He had to be mad – what else could drive him to make such a match?

My father was alone in the room, and he did not bother to look up at my approach, which infuriated me all the more. There was a table spread in front of the throne, laden with enough food to feed two dozen men; but of him, all I could see was the top of his head as he bent over a steaming platter.

“You great gluttonous pig.” The words were out before I could even think, the icy coldness of my voice at odds with the fire burning through my veins.

The hand holding a leg of chicken paused in its rise, but still, he did not look up. “Have you no shame?” I hissed. “All your people suffer food rations, and here you sit, shoveling all you can fit and more down your gullet.”

His gluttony was not what I was really angry about, but it would serve. I wasn’t ready to put words to the real reason, though it hung between us like the stench of a sewer.

My father set the chicken leg down. And then he raised his head.

He looked as weary as I had ever seen him, eyes drooped and shadowed, lines I had never noticed before marring his skin. “Tristan,” he said, leaning back on the throne and resting his elbows on the arms. “I have very, very few pleasures in life. I will not begrudge myself this one. Not as long as I am king.” He tilted his head slightly to one side. “Unless, of course, that is why you are here?”

Reaching up over his head, he lifted the crown from where it was casually hooked over the back of the throne. “Finally come to take it? Here.” He tossed the golden circlet over the table. “Have it.”

It landed with a loud clank against the stairs of the dais, bounced once, then rolled across the floor before coming to a stop at my feet. I stared at it, astonishment chasing away my anger and giving me a moment of clarity. A moment was all I needed to realize what had happened.

I looked up. “It’s frustrating, isn’t it, when your pawns don’t play by your rules?”

He stared silently back at me, but I needed no confirmation that he understood. I knew now what Lessa had done to provoke his wrath, the knowledge solid in my mind as only the truth was. “This is Lessa’s doing. She has her own endgame in mind.”

Very slowly, he nodded. “How long have you known?”

“That Anaïs was dead, or that it was my own sister who had stolen her place?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I knew it wasn’t Anaïs within moments of speaking with her. Lessa is not so fine an actress as she thinks.”

“Fine enough to fool the girl’s own father.”

I laughed, the sound harsh. “Angoulême never bothered to know Anaïs. He saw her only as he imagined her to be.”