“I doubt it’s my clavicle he’ll be looking at,” Mia said darkly. Between the whalebone corset pushing up and the gown’s neckline plunging down, she had never seen so much of her own flesh.
“You have Mother’s figure.” Angie sighed. “What I wouldn’t give to have a porcelain swell of breast.”
Mia caught her sister’s eye in the polished glass, and despite everything—or maybe because of it—they both burst into laughter. It was always like this: they could be bickering one moment and shrieking in unabashed delight the next.
“You’ve been reading your dreadful novels again, I see.”
“You have so little faith in fate. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to fall in love! To be swept up in something bigger than yourself—to find a handsome partner in the dance of destiny.”
“Like Mother and Father.”
Angie touched the moonstone pendant at her throat. It had belonged to their mother. “Yes,” she said, her voice feathery soft. “Like that.”
They were wasting precious time. It was now or never. “I need you to listen, Ange. What I’m about to tell you is important.”
“Oh?” Her sister seized a long hairpin and plunged it into the smoldering candle, then took a strand of Mia’s dark-red hair and coiled it around the warm, waxy pin. When she let go, it snaked into a perfect corkscrew. In the torchlight Mia couldn’t help but think her curls gleamed the color of wet blood.
“Angelyne.” Her voice was deadly quiet. “We are getting out of here. You and I. I have everything arranged, so you don’t have to do anything but trust me.”
Angie set the pin slowly on the dresser. Her blue eyes flashed in the mirror.
“I know what you’ve been plotting, Mi. I’ve seen you with your maps, packing your secret satchels. I know you’re running away. And I’m not coming.”
Mia was stunned. “I—I’m not leaving you behind.”
“Maybe I want to be left behind. Have you considered that? Maybe this life you’re so determined to hate—living in a castle, married to a prince—isn’t such a bad life.”
“To be trapped forever in this frozen tomb?” She reached up and pressed a palm to her sister’s forehead. “Are you febrile? The fever is stealing your sense.”
Angie shrugged her off. “I’m the one who’s being sensible! You treat me like a victim. Poor sick little Angie, always in need of someone to save her. But I don’t need saving. Go. Flee the castle. Run off to have your adventures.”
“My adventures? You speak as if I’m going on holiday. You know I have to find her, Angie. If Father won’t, I will. Heart for a heart, life for a life.”
“Yes, well. You Hunters all think you’re exacting justice when really you’re just adding weight to one side of the scale. More bodies. More loss.”
The conversation was twisting too quickly for Mia to grab hold of. “Why would you choose a loveless marriage? What about the ‘dance of destiny’? Think of the way Mother looked at Father . . .”
“I try not to think of her,” Angie snapped. “Though you seem intent on reminding me.”
“Is that really what you want? To be bound by sacred vow to a boy who doesn’t love you? All so you can twirl around the castle in a pretty gown?”
“You don’t get to tell me what I want!”
All the blood drained from Angelyne’s face. She staggered forward, clutching the bedpost, her slim body racked by coughs. Instantly Mia was by her side.
“The dizzy spells again?”
“They come out of nowhere. Everything is fine and then the world goes white.”
“Maybe you should lie down.”
“Maybe I should.” Mia helped ease her onto the canopy bed, plumping the vermilion silk pillows under her head. She watched her sister’s chest rise and fall, a delicate paper lantern. Guilt roiled in her belly.
Mia didn’t feel so well herself. An inexplicable heat poured over her, as scorching as if she’d leaned over a fire, orange flames licking her freckled flesh. She felt the sweat gathering damply beneath her arms, pooling in the scoop of her lower back. Reason number six hundred and twelve she wouldn’t make a very good princess: princesses did not have sweat stains blooming on their fine silken gowns.
Angie’s smile was sad. “Look at me. Not even strong enough to have a proper fight. I really am a heroine from one of my novels.” She reached for Mia’s hand, her skin sweltering. “Go, Mi. If you want to run, run. I’ll only slow you down.”
Mia’s heart plummeted. Her sister couldn’t go more than five minutes without succumbing to one of her unexplained ailments—fevers, coughing fits, dizzy spells, monstrous headaches. Sometimes Ange stumbled forward, her feet gone suddenly limp, her toes numb. Mia had searched all her books on physiology, exhausted every tome on maladies and infections. She always came up short.
To escape, they would need to slip stealthily through an endless maze of tunnels, flee the castle, make it through the village undetected, commandeer a boat, and sail the Natha River east to Fojo Kara??o. Fojo was where her mother had first fallen in love—and where she had made enemies. The journey would take days. Weeks.
Angie would never make it. In her heart of hearts, Mia had always known.
The truth seeped into her with sickening certitude.
She would never find the murderous Gwyrach.
She would never leave the castle.
She would marry the prince.
Mia tried valiantly to mask her despair. If she couldn’t save her sister, at least she could make her smile.
“You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid. Even if you’d rather have a handsome boy to admire the swell of your porcelain bosom.”
She heard footsteps in the castle corridor. Two harsh knocks echoed through her chambers.
“Lady Mia?” It was the prince, his voice icy. “I’ve some news.”
Chapter 2
Instruments of War
PRINCE QUIN STOOD AT the threshold, arms crossed. He bore a striking resemblance to her favorite human-anatomy sketch: his body long and lean, his face perfectly symmetrical. Not that she’d noticed.
“You can call me Mia. I’ve told you a thousand times, no ‘lady’ required.”
“Until you are my princess, you will remain my lady,” he said in his oddly formal way. He stared at her bare arms and flinched.
“My apologies, Your Grace.” The last thing she needed was the prince to report her. “I was performing my ablutions,” she lied.
She seized the velvety gray gloves off her dresser and slid them over her hands. While most girls in the river kingdom wore coarse bullock and deer hide, Mia and Angelyne enjoyed gloves of lamb slinkskin, soft and buttery. There were perks to being the daughters of an assassin. Especially when that assassin led the Circle of the Hunt, the king’s dedicated tribe of Gwyrach Hunters.
Quin cleared his throat. “I’ve come to tell you the final feast has been postponed.”
“Oh? To what do we owe this tragic turn of events?”
“Something about a burnt duck. We will reconvene in one hour.”
Mia wondered why Quin hadn’t sent one of his myriad servants to impart this news. The Kaer was swarming with them, all young, all female. Was there something else he wanted?
They stood angled toward one another in the doorway, studiously avoiding eye contact. He fidgeted with a gold button on the sleeve of his smart green jacket. Quin was wearing the colors of Clan Killian: seasick emerald and scintillating gold.
He cleared his throat again. “I trust you won’t be late?”
“Of course not.”
“Unlike last night.”
“Last night was an anomaly.”
“And the night before.”
So that’s what he wanted: to mock her. She glared at his glittering green eyes, framed by high chiseled cheekbones and a light smattering of freckles across sandy skin. His gold mane of hair curled over his ears in a perpetual state of touslement. Yes, Quin was beautiful. He was also cold and arrogant and completely unknowable. More than anything, Mia wanted to know and be known.