In the privacy of her room, Wren smoothed the letter out on her desk like a specimen ready for dissection. It was signed Lord Alistair Lowry III, and all at once, her mood soured. Of all the Cernosian nobility to write her, of course it would be the man whose name once appeared in every gossip column. His people might have refused all contact with Danu, but the rest of the world was all too eager to leak news from Cernos. Their latest inventions, their most extravagant fashions—which spawned cheap knockoffs that flooded Danubian ballrooms each season—and of course, their courtiers’ latest scandals.

Alistair Lowry was widely, and perhaps rightly, considered to be something of a buffoon. The quintessential aristocrat, he wanted for nothing and had few ambitions beyond sleeping with beautiful people, writing middling poetry, and drinking fine spirits. In short, he was a useless dandy—or, at least, he had been. In the last year, speculations about his health and finances had replaced the accounts of his lavish parties. He’d simply vanished from the Cernosian social scene, as if he’d lost interest in it all overnight.

Strange, all of it. But nothing more so than this letter. Despite his waning stardom, he was still one of the biggest celebrities in Cernos, and Wren was nobody. What could someone like Alistair Lowry have to offer her? With curiosity overcoming her, she peeled open the envelope as if preparing to trigger a trap. Meticulous looping handwriting shone in dark ink on the page.