“You’ll be moving out, of course, girl,” the wife had said. She could still hear that distant, dulcet voice in her mind. It hadn’t been more than a moment after she had been introduced to the new Baron of Sterngal and his wife. The wife hadn’t even bothered giving Delia her proper name; she’d just stared down her nose at Delia, and said, “You’ll be moving out, of course, girl,” in tones that suggested Delia should do so on the instant.

Delia had been at her wits’ end. Her father was barely in his tomb by a day, she was still in grief and shock at his sudden passing, and at the very least she had expected that she would be allowed to move to the dowager house or at worst the gatehouse on the grounds. She’d have been perfectly happy in either place. Her needs were few, and she’d still have been home.

But no.

They had shown up out of the blue, parading through the activated Portal with their entire household, which had included enough armed men that she had felt utterly intimidated.

And as she had stood on the steps of what was no longer her own home, wondering what the hell she was going to do, with the Ice Queen glaring down at her from one side, and the Ice Queen’s husband looking everyplace except at Delia, she had been tempted to run inside, flee up the stairs to the highest tower, and fling herself off it in despair to land messy and dead at their feet. Not being one of the Emperor’s mage-built edifices, that tower wasn’t that tall and she wouldn’t have splattered their lovely garments when she hit, but she’d at least have made an inconvenient mess for them to clean up and explain.

And that was when there had been a flurry of trumpets above as the two Heralds announced yet another group approaching the manor. She’d stopped herself—because it might have been the Emperor’s people coming to fetch her to the Capital, and while that was far from ideal, if the Emperor was fetching her, it meant he would probably make sure she wasn’t stripped of everything.

But it hadn’t been the Emperor’s representative.

It had been Kordas.