I rest my cheek against the wood, trembling. He hates me now. Not that he ever cared for me. I’ve always known that. Just as I’ve always known of his penchant for cruelty, harsh games and tricks that hurt those around him, if only rarely me. But now it will be different. Now he will discriminate, because I robbed him of the girl he meant to marry, and he will never forgive me for that.

“Your Highness?” The voice is soft and hesitant, and distinctly boyish.

I lift my head to find a page hovering a few paces away, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot. He is the same young boy who stood in the hall upstairs under guard yesterday.

“Can I help you up, Your Highness?”

I nod, and he offers me his hand, and then supports me as I untangle myself from my skirt and cloak and stumble to my feet.

“Thank you,” I say as I release his arm.

“Thank you, Highness,” he says, as if correcting me, and with a dip of his head hurries off up the stairs.

I look after him, bemused. My whole body aches with a constellation of pain that will blossom into bruises. My brother has never attacked me like this before. Not this openly, this terribly.

I take a shuddering breath and start down the hall, limping slightly. My feet and ankles are all right, it is my back and legs that hurt most. I stop before my mother’s room. I know she is still angry with me, I know precisely what she said yesterday—but surely she will not allow this? No matter how furious she is, I am still her daughter, am I not?

I knock hesitantly at her door, my scraped knuckles making me wince. At her call, I step into her front sitting room. She stands in the doorway that connects to her bedchamber, and as our gazes meet, her features tighten. From behind her come the faint sounds of rustling: her maid, no doubt.

“What do you want?”

“S-someone pushed me down the stairs,” I stammer, not sure why I cannot quite admit it was my brother.

But she knows. She laughs, a short, unamused sound. “Someone? Your brother, I presume. No one else would dare.”

I nod, searching her expression for some gentling of emotion, some hint of kindness.

But she just laughs again, a sharper, more cutting sound. “Well, what did you expect? You’ve destroyed what he had hoped for with Valka. That’s your concern, not mine. Now get out; I’ve greater affairs to attend to than your clumsiness.”

My shaking has begun again, accompanied by a sick feeling in my stomach. I turn and let myself out of the room because there is no arguing with my mother, no salvaging her regard.

She has discarded it for the things she would not lose: Valka’s father’s support, my brother’s future. Politics and power.