Maybe whoever helped her smuggle the radio to me had helped her first lay hands on it.

I wouldn’t know. Nobody told me anything.

I chewed my lip, running my fingers over the leather I knew so well and the black box so unfamiliar to me. “I want to talk to her,” I whispered. “I have to.”

“I’ll help you,” Lang said. “I promise.”

Even with the weight of the radio in my hand, I felt lighter. Bear had ripped me apart, but Godmother Althea—just her voice, spirited to me by magic and machine—had pieced me back together.

I sat forward on the bed, cross-legged. “Thank you for last night,” I said. “You and Cobie and Skop and Yu—you stood with me.”

“That’s our place,” Lang said, voice quiet and tight. His knee bumped mine; he didn’t move it. “That’s where we belong. Between you and everyone else.”

I glanced up. Beneath his arching eyebrows and heavy lashes, I read not quite an apology but a ceasefire. And when I said thank you again, Lang understood, too: I’d accept his truce and let him keep his secrets.

After all, I had mine.

After that, Godmother Althea spoke to me every night. Lang showed me how to adjust the radio’s volume and frequency, how to angle its antenna to hear her more clearly, how to replace it within the book’s thick binding to hide it when I was done.

Night after night. Story after story. Five marks on the back endpaper, each little scratch a step closer to Norge.

Their prince was my last best chance. The only one not bound permanently to his home by the responsibilities of a firstborn son.

If I could persuade him to propose, I could be mere weeks away from home. From Daddy.

If I couldn’t, the Imperiya fürst was waiting.

I tried to forget about all of them. The ones ahead, and the one behind.

Ne pisses pas dans un violon, Jeanne had told me in indignation when the crew heard what had happened at court.

Don’t . . . urinate in a violin? I’d asked, confused.

Her amber eyes had flashed as she’d shaken her head. Do not waste your efforts on good-for-nothing boys. Do not cast your pearls before swine.

I’d tried to laugh. I wanted not to believe Bear’s eyes and hands and heart had left their marks on me for good.

I tried not to fear I would never make it home at all.