“I learned from the best in Ketterdam. I’ll find a way.” She held Hanne’s gaze. “Never doubt it.”

Joran was waiting when they emerged. He led them out of their chambers and back to the palace through a series of confusing passages. Nina didn’t think she’d be able to make her way back. Maybe that was the point.

“The prince is well?” Nina asked.

Joran said nothing. His shoulders were rigid. Nina knew the drüskelle, especially those still in training, were fastidious about maintaining protocol, but this one seemed even more tautly wound. He was tall, even by Fjerdan standards, but he couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen—still a boy, made even more boyish by the fact that he wasn’t permitted to grow any kind of beard.

“How long have you been the prince’s bodyguard?” she asked.

“Nearly two years,” he said curtly.

Nina and Hanne exchanged a glance. They weren’t going to get much out of him. Nina reached for Hanne’s hand; her fingers were cold.

They arrived at a door flanked by royal guards and were escorted into a sitting room layered in cream and gold cushions. Its vast windows looked out over the gleaming expanse of the Ice Bridge, which linked the White Island to the outer ring of the Ice Court, and they could see soft flurries of snow gusting past the glass in the gray afternoon light. Nina had assumed they’d be brought before some kind of royal tribunal, but other than the servants in their royal livery, the only other person in the room was Prince Rasmus, propped on a sofa embroidered with gold brocade.

“It’s not much of a view, is it?” said the prince. He was pale and fragile as an eggshell, nearly the same shade as the heap of white pillows upon which he was settled. There was a blanket over his legs, and a cup of tea in his hands.

When Hanne said nothing, Nina murmured, “I was just thinking it was very grand.”

“Only if you never want to see more of the world. Sit.”

They lowered themselves onto two plush chairs that had been designed to ensure that no one would ever be seated higher than the crown prince.

“Leave us,” the prince instructed the servants with a wave of his hand. Joran closed the door behind them and stood at attention, his gaze fixed on nothing at all. “I trust Joran with my life. I have to. We have no secrets from each other.” Nina noted the slight clenching of Joran’s jaw. Interesting. Maybe some secrets after all.