“And when the shroud came together and everything went to pieces, I wove another plan,” she said sharply, slicing her hand through the air. “I made it through, one day at a time.”

I stilled. “What do I do?”

“Not everyone is fast. Not everyone is clever. I could only stay one step ahead of my enemy before my reinforcements arrived.” She tapped her index finger on the deck. “But if you’re one step ahead of them, they still haven’t caught you.”

I woke with a painful jerk, heart hammering so hard against my ribs that it felt like the bed shuddered beneath me. Sweat coated my lower back and underarms. Wood scraped wood as I clutched my rosary from my nightstand, crossed myself, and began to pray.

But my mind wandered.

So many of my dreams were vague and jumbled, but this one had been vivid—hideous.

And yet.

Something stirred in me, the same raw wonder I’d felt when Perrault had told me we were going to England.

I made a plan. I made another plan. One step ahead.

Penelope had chosen to resist. To outwit and outlast where she could not overpower. I could do the same.

I pressed my fist and the beads over my thundering heart, thinking of the folder stuffed in my trunk beneath Godmother Althea’s book, beneath the words and the tick marks counting every day I’d been away from my father.

I’d buried it like a dead snake. But perhaps it was time to begin facing my monsters.

Those are your suitors, Alessandra had said. Prepare to meet them as you see fit.

I lurched out of bed. The moonlight through the porthole was bright enough to see by as I changed my sweaty shirt for a fresh one, retrieved the folder, and curled with it against my headboard.

The first page bore my father’s signature, wobbling and childish—nothing like the busy slash his strong hand had once produced.

I sighed and put aside his letter and my own information; I already knew how Alessandra and the Council saw me. Not fat but not thin, brown hair, green eyes. Reads too much. Good with a tiller, useless at parties.

All my information and nothing about me.

Sighing, I flipped through the rest of the profiles.

Bertilak, prince of England, Duke of Exeter. Firstborn son of the king of England. Brown hair, blue eyes, seventy-three inches tall. Thoughtful, wise. No portrait accompanied the long list of academic achievements.

Prins Torden Asgard. Fifth son of Konge Alfödr of Norge. Age: nineteen. Hair: Red. Eyes: Brown. Seventy-six inches tall, muscular. A portrait of him in color featured a square jaw and a serious gaze.

Reichsfürst Fritz of the Neukatzenelnbogen. Brown hair, brown eyes, medium height. Age: twenty-seven. Oldest son of Hertsoh Maximilian of the Imperiya Yotne, Reichsfürst of Terytoriya Shvartsval’d. Fritz was described only as Perrault had noted—“clever.”