Her guards are immediately in front of her, swords drawn and leveled at me.

“No!” Nolla Verin coughs. “I told him to do it.”

“Told you,” Jake says.

The guards slowly lower their weapons. I feel as surprised as she looks, but I sheathe my sword and walk to Nolla Verin, extending a hand. She glances at it, then springs to her feet on her own. She regards me with obvious new interest—but greater regard. “As I said. A new opponent.”

“As you said.”

Her breathing is faintly quick now, her cheeks pink in the moonlight. “Again?”

I hesitate.

“Yes,” calls Tycho.

She draws and swings. I barely draw my sword in enough time to stop hers. Our blades clash and fly in the night air until I feel the stars waiting.

Gently, Lia Mara said in the woods.

I give those stars a subtler push.

Nolla Verin misses her next block by several inches, and she throws herself back. I take advantage and hook her sword to disarm her, but it knocks her off balance, and she goes down hard.

Her guards are there again, but Nolla Verin is grinning up at me. “That is a handy trick.”

I can’t help smiling back. “Magic takes too much thought. I prefer the swords alone.”

“It won’t take much thought with more practice,” says Iisak.

This time, when I offer my hand, Nolla Verin takes it. Once she’s on her feet, she looks up at me, her eyes coolly calculating. Her hand doesn’t leave mine.

“Walk with me,” she says.

I lose the smile, and I glance up at the dark wall of the palace. “I should retire.”

“Please?”

I inhale to decline, but emotion flickers in her eyes for a brief moment. For all of Lia Mara’s comments about somehow being lesser than her sister, she never once spoke ill of Nolla Verin. The girl in front of me presents a fierce demeanor to the world, but I wonder how much of that has been developed to please her mother—and what hides beneath it.

I nod and offer my arm.

Nolla Verin laughs and starts walking. “Do ladies in Emberfall truly need assistance to walk?”

“No. Keep your distance if you’d rather.”

She huffs in surprise, and I discover I was right. So much of her aggression is a front to hide insecurity. In truth, she reminds me of Rhen a bit. They likely would have made powerful allies.

Then again, one of them probably wouldn’t have survived the first week.

We walk in silence across the training fields, the shadows growing longer as we move away from the torches near the back wall of the palace. Her guards have followed at a distance, as has Jake, which surprises me.

Nolla Verin glances over her shoulder at where Tycho and Iisak remain. “Mother does not like that you’ve freed that creature from his tether.”

“He is not my slave.”

She glances up at me. “What did you threaten him with, then, to keep his obedience?”

“Nothing.” I want to ask if ladies in Syhl Shallow need threats or a tether to ensure a promise is kept, but I do not wish to fight with her.

We fall into silence again. It’s prickly and uncomfortable. I much preferred swinging swords. It felt like the first time she’d been open and honest with me.

Maybe because she was trying to kill me.

I consider everything I heard from Lia Mara, and everything I’ve gleaned on my own. Nolla Verin is quick to echo her mother’s desires, and I wonder how deeply that runs. I glance at her. “Do you want this alliance?”

“Yes. It will be a boon for our people to have access to the waterways at Silvermoon Harbor, and it will benefit Emberfall to have funds to assist with rebuilding after all that was lost.”

“All that was lost during the invasion by Syhl Shallow, you mean.”

“All that was lost while your royal family was ‘in hiding.’ ” She looks up at me. “Do not pin all your troubles on us.”

“I am not.” Though I am. A little. It’s impossible not to. “That was not my question, though, Princess.”

“What is your question?”

“Do you want this alliance?” I stop and turn to face her. “With me.”

“Of course.” That emotion flickers in her eyes again, but the longer I stand here speaking with her, the more I see it as uncertainty. Vulnerability. Lia Mara sang her sister’s praises during our journey here, and certainly everyone I’ve met is quick to speak of Nolla Verin’s talents on a horse, or with a bow, or with a blade. Well-earned, for certain, but maybe all her skills hide the fact that she seems so perfect for the throne because she has no backbone to defy her mother. Maybe all her skills and her parroting hide the fact that she is young, and untested, and uncertain.

After spending so much time with Lia Mara in the woods, I began to wonder why Karis Luran would choose her younger daughter to be her heir—to negotiate an alliance first with Rhen, and now with me. Lia Mara believes it is because she herself is quiet and longs for peace—that she lacks her sister’s ruthlessness.

I now wonder if it is because Lia Mara would stand against her mother.

And Nolla Verin will not.

I glance back at the palace, and I can see a flutter of color at Lia Mara’s window. “How long will your mother keep your sister imprisoned?”

She follows my gaze. “Lia Mara is in a royal suite in the Crystal Palace. She is hardly imprisoned.”

I can hear the uncertainty in her voice. It’s well hidden, but it’s there. “You worry for her.”

“Yes. I do.”

But she will not visit her. I know as much from Iisak and the notes he brings to me. Nolla Verin will not contradict her mother’s will.

Silence drops between us again, full of so many unspoken things.

Nolla Verin knows I gave Lia Mara my jacket on the terrace—but she has never mentioned it. I wonder what she suspects. What she thinks. What she worries about.

I am hardly one to complain—she likely wonders the same about me. I learned long ago how to hide every thought behind the stoic countenance of a guardsman. She likely learned the same as a princess.

Maybe I was wrong. Nolla Verin isn’t like Rhen at all.

She’s like me.

I think of Iisak, the night we fought. I needed a battle, too, he said.

I glance at her. “Are you rested, Princess?”

“Somehow I have managed it, without the assistance of your arm.”

I smile. “Good.”

Without warning I draw my sword, and she grins.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

LIA MARA

Every candle in my chambers is still lit when Iisak alights on my windowsill. I’m sure he has a note from Grey, but I have no desire to read it. I almost wish he hadn’t appeared tonight. My thoughts flicker between desire and loyalty, and I doubt I’ll be good company. Books and papers are spread across my chaise lounge, and a half-eaten platter of sugared fruits sits by my side.

“The hour is late,” says the scraver. “I expected to find you asleep.”

I don’t look up at him. “Did you? Truly?”

He ignores my sarcasm. “Yes. Truly.”

“I’m reading about Iishellasa. Why did the magesmiths leave while the scravers remained behind?” I peer over at him. “Why were the magesmiths not bound by a treaty?”