I step to the side, look Lady Emmanika in the eye. “Lady, what did your brooch look like? Was it sapphire and gold, by any chance?”

Emmanika nods, her brow creasing. “It was.”

“Then you should know that I walked down this hall when Valka did, and I saw her with it. That serving girl was not here at all.”

A silence rolls out around my words, riding a wave of gasps that die away to nothing.

“That is absurd!” Valka cries, in an accent of absolute disbelief. “Me? Steal jewelry? I am helping to find who stole it!”

Her outrage fuels my own, pushing back the terror roiling at the edges of my mind. How dare she pretend she is just a helpful bystander? She planned this.

“Where is it now, Valka?” I demand. “Did you put it somewhere, or is it still in your pocket?”

Her fingers twitch, and I know in that moment she still has it, that she hasn’t bothered to hide it away somewhere. She never believed she would need to.

“Alyrra, shut up,” my brother hisses. “What are you doing?”

“I—I cannot believe that the daughter of such a nobleman as Lord Daerilin would steal,” Lady Emmanika says.

“I would never,” Valka says, green eyes gleaming with fury as she glares at me. “Really, Alyrra, your imagination has run away with you!”

“Come along,” my brother says, his hand closing on my arm, tight as a vise. But I won’t go with him. I won’t.

“Search her,” I say, my voice hard and strong, an order that takes the guards by surprise. They stare at me as my brother turns, yanking at me. I can’t twist out of his grip, so instead I brace my feet and shout, “As your princess, I demand you search her!”

And they do. I don’t know who is more surprised, my brother or I. He manages only a growl before one of them reaches Valka, pulls her hand away from where it covers her pocket, and plunges his own hand in.

“Get away from her!” My brother releases me, surging toward the guards, but it’s too late to stop them, too late to save her at all, for there in the guard’s hand gleams the brooch, gold and sapphire.

“That’s it,” Maralinde says in a strangled voice. “That’s my mother’s brooch.”

The hall erupts in shouting.

Chapter 4

In the ballads our old troubadour sings, the heroes who vanquish the pillaging hordes or the ravening night beasts are raised high; they are toasted in the king’s hall and fawned upon by all, and remembered for their courage and strength. But my mother, looking at me as I stand before her that afternoon, says only, “You stupid little fool.”