“As do we both. And we shall have some new dresses cut for you as well.”

“Oh no, that isn’t necessary!”

“It is what I wish. Would you deny me?”

I would push you into the sea and do a jig as you drowned. But Nina turned her eyes up to him, wide and thrilled, a young woman flustered and overwhelmed by a great man’s attention. “Never,” she said on a breath.

Brum’s eyes strayed slowly over her face, her neck, and lower. “Fashion may favor a trimmer figure, but men do not care for fashion.”

Nina wanted to crawl right out of her skin, but she knew this game now. Brum wasn’t interested in beauty or desire. All he cared about was power. It excited him to think of her as prey, pinned by his gaze as a wolf might trap a lesser creature with its paw. It pleased him to think of offering Mila gifts she could never afford, of making her grateful.

So she would let him. Whatever it took to find Vadik Demidov, to help the Grisha, to free her country. A reckoning was coming. She was not going to forgive Brum for his crimes even as he sought to commit new ones. Whatever she might feel for Hanne, she intended to see Brum dead, and she doubted Hanne would be able to forgive her for that. The divide was too great. The Shu had a saying, one she’d always liked: Yuyeh sesh. Despise your heart. She would do what had to be done.

“You are too good to me,” she simpered. “I am not deserving.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“They’re beginning!” said Ylva giddily, oblivious to the overtures her husband was making mere feet from her. Or was she? Maybe she was glad to have Brum’s attention elsewhere. Or maybe she’d overlooked the man’s flaws for so long that it had become a well-worn habit.

Nina was glad for the interruption. It gave her a chance to assess the crowd in the ballroom as one by one the girls approached the fountain at the center of the room, where they were met by the crown prince. Prince Rasmus was of average height for a Fjerdan, but eerily gaunt, his face a portrait in angles, the cheekbones high and sharp. He had only just turned eighteen, but his slight build and the tentative way he moved gave him the look of someone much younger, a sapling that wasn’t quite used to the weight of its branches. His hair was long and golden.

“Is the prince ill?” Nina asked quietly.

“Every day of his life,” Brum said with contempt.

Redvin shook his grizzled head. “The Grimjers are a warrior’s line. Only Djel knows how they shat out a weakling like that.”