This was what it felt like to be betrayed by a friend. No. By a traitor pretending to be a friend. Such a wonderful friend he’d seemed, so sympathetic, so understanding—and no wonder, if he’d always known her thoughts, always known her feelings. The perfect pretense of friendship.

“No,” he said. “No. I have lied, Katsa, but my friendship has not been a pretense. I’ve always been your true friend.”

Even now he was reading her mind. “Stop it,” she spat out. “Stop it. How dare you, you traitor, imposter, you . . .”

She couldn’t find words strong enough. But his eyes dropped from hers now, miserably, and she saw that he felt her full meaning. She was cruelly glad his Grace communicated to him what she couldn’t verbalize. He slumped against the table, his face contorted with unhappiness. His voice, when he spoke, toneless.

“Only two people have known this is my Grace: my mother and my grandfather. And now Raffin and you. My father doesn’t know, nor my brothers. My mother and my grandfather forbade me to tell anyone, the moment I revealed it to them as a child.”

Well. She would take care of that problem. For Giddon was right, though he couldn’t have realized why. Po was not to be trusted. People must know, and she would tell everyone.

“If you do,” Po said, “you’ll take away any freedom I have. You’ll ruin my life.”

She looked at him then, but his image blurred behind tears that swelled into her eyes. She must leave. She must leave this room, because she wanted to hit him, as she had sworn she never would do. She wanted to cause him pain for taking a place in her heart that she wouldn’t have given him if she’d known the truth.

“You lied to me,” she said.

She turned and ran from the room.

HELDA TOOK her damp eyes, and her silence, in stride.

“I hope no one is ill, My Lady,” she said. She sat beside Katsa’s bath and worked soap through the knots in Katsa’s hair.

“No one is ill.”

“Then something has upset you,” Helda said. “It’ll be one of your young men.”

One of her young men. One of her friends. Her list of friends was dwindling, from few to fewer. “I’ve disobeyed the king,” she said. “He’ll be very angry with me.”

“Yes?” Helda said. “But that doesn’t account for the pain in your eyes. That will be the doing of one of your young men.”

Katsa said nothing. Everyone in this castle was a mind reader. Everyone could see through her, and she saw nothing.

“If the king is angry with you,” Helda said, “and if you’re having trouble with one of your young men, then we’ll make you especially beautiful for the evening. You’ll wear your red dress.”

Katsa almost laughed at that bit of Helda logic, but the laugh got caught in her throat. She would leave the court after this night. For she didn’t want to be here any longer, with her uncle’s fury, Giddon’s sarcastic, hurt pride, and, most of all, Po’s betrayal.