“Who is that man?” Anryn asked.

She leaned toward Beatrice, her winecup half-covering her mouth. Without pointing, she flicked her eyes to the table furthest from the high table, where a gaggle of green-cloaked men sat together. They kept a wary eye on their liege lord, Gruffydd, whom Beatrice seated four positions from Anryn’s side.

Behind them stood a man in a darker shade of emerald with a short silk cap to cover his close-cropped hair. The long folds of his robe looked like a modest priest’s frock, but he wore a ruffled silk collar like an aristocrat. Beatrice studied his hands, counting the fat silver rings on each finger.

“Gruffydd’s doctor, perhaps?” Beatrice didn’t recognize him from her brief time as a houseguest of Lord Gruffydd. She’d distanced herself from the Lightning King’s great lord the moment he’d had her brother arrested on false charges of conspiracy to commit murder. “Doesn’t he look a little sick to you?”

“Bea,” Anryn said with a sharp note to her rich voice. “Don’t start.”

Beatrice bit back her reply. They had not been married long enough to have many arguments, but Lord Gruffydd was the beginning of one that would last a lifetime. Beatrice wanted the traitor sent from court, but Anryn refused. Ammar had some infuriating concept of honor that kept her from banishing the man who almost killed them.

Beatrice didn’t believe that Lord Gruffydd had abandoned his plot so quickly. She glanced down the table to where he sat. Beatrice had to twist to get a look at him -- men sat apart from women in Ammar during formal occasions. She’d nearly torn her hair out trying to place all the wives throughout the room so they could be opposite their husbands as Sanchian custom dictated. Countries aligned more swiftly on maps than they did on seating charts.

Lord Gruffydd sat back in his chair, his plate pushed away, a little pale beneath his iron-gray beard. He was easily twice her father’s age, yet nothing about him had seemed grandfatherly to Beatrice. Tall and imposing like the rest of the Ammarish, Gruffydd carried himself with the vitality of a man of fifty. Rumor had it he still searched for a fourth and final wife for himself rather than finding a bride for his only son. Beatrice shuddered to think he might even try it with one of her younger sisters.

“Well, maybe it’s just a chill,” she offered lightly, even as she thought, I hope he catches the plague and dies.

At that moment, the man in the silk cap shifted his gaze from Anryn to her. Beatrice caught the liquid-dark stare and felt a chill go up her spine. The man did no more than bow respectfully, but something about it set her on edge.

She heard a telltale clicking at her side. Anryn ground her teeth whenever she was angry -- sometimes even in her sleep. The fierce click-click-click gave away the king’s anger.

“Your Majesty,” said a calm, soothing voice behind their chairs.

Beatrice shifted to make room for Haley Lawson, Anryn’s chief counselor and one-time tutor, to lean between their chairs. This tall man Beatrice approved of -- he’d been the scholar to draft her marriage contract and, so far, the only man she thought that Anryn could trust. More white-haired than silver, Professor Lawson embodied the red-cheeked jolliness that Sanchians loved best in their Ammarish compatriots. His voice had a soothing, musical quality Beatrice adored.

“That is Count Mercy. He is here as the guest of Lord Gruffydd with a Letter of Mourning for the departed.”

“He calls himself Mercy?” Anryn stiffened at her professor’s words. The clicking in her mouth ceased. “Is he mocking me?”

“I cannot say, Your Majesty,” Professor Lawson murmured. He placed an encouraging hand on the back of the chair behind Anryn. Beatrice thought that if Anryn were still the prince of Ammar, he would have put it on her shoulder. “Mages do not enjoy irony. It has been known to corrupt their spellwork. I suggest you allow his approach, and Lord Gruffydd may quietly show him out.”

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“A mage?” Beatrice whispered. Her fingers danced across the hilts of her throwing knives. The foreboding she’d felt turned to a thrill of adventure. “The border has been breached? We should call for the guards…”

Anryn rested a hand on her wrist. “It doesn’t work like that, Bea. If he’s here incognito and came to court with Gruffydd as his protector, I must treat him as he presents himself. See how he’s not wearing a crescent? He didn’t come here as a mage.”

Before Beatrice could protest, Anryn made some slight twist with her fingers. Professor Lawson bowed his way back from the table and walked down to Lord Gruffydd’s slide to tell him his king’s wishes. Beatrice struggled to smother her frustration. A little bit of the embarrassment from the lapse with the Kenons returned, and a vehement stab of homesickness tore at her heart.

I wish Riccardo were here. Or my father. Or any of my family… Tears welled up so suddenly that Beatrice almost didn’t catch them before they could spoil her eyeliner. She was suddenly conscious of the court around them and what they would think if they saw the young queen crying at her birthday party. They’ll think I’m a little girl…

She turned her head so she would not see the secret mage’s eyes on her. Now, her fingers went from the knives to the coins in her pocket. Fleetingly, she wondered whether Ciamon knew this man.

“Your Majesties,” said the man, calling himself a count. He stood before Beatrice and presented her with a folding rosewood box polished to a lustrous shine with gold lining on the sides and top. He set it before her on the table with a heavy thunk and stepped back with the grace of a dancer. “Many happy returns of the day to Queen Beatrice. And, of course, my most sincere condolences for the… untimely passing of Anathas, the late king. He was a good man.”

“There are only so many fictions I can entertain, Count Mercy,” Anryn answered. When she yelled and snapped, it was very easy to think of Anryn as a man just like her father. Demanding and shrill, just as the Lightning King had been. “You care to leave a letter on his grave so that he can read it in Heaven? You’d be better off burning it so he eats the ashes in Hell.”

Thank God I had the men leave their swords outside, Beatrice thought. She must admit she found Anryn’s sharp wit and bold manner attractive. But she’d learned at sixteen how quickly that led to bloodshed.

She rested her fingers protectively over Anryn’s sword hand, angled so the mage could see the stack of glittering wedding bands she wore on her left heart-finger. Nynomath -- Nymaut, as they called themselves -- had opposed her marriage so strongly that it almost led to her death. She wanted this man to know they had failed.

“Thank you for the gift. Count Mercy. I confess I cannot imagine how you got it here. The storms in the Gulf have been so terrible this time of year. And, of course, the way over the mountain is shut… Did you know the snow doesn’t melt there until late spring?”

The stream of pleasantries was Beatrice’s form of weapon. She spoke so quickly and merrily that the mage couldn’t avoid looking away from Anryn. She slid the box toward her and put her fingers on both sides.

For a small moment, she thought Anryn might slap it from her hands. But Beatrice had gambled this way before and won, testing their vow cup for poison when Gruffydd’s assassins stalked them at their wedding. She made the same gambit now, opening the mage’s gift to see whether some life-stealing enchantment waited inside.

A froth of lace spilled from beneath the velvet-lined hood. Beatrice carefully set the top on its brass hinges and studied the folded embroidered silk inside. She pinched the delicate fabric between her fingers and shook out a lavender Ammarish veil embroidered with threads of rose pink and sage green. Beatrice could not suppress a gasp at the fine needlework. The lavish work was just the ostentation she preferred in her favorite combination of colors.

How did they know?

The thought snaked its way through Beatrice’s heart like an errant thread. She glanced at Anryn’s face to see how she received the generous gift. Now she knew that Anryn turned the Sight on the garment, the center of her eyes crossing while the whites around the blue irises seemed to brighten.

When Beatrice flattened the veil against the table, she saw what Anryn glared at with witchcraft:

A single character of the Old Language embroidered in golden thread at the veil’s center. Shin-ayin. A word that might mean half, temporary, or incomplete. The very same character Ciamon had tattooed onto Anryn’s chest to twist her curse sideways.

He told them. Ciamon told them everything, Beatrice thought. A cold, sick feeling started somewhere in her chest. She placed the veil back in the box and shut the lid. The veil isn’t for me at all -- it’s for Anryn.

“The Great Dome sends an acknowledgment for the momentous grief and anguish Ammar must feel at the loss of its king.”

The secret mage bowed to them again and stepped back from the table. Beatrice watched him return to the clutch of Gruffydd’s men while the lord himself rose to his feet. She felt the weight of her coins like tiny balls of lead.