He sat at the place of honor on the right hand of the dais. More extravagantly dressed than she’d ever seen him, he wore a red brocade cloak fastened at his throat with a solid gold brooch. A circlet of gold, a jaunty mockery of a crown, rested atop his neat black curls. His cloak spilled onto the floor, the exact color of blood. Even from here, she could tell something was wrong about his wide, exhausted eyes. Everything about him—from his fingers drumming on the arm of his chair to his bouncing knee—radiated a restless, hungry energy. As if the inevitability of his success tormented him, haunted him.

He looked like a snag in stitching. Something that would unravel if pulled too hard.

But then, as someone caught his attention across the room, his smile slipped effortlessly into place, and Wren saw not a monster or a madman, but exactly what he wanted everyone to see. Someone charming and unassailable and visionary.

“Um, excuse me.” A voice yanked Wren from her thoughts. A young Guardswoman, no older than thirteen and too small to fit into her standard-issue uniform, was gaping at her from the adjacent seat. “You’re Lieutenant Wren Southerland, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

Her eyes bulged. “You’re the one who saved Lord Lowry.”

Wren felt ill. The crowds outside were easy to ignore, easy to dismiss, but she saw herself in the earnest openness of the girl’s face. It was a painful reminder of how naïve she’d once been. What she’d done was nothing to admire, nothing to aspire to.

“I am.”

“What was it like? Facing the Reaper?”

Before Wren could even begin to formulate an answer, the doors banged resoundingly shut. A glasslike quiet followed, ringing and fragile, as two soldiers paraded a prisoner down the central aisle and shoved him toward the dais. The tether of her magic pulled taut, snapped against her breastbone.

Hal.

As if she’d called him, he turned his head toward her. Longing and fear and hope welled up in her all at once. He was here—painfully, tantalizingly close. She wanted to throw herself from this balcony and run to him, to tear through every soldier that stood between them. Her thoughts churned restlessly, searching for any possibility, any opening. But she found nothing. Nothing that didn’t end with both of them dead before she even reached him.

She’d never felt so powerless in her entire life.

“Your Majesty,” one soldier said with a deep bow. “We bring you Hal Cavendish.”

The room exploded into chaos: gasps of horror, shouts of fevered delight. Hal’s head hung low, and his arms were twisted and bound at a sharp angle behind his back. His once white shirt was torn and spotted with oxidized blood.