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“What an excellent memory you have.” I can hear the smile in the Exetor’s voice.

“I remember everything about us,” she says. I’ve never heard her sound so vulnerable. “Every single second. I first saw this when I was thirteen and we broke into that old chest your father kept in one of his studies.”

“We got in quite a bit of trouble for that.”

The Duchess’s laugh is gentle, and full of memory. “We did, didn’t we? My father kept me locked in my room for a week.”

“And I arrived two days into that week and demanded he release you.”

“Yes, I’m sure you were very intimidating.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t box my ears.”

“So am I.”

It’s the Exetor’s turn to laugh. “I’m certain he wanted to. But I don’t think my father would have been so forgiving of one of his subjects accosting his own son.”

“What do you think our fathers would make of us now?” the Duchess asks.

There is a long pause. “I don’t think I care, to be honest. After what they did . . . after . . . it was our lives, Pearl, our lives, and they—”

“I know,” she says softly.

I hear a stopper being popped off and liquid poured into glasses. “I’m worried, Onyx. What if we fail? What if people don’t believe it was her? We need the royalty to love this engagement. We need them to be so attached to the joining of our Houses that there is an outrage when the surrogate is murdered.”

She’s trying to kill me. Hazel’s words come back to me with full force. Someone in this palace is trying to kill her. I was just wrong about who.

“Yes, I’ve thought on this quite a bit,” the Exetor says. “Your House has garnered so much sympathy recently. What if we were to make use of all that goodwill?”

“In what way?”

“We make the Auction double serve as an engagement party for Larimar. A grand affair, not like Garnet’s little promotion celebration. We will make it the event of the century. And we will open the invitation to every member of the royalty.”

“Of course,” the Duchess says. “The royals will love it, especially the unmarried ones who wouldn’t be able to come otherwise. A party on top of a party.”

“We appear as a united front. No one will doubt the validity of this engagement. Then, when the surrogate is murdered with the Electress’s dagger, this circle will turn on her like a pack of wild wolves.”

“Oh, my darling,” the Duchess says. She murmurs something too low for me to hear.

“I could have been better,” the Exetor says, his voice straining with emotion. “I should have been. With you by my side.”

“We can’t change the past.”

“I should never have let—”

“Shhh.” There are some more muffled movements. “Soon. After the Electress is hanged for treason. This will all die down in a year or so.”

“That seems so far away.”

“We’ve been waiting twenty-eight years,” the Duchess says. “I think we can wait one or two more.”

I don’t understand. If they love each other so much, why did the engagement break off in the first place?

There is a silence and then he asks her something in a whisper, too soft for me to make out.

“I don’t know,” she replies, and she sounds like she’s in pain. “I never knew. It was too early to tell.”

Too early to tell what? I want to shout.