already seated and waiting when Sounis arrived from the morning exercise, freshly washed, his hair still wet.

“Gen is still going at it,” he said. “Whereas I am an idle layabout who refuses to be bullied into sparring all morning.” He dropped onto a chair and flinched as it creaked under his weight. Sotis brought him coffee and he took a cup from the tray without bothering to pinch the tiny delicate handle between his fingers, then blew on it before downing the contents in a single swallow.

Just then we heard the king. He was making his way along the terrace below the window, singing loudly. I saw Eddis wince, and not at his sour notes. He had to have known we would hear him and that we would recognize the song.

Without a word, Sounis pulled himself back out of his chair. He reached for the pitcher of water on Sotis’s tray and, looking to Attolia, he waggled it suggestively. After a moment’s uncharacteristic hesitation, she gave a tight nod just as the king reached the chorus.

Keeping his own dear love in mind

he said, you are more beautiful,

but she is more k—

Sparkling in the morning light, the water arced out the window, the king’s outraged shout proof that Sounis’s aim had been true. The room filled with laughter as Sounis turned to replace the pitcher. When he turned back, probably intending to shout something rude out the window, he did not expect to be face-to-face with his target.

The king’s attendants had watched, open-mouthed, as he’d thrown his practice sword aside, rushed directly at the wall, and gone straight up it—as if the power that pulls all things toward the Earth had tipped on its side just for him. He toed the rough stones with his soft boots and made it all the way to the windowsill, where he’d had just enough time to snatch at Sounis’s sleeve before he began to drop. While Sounis squawked like a surprised rooster, Eugenides shifted to get a better grip. Sounis tried to shake him off and was pulled halfway out the window. The expressions on the faces of the men below were changing from shock to horror. If Sounis got free, the king would fall. If Eugenides pulled him any farther, they both would.

Attolia and Eddis tried to draw Sounis back, but Eugenides had planted his feet flat and was pulling with everything he had. Everyone was shouting or laughing, even Attolia. Sounis’s face was growing redder by the moment. Because it was three on one, or more likely because he outweighed the king, Sounis was slowly hauling himself back inside, and bringing Eugenides with him. They had their arms locked around each other’s necks, Eugenides still not giving up, when Attolia said, very quietly, “Gen, enough.”

They both froze, though neither let go. In the sudden silence, Sounis’s breath was whistling in his throat.

“You’ve made your little monster cry,” said Attolia, and ludicrously, the king of Attolia and the king of Sounis, still without releasing each other, twisted to look at me where I stood with tears running down my face.

Sounis said in a kind, if strangled, voice, “He doesn’t mean it.”

I hadn’t realized I was crying and, realizing it, found I couldn’t stop. The king untangled himself from Sounis and came to drop on one knee beside me.

“It’s just a game,” he reassured me. “No one is angry.”

But I only cried harder, until the sobs shook my whole body and I struggled to breathe.

“Chloe,” said Attolia, restored to her usual formality, “take him and a few of the sweets up to the apartments. He needs a rest.”

Chloe was something of a dogsbody among the queen’s attendants, tasked with the less pleasant errands. She had offended the queen, I believe, and been sent home for a while. I’d heard her complain about it, and I’d heard the older attendants trying to make her see that the queen offered her a way to prove herself, that a diligent performance of the unwelcome tasks was the path back into the queen’s good graces. I thought Chloe dim-witted, though, and I doubted that she would ever learn.

She kept her expression pleasant until we’d left the room and the queen of Attolia was out of sight.

“Ugh,” she said, pulling her hand out of mine. She wiped her hand on her skirts. She wasn’t unkind, so she didn’t hit me, merely suggested I pull myself together.