Rosslyn woke to sore muscles and a fuzzy brain.

Her head pounded harder as she rose to a seated position in bed. She was definitely hungover. Rosslyn was a bit of a lightweight; she did not normally drink enough alcohol to develop a strong tolerance.

I should not mix feasting, alcohol, and exercise, she thought, wincing as the light hit her eyes. Duly noted. Her body had sent her an unambiguous message.

The memories of the other events of the night hit her, and she shook her head and reddened. Those damned brothers, why did they have to mention that at dinner…

The conversation with Adon had been perhaps the most embarrassing one of her life—and had only needed to happen last night because of William and Frederick’s choice of topics at the dinner table.

She let out a heavy breath and then rose slowly from the bed. She had to pull herself together. Today, she was supposed to give the brothers a tour of Wayn.

The Princess would not use her hangover as an excuse to shirk her duties. Not only was it against her nature to make excuses, but she was unwilling to show weakness in front of foreign dignitaries—which William and Frederick were, even if they were nominally here for a friendly visit.

With that in mind, she rose, walked to her bathroom, and ran some water. Almost as an afterthought, she closed the bathroom door behind her and then stripped off her nightgown so that it would not get wet. Cupping her hands to make a little basin, she waited until they were full and then splashed it on her face. She would not have time to bathe this morning—and she had bathed the previous night, following her exercise, before she collapsed into bed—but she still felt as if she needed to wash the events of yesterday off.

Rosslyn pulled her nightgown back on, returned to the bedroom, and pulled a sash to summon a servant.

She would need help applying her makeup—as she’d had last night.

Someone arrived so quickly that Rosslyn wondered if she had just been waiting right outside of the room. She heard the footsteps approaching and then the knock on the door.

“Your Highness, may I enter?” Celeste asked.

Rosslyn could not help smiling at the sound of her voice. Her long-serving maid was exactly the person the Princess wanted to see right now.

“Come in!” Rosslyn called.

Celeste stepped in and smiled demurely.

“I hope your evening went well, Your Highness,” she said quietly.

Rosslyn knew that was as much as Celeste would venture to say without some encouragement. Unfortunately, she did not have time to coax the maid into a deeper conversation this morning. There was a schedule to follow.

“The evening certainly went well,” Rosslyn said. She was not entirely certain whether she was lying or not. A lot had happened the previous night.

“Would Your Highness like assistance in preparing for the day?” Celeste asked.

“Yes, please,” Rosslyn said.

Celeste curtsied, excused herself, and brought another maid in. Then the two of them spent the next hour undressing, re-dressing, pulling, poking, painting, and generally transforming Rosslyn into the Princess that she was born to be. The process felt simultaneously tender and clinical. Their hands were soft and gentle, but they manipulated Rosslyn’s body without speaking, as if she was not alive. She allowed her mind to drift through the process, wandering to other locales—mainly moving through the plan for the day.

At the end of the hour, Celeste gently cleared her throat.

Rosslyn realized that they were done. The repetitive motions had almost lulled her back to sleep. She rose slowly, careful not to spoil any of the work they had done on her clothing, and she saw herself in the mirror she had in the corner of her room.

I look like a stranger, she thought. Just like last night. Perfect. If I think I look completely different from myself, hopefully other people will see the same thing.

“Thank you both,” Rosslyn said, turning to face the maids.

They curtsied, and Elspeth—the other maid Celeste had brought in—spoke.

“We are only doing our duty, Your Highness,” she said.

“Your Highness, I should note that you will be just in time to meet the brothers for the planned tour of Wayn if you leave right now,” Celeste added gently.

“Will one of you be chaperoning the tour?” Rosslyn asked. She hoped it would be Celeste.

Instead, Elspeth curtsied.

“It is this humble servant’s honor to have been assigned to accompany you,” she said.

Rosslyn disguised her disappointment and simply nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “I know I am in good hands.”

Celeste curtsied as well. She had a slightly apologetic look on her face.

The Princess moved through the palace, her mind flashing through things she might say to the brothers, the places they were going, and other bits of information that she had prepared herself with, the flotsam and jetsam of a mind still composing itself after the storm of the previous night.

When she reached William and Frederick, she was pleasantly surprised to find that they did not renew the formal gestures of greeting from the previous day.

Good, so we can be casual with each other, Rosslyn thought.

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She looked forward to properly getting to know the two boys she had played with as a child, now that they were grown men.

“We missed you at breakfast, Rosslyn,” William said in a confidential tone once she was close.

“I may have had a little too much wine last night,” she admitted. “I rose much later than is my custom.”

“Do you want to stop and get something to eat?” asked Frederick. He kept himself just a little further away from Rosslyn than his brother did, as if trying to give the two of them space to be alone. It was only an extra foot of distance, but the body language spoke volumes. Only William was truly there to court her.

“I will be all right until we stop for lunch,” Rosslyn replied. She could use Mana to stop her stomach if it started to make embarrassing noises, and if she delayed the group any further, they would fall behind the plan for the day.

The four took a carriage and rode into the center of Wayn, where Rosslyn showed the brothers the daily fountain show that took place in Wayn Central Park.

The water moved in strange shapes and patterns, guided only by pipes and engineering rather than magic. Rosslyn had always found it beautiful, especially with the autumn leaves turning their brilliant shades of red, orange, and yellow in the background.

But as she scanned the brothers’ faces for their reactions, they appeared distinctly unimpressed.

“Do you have shows like this in Dessia?” she asked. She only dimly remembered their capital city of Vernitz from her childhood visits. She did not recall much entertainment. Her memories of the place were dominated by images of soldiers. It was a highly militarized country.

“We do not, as far as I am aware, Rosslyn,” said Frederick.

“What is the point of it?” asked William, sounding genuinely confused.

“Um, I would say the point is simply to appreciate the beauty of water in motion,” Rosslyn replied.

“Ah, that—of course.” William gave an unconvincing smile and nodded as if he understood.

Rosslyn made a mental note to tell Elspeth and the carriage driver to cancel the return visit to the park—when the fountain show was set to repeat, with fireworks this time, to honor the special occasion of the young lords’ visit. She felt certain the fireworks would not change their lack of enjoyment of the spectacle.

The next destination was the Logan Museum, an art museum named for the King who had ordered its construction.

Rosslyn linked arms with William as they entered the museum, and she prepared to transmit her enthusiasm to him. She would ensure he enjoyed this place by sheer force of will. The Logan Museum had rooms for every different form of non-performing visual art that the continent had produced.

She tried to surreptitiously watch William’s face as they visited the Room of Color and Textiles, a room full of colorful fabrics, the Room of Glass, where there were thousands of pieces of glass-blown art on display, and the Room of Sculpture, where there were sculptures made of almost every conceivable material and with almost every type of subject.

King Logan had been a great patron of the arts, and Wayn still had what Rosslyn had come to believe was an incredible artistic community. Yet the brothers seemed to remain unimpressed. Rosslyn wondered silently if she was actually quite provincial in her outlook. Perhaps Dessia’s great museums put Claustria’s to shame, and this place was simply boring.

She kept up a running commentary in the early part of the visit, but gradually gave it up as it became obvious that the brothers were only attempting to show interest to be polite.

William only stopped and really stared at something once.

It was an ice sculpture intended to be a likeness of the Demon Emperor.

Well, not the current Demon Emperor—no one in Claustria would know what he looked like—but a fierce and impressive conqueror from the Empire’s long history.

Rosslyn smiled as she saw what William was looking at. He had good taste. The statue was so close to a likeness of a real demon, so tall and imposing and powerful in build, that it almost made her shiver.

It probably didn’t hurt the effect that the figure was made of ice.

“Do you like this one?” she asked.

“Is it not heretical?” he replied slowly. “Depicting the Demon Emperor this way, so powerful and triumphant?”

“Well, I think that is a specific Demon Emperor,” Rosslyn said. She looked at the sign nearby. “Yes, that was Emperor Mundus, who lived six hundred years ago. I think that since he is already dead, it is probably harmless. And the chosen medium of ice conveys that even the greatest conqueror is only here temporarily. The Goddess will take him at the time of her choosing.”

William moved his head from side to side as if considering, then nodded and looked at her.

“A viable interpretation, I think,” he said, half-smiling. “You are clever.”

Rosslyn returned his smile. “Thank you,” she said.

The gallery of paintings, when they entered it, felt almost like a giant warehouse. The vast space took up almost half of the museum building, with thousands of artworks arranged by subject and period all around the room.

“This feels so decadent,” Frederick declared.

“Decadent?” Rosslyn asked.

“I have been feeling the same way,” William admitted. “In a country constantly under threat, do you really have the time and space to encourage people to produce art? Even if you do have some space to produce, um, imaginative works, this many? And some so large?” He gestured at one of the largest paintings, a massive work that depicted the construction of Wayne itself, layers of paint depicting different stages of the process.

The painting was a century old and hung in a careful place so that it could be seen easily without being hit by direct sunlight. It was the masterpiece of Allanach, widely regarded as the greatest native-born artist in Claustria’s history—Claustria was home to many artists from other countries, as a result of Logan’s legacy of supporting the arts.

Rosslyn had to struggle to keep a smile on her face.

What do you think we are fighting for? she wondered. It is not merely to live. If the Empire conquered us, they would not simply grind us all into sausage. If we do not care for our own cultures, we may as well be conquered. These are the things that give life much of its meaning.

She herself had never spent as much time on the arts as it was often thought proper for a young lady of noble birth, but she had always sought to appreciate beauty wherever it was offered.

“I visited the capital of the Demon Empire,” she said, “and they do not care much for art either. They deface images of the Goddess and steal statues from the cultures they conquer.” She thought specifically of the Ursabians’ gargoyles, which the Empire had ripped from old buildings and placed on their new, ugly structures. “They make nothing creative or beautiful of their own. I think it is one of the defining differences between us and them.”

She realized she was perhaps not explaining her disagreement in a persuasive way, but it was the best she thought she could do without insulting the brothers.

“It feels frivolous to us, but you may have a point,” William admitted softly. “Our minds work very differently, I sense. When I saw the ice sculpture of the Demon Emperor in the other room, my first thought was how impressive it was that they managed to get such a large block of ice into the city and keep it cool before Fall had even properly begun to bite. My second thought was that the subject matter of the statue was heresy. But perhaps I am a little too inflexible.”

Rosslyn’s smile turned genuine again. At least he was trying to give the city’s culture a chance.

As they left the museum, she found an opportunity to step away from the brothers and snag the carriage driver’s attention.

“Forget about the other cultural sites,” Rosslyn said quietly. “We should skip straight to lunch. After that, I think we go to the orchestra.” She smiled at the thought.

If there was anything in Wayn the brothers would actually enjoy, based on Rosslyn’s old memories of them, it was music.