The maid watched as the princess cast her pearls onto the riverbank. The princess’s dress tightened, seams stretching, and with a cry of frustration, the princess threw it to the ground too, caring not a whit for the mud that would need to be scrubbed out of the silk, the stitches redone, the buttons found and replaced.
To her, it was freedom.
To her maid, it was one more mess that would fall to her.
The princess dropped her purse and toilette and stormed to the water, tears burning down her cheeks. “I can’t marry him! I’ll have to go to balls and socials and all those awful parties with people I hate, and I’ll have to pretend to like them for thepolitics, and I’ll have to keep wearing the pearls for the rest of my life or he’ll know I’m—me! I canneverbe me again!”
“That does sound miserable,” the maid said tonelessly.
“He’s twice my age, and I’m sure he’ll want an heir as soon as possible, and Mama said it would be over soon and not to fight—” The princess wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “I don’twanthim.”
The maid was only half listening as she collected the gown and the pearls. The pearls tangled around her hand, smooth and lovely, and she wondered what it would be like to have a mother who would give everything to try to protect you. Even if it was the kind of protection you didn’t want.
“I need my kerchief,” the princess sniffled, and the maid brought it to her.
The maid saw the cambric shift the princess wore was much the same as her own. Almost identical.
“I can’t marry him, Vanja. I don’t love him. I—I don’t think I can.” The princess stared into the river, at the slices of peach and gold light carving into her own reflection, before splashing her face with the icy water. “You have to help me. Youhaveto.”
The maid didn’t answer for a long moment. Then she said, cold and flat, “Fine.”
Gisele did not see Death and Fortune standing between her and me on the riverbank that day. She didn’t know how they lingered, reminding me that an easy solution lay before us. Death could strike the margrave down, Fortune could keep the wolf at bay through unlikely coincidences, but they would cost my freedom.
And I—I held the pearls.
There was nothing and no one to offer me protection in this world, so I would seize my own.
“I’ll do it,” I said. I had already climbed into Gisele’s gown, and the moment the pearls clasped around my neck . . . it fit perfectly.
Gisele stared at me from the riverbank, mopping up her face. For a moment, she didn’t understand. Or rather, she did, in a way that was all von Falbirg. “Oh, Vanja, you’rebrilliant. You can take my place when I need you to, like at a ball, or with . . . with the margrave, I’m sure you can—”
“No,” I told her, running my hands over her dress—my dress. “Notwhen you need me. If you don’t want this life, I’ll take it. I’ll take it all.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.” I pointed to the Falbirg servant uniform on the ground. They always made mine too big, in case I grew into it. “But I could use a maid now.”
“You can’t be serious,” she sputtered. “Give the pearls back, Vanja. You’ll never pass for me, you weren’t trained as a lady.”
I swept the perfect curtsy I’d watched her practice for years, a furious, toothy smile on my face. “Of course I was. You just didn’t notice.”
Gisele caught her breath. A flush rose to her cheeks. “Give them back. I’ll call the guards.”
A bone-deep stab of fear shot through me. Then an impossibly shiny platinum curl fell over my shoulder, and I remembered who I was now.
“Go ahead,” I told her.
She screamed for help, haughty and angry and frightened, still oblivious to what it meant to lose the pearls. When the guards came running, I wrenched my face into a mask of hysteria and half stumbled to them first, claiming this madwoman had attacked me, that she was claiming to be the real princess, I was scared, so scared,help me, please.
They were Adalbrecht’s soldiers all, and not a one of them knew Gisele’s true face.
When Gisele shouted who she was, who herparentswere, red-faced and weeping and clad in nothing but a muddy shift, she lived my lie to the letter.
“You’re safe now,Prinzessin,” one soldier told me, putting herself between me and the thunderstruck Gisele. “She can’t hurt you.”
“Go on now, leave Princess Gisele be,” another guard shouted. “Go home.”
She sank to her knees on the muddy riverbank, stunned.
