Barthl is back. His eyes linger on the ruby teardrop, but he doesn’t say anything about it, only escorts me to the entrance hall.
The sun is almost too bright, shattering off the pale marble and alabaster and relenting only on the red-fringed swaths of blue bunting. Adalbrecht’s added more golden wolf statues, because of course he has, and now a small fortune in hothouse flowers crowds urns around the hall: cornflower for prosperity, dahlia for promises kept, peony for high hopes . . . white lilies, a loaded choice. They can signify purity, but Death liked to keep some in the house when I lived with her and Fortune. It wasn’t until later I learned she took them from funerals.
The margrave himself tromps down from his wing just as the doors of the entrance hall swing open. And then they’re here: the Prince and Dame von Falbirg.
The last year looks to have been kind to them; either that or they’ve gone to considerable expense to make it appear so. I see velvet and miniver instead of fustian and rabbit fur, rosy cheeks instead of sallow, comfort instead of hunger.
Still, a year is not enough to forget who they are. Gisele—the real Gisele—takes after her father, with his broad hunter’s build and light brown hair, but the hard gray eyes are all her mother.
And when I see them, a stale frost seizes my heart, my spine, my lungs. I’m bracing for a rebuke. I’m looking over the silver, because there will be no dinner if I missed a spot. I’m stiffening against a tirade because they traveled so far just to see me, and there’s a wrinkle on my sleeve, and can’t I doanythingright?
But Dame von Falbirg surges forward in an assault of velvet, throws her arms around my neck, and practically sings, “My darling!”
Right. I have the pearls; I am thePrinzessinnow. I am safe, I tell myself. Theywantto like me.
Still, something in my bones is buzzing on high alert.
I go into a kind of fog, making inoffensive small talk as we head to the banquet hall. It’s almost as massive as the ballroom, set just above the kitchens in the north end of the castle, with windows all along the eastern wall to let in the morning light. I’m pretty sure the decorations of evergreen boughs and gilded ivy have been repurposed from the ball.
It’s also close to bursting. Its infamous oaken banquet table is a relic from the days of Kunigunde, who made a point of seating her noble guests alongside her soldiers, and ordered a table to accommodate. One of her descendants found that demeaning and added a dais for the high table at some point, but nothing spares us the noise of the guests. Kunigunde’s ambitions, too, have been mitigated, for the end nearest the dais is choking with nobles, and the far end left for the common element.
I move through it all in a detached haze. I’m not me, I’m not even my invention of thePrinzessin. I’m a bland, unobjectionable, beautiful girl, someone not even the von Falbirgs can find fault in.
When we reach the high table, near sagging with an outlandish floral centerpiece, it gets worse. Not just because I have to sit at the foot, across from Adalbrecht, but because the von Falbirgs are on my left . . . and the von Hirschings to my right.
“They’re practically family,” Adalbrecht says. “You’re acquainted, I believe?”
“We had a lovely little visit, what was it, three years ago?” Irmgard blinks my way through plumes of baby’s breath, chin propped on her laced fingers. You would hardly think just two nights ago, she’d been castigatingMarkgrafvon Reigenbach for failing to murder me on her schedule.
“Four,” I say distantly. “Four years, in less than a week.”
Dame von Falbirg reaches over and clasps my left hand, squeezing it in her powder-soft one. “You’ve both become suchpreciousyoung ladies. I’m sure your father is just as proud of you,FrohleinIrmgard, as we are of our little pearl.”
I think I’m going to be sick.
What is wrong with me? I’ve endured Irmgard before, the von Falbirgs think I’m their key to salvation, and there are too many witnesses for Adalbrecht to do anything. Yet I still feel like at any point, my throat’s about to be slashed from behind.
I slip my right hand into my pocket and find the mirror. The weight, the cool metal, it steadies me a little. Or it gives me something to grip until my fingers break. Either way, it helps.
Adalbrecht straightens abruptly, eyes sharpening. “Franziska,” he barks. The steward hurries over. “Go get the Conrad boy, he just walked in. I need a word.”
A different kind of alarm needles through the fog, familiar and almost welcome. We were careful to stay out of the hallway last night, and none of the other guests in the riverfront wing should have been out on their balconies thanks to the cold—but if wewereseen somehow—no, they would have spotted him with Marthe the Maid, not theprinzessin—
But when Emeric arrives, we discover Adalbrecht means to twist two knives at once.
Emeric stops before the dais and drops a quick bow, going through his fidget-shuffle routine and distinctly not looking at me. “Sir?”
MarkgrafAdalbrecht stands, circles the table, comes to a halt by my chair. His hand drops onto my right shoulder, a little too close to my neck. “I wished to offer my sincerest condolences, Conrad.” He squeezes, a little harder than Dame von Falbirg still clinging to my left hand. “I heard the news about Prefect Klemens. Truly devastating.”
Emeric bows his head and clasps his hands behind his back—but not before I see them snarl into fists. “Much appreciated. Sir.”
“Do you have any idea who would do something so heinous?” Adalbrecht grips my other shoulder as well, his thumb brushing up against the string of pearls. I freeze, my face stiffening into a mask of empty sympathy.
Emeric’s eyes flick briefly to me, then away. I’m fairly certain he’s reconsidering his stance on stab wounds. To his credit, the only sign is a muscle jumping in his jaw. “I’m not at liberty to say,” he says tightly. “Thank you again for your concern, sir. Please excuse me.”
Adalbrecht lets me go once Emeric turns his back, and I can breathe again.Damnhim. Damn it all.
There’s one thing I can salvage from this: my fury. It reminds me who I am.
