Europe taxed and took what it wanted, retreating from the New World only after the Old claimed all its attention—when Bharat, far away in Southeast Asia, began to press back against the men who came first for commerce and coercion and then to outright conquer. When distance and cost made us more trouble than we were worth.

A thousand tiny moments. A winding path of yeses and nos.

I wondered how different my life would be if the New World colonies had pushed back instead of being squeezed thin in Europe’s grip. If we had been the ones to revolt instead of Bharat. If, when abandoned by English overlords cheerfully declaring our “independence,” someone other than my ancestor had been the one to save our starving, depleted colony and become our first seneschal.

I wondered how different my future might look if Peter had said yes tonight instead of no.

Bharat’s revolt had meant the beginning of the end of the British Empire—and, for a time, of all empires. After England’s resources were decimated in Bharat’s war for independence, Europe’s enterprising crowns abandoned their imperial pursuits in the New World and the Old, determined to stay within their borders and stay afloat.

But Britain was not the last empire to seek to cover the earth. If the reports were right, the Imperiya Yotne—the endless swaths of land conquered by the country of Yotunkheym—was a gaping mouth and a bottomless stomach, swallowing more territory in Europe every year.

I shook myself, tried to focus.

I wanted to serve Potomac. I wanted to marry.

But the tides of history weren’t mine to command. And neither was my own heart. Or anyone else’s.

“Bharat, al-Maghreb, and Masr balance the Imperiya for now. But we cannot perpetually count on great foreign powers to slap the tsarytsya’s wrist away, should she reach beyond Europe’s shores,” Marshall finished. “Who will you choose, Seneschal-elect?”

“There’s no one else,” I said, staring at the Council table, my voice barely above a whisper. “There was only Peter.”

I lifted my gaze and met the eyes of the third stranger.

The last and youngest of the trio sat the tallest of the group. His tanned face was smooth and unwrinkled, set with an upturned nose and bowed lips. No silver threaded his dark hair, but his expression was grave, better suited for a much older man.

His thick-lashed dark eyes were a little dismayed, studying me as I studied him. I glanced away.

“Give her time,” my father said quietly. “And, in time, perhaps we can look elsewhere.”

Daddy smiled, and I imagined the day he’d met my mother. A stranger who’d become his wife.

Perhaps I could do the same. Given time.