Gunter only glanced at me once, but the look in his eyes had been enough to melt the terror keeping my feet sutured to the ground.

I’d scurried out of the dungeons and rushed to my room after that, but it occurred to me that the king might come looking for me there, so instead I crossed the hall and locked myself in Gunter’s room, perching myself on the seat of his spinning wheel, never taking my eyes off his door.

I was right; the king had knocked on my door across the hall. He’d even waited long enough for a servant to pass and asked them to fetch a key for him.

He’d found the room empty and given up.

The next day, the king was found dead. Poisoned.

Neighboring kingdoms blamed Abra for it; said her ascension to power had always been suspicious. It wasn’t difficult to believe she’d enchanted the king with her wiles, only to spike his wine with poison. After all, didn’t she wear a bracelet infused with the same poison that had killed her husband?

I knew it was Gunter, of course. The king’s symptoms had all pointed to wormwood—he’d vomited his guts up in a long and arduous death. For weeks, I skirted around the castle on my tiptoes, sure the queen would discover Gunter’s transgression, sure my mentor would die for having protected me.

But the queen shouldered the insults, the accusations from other royals, none of which could be proven. She mourned her husband as if she’d loved him, but she hadn’t searched for his killer. Not really. Not like one would expect from a widow of unlimited resources.

I’d wondered about it for years, and only when I reached maturity did I begin to suspect what kept the queen from pursuing the truth surrounding her husband’s death.

She’d made me come to dinner one evening, and all at once, she started talking about him. About how he wanted a child so badly. That he’d always been good with children—fancied and took special care of the servants’ children whenever he found them running about the castle.

I’d realized it then; the queen had known what her husband was, and had simply decided not to know.

So when someone had hated him enough to poison him, she hadn’t pursued the murderer, too fearful was she of discovering the motive.

Gunter sighs, then crosses the room and sits at his spinning wheel, picking flax from the pile next to him and threading it through the machine.

My mentor doesn’t have to say a word; I know he’ll honor Blaise’s request.

CHAPTER 17

BLAISE: AGE TWELVE

My father is dead.

It happened in the night while I slept. No one bothered to wake me, not even in the morning when the entire household knew of it.

They took his body away before sunrise because Clarissa told them to. I keep trying to come up with a reason she would do that, but I can’t think of any except that she meant to punish me.

Clarissa believes that the timing of my father’s death is for the best. After all, our neighbors won’t ask questions when I lock myself away in mourning. They won’t pry when I no longer walk in public.

There’s no need for them to consider the true reason Clarissa refuses to let me leave my room in the attic. They won’t notice the swell of my belly.

I lay in the bed that has become my prison, ever since Clarissa thought she perceived a bulge in my abdomen.

I personally believe she was weeks early in locking me away, but it isn’t as if I had any say in the matter.

The days are long, but the nights are longer. With hardly anything to busy myself with in my little attic, I grow restless at night, and as there are no windows in my room, my body has forgotten what is day and what is night.

It has been months since I’ve tasted sunlight.

There’s a knot in the wood paneling of the wall that I often stare at. Sometimes it looks like a thirsty puppy with its tongue lolling out. Other times, it’s a fire-breathing dragon.

When the servants are kind enough to replenish candles, I sometimes warp my fingers to make puppets in the shadows of the flames.

The shadows are my only friends up here.

Clarissa bought me a clock fueled by faerie magic. Rather, she bought Elegance a clock and gave me Elegance’s old one in the hopes I would go to sleep at a proper hour, but my body can’t seem to tell time.

So now I lie awake, and it’s almost midnight, and I wonder if the moon is directly overhead.

My belly has swollen to the point that I don’t believe I’d be getting much sleep anyway, even if my body knew day from night. I would toss and turn, except I’ve long since realized it does me no good, so I lie on my side and run my fingers over my belly with one hand as I clutch a stack of letters to my chest with the other.

The letters are from both Jerad and Evander, but mostly Evander. Jerad is awfully busy with his duties as the heir to the throne and writes when he can, but Evander isn’t busy with much at all, so he finds time to write to me every day.

I’ve known the princes for as long as I can remember, back from when my father served as a human ambassador in the king’s court. They’re a constant in my life, and it hurts having been separated from them for so long.

Evander says in his most recent letter that Jerad is working on something to take care of me now that my father is dead. Clarissa puts on like we won’t run out of money, but even trapped up in the attic, I can tell she’s spending more than she did even after my father fell ill. Every time she storms into my room, a new costly scent assaults me and a pair of earrings I’ve never seen before dangles from her ears.

Evander must know we’re going to run out of coin, that I’ll need something to do, that I’ll need a job.

I’m not fond of the idea of having a job. Clarissa spoiled me for work, I’m afraid.

Evander doesn’t know about the baby, but he knows about Father, and he knows I am miserable and wretched, and I think that is probably why he writes.

After my father died, Evander came to the house, but Clarissa lied to him and told him I was asking for no company. His letters began the day afterward. In each one, he asks if I am well, and he tells me I am welcome to return to the palace when I’m ready.

There are a thousand reasons I’m impatient for the baby to hurry up and come, but seeing Evander again is one of them.

He’s the most wonderful male in the world. I should have remembered that from the start, should have never even looked in Derek’s direction. I enjoyed Derek’s attention. Thought I loved him even, and perhaps I did, but I know now that he showed no signs of loving me.

I don’t know what Evander would do if he discovered he was going to be a father, but I imagine his reaction would be nothing like Derek’s.

It’s dark in my little attic, and my mind has little to distract me from the ache deep inside my gut when I remember my father is dead, which is often, so I don’t rebuke my imagination when it wanders off to silly places.

I don’t slap it on the wrist when it pretends that this baby is Evander’s and not Derek’s. I don’t tell it “stop that” when I imagine confessing to Evander about the baby, how his sea-green eyes light up with delight. How he grins and slips a ring on my finger and asks me to marry him.

Sometimes this is the way the imaginings go. Other times, the baby isn’t Evander’s at all, but Derek’s, and Evander bursts into my tiny attic, finally onto the fact that Clarissa has been hiding something. And then he sees my belly, and he knows all about the baby, and he holds me while I cry and cry and cry.

And then he tells me he’ll raise the baby as his own.

This is the nicer dream, because it is more likely to come true than the first.

There is no time to erase the past, but there are still a few weeks left for Evander to burst through my door.

I’m imagining my and Evander’s wedding, wondering whether he’ll want to marry me immediately or wait until after the baby comes, when the baby kicks me hard. I gasp, a little in pain, a little in delight, and my hand finds where the baby’s foot presses against my stomach. My heart gives a little flutter, and a smile appears on my lips.

I am terribly wretched, and most all the time I feel quite alone. But my baby is with me, and after months of contemplation, I’ve decided I love my baby.

I’m unsure whether my baby is a little boy or a little girl, but I see my baby both ways. If my baby is a little boy, he will be a Theodore, after my father. I wish I liked my mother’s name, but alas, it was Blossom, and I cannot bear to name my daughter Blossom, so she will be Rose if she really is a she.