I almost feel sorry for Micah, Raisa thought. She looked around the room for a way out. Her gaze lit on Redfern, who seemed woefully out of place, and it all finally registered. “Hold on. You’re planning to marry us tonight?”

“Yes,” Bayar said impatiently. “We’ll send the southerners home with the news. That will stifle any talk of alliances.”

“Mother,” Raisa said, her heart pounding beneath the creamy silk. A wedding dress. Of course. “Don’t do this. I don’t want to marry anyone right now.”

“We upland queens marry for the good of the realm,” Queen Marianna said softly. “As Hanalea did. As I did.”

“But this isn’t good for us,” Raisa persisted, circling a serving table with Micah in pursuit.

“Don’t tell me what’s good for us!” Queen Marianna turned in a swish of satin and snatched up a wineglass. “I lie awake every night wondering what’s to become of us, with war in the south and conflict in the queendom and pirates on the ocean and southern spies and assassins in every back hallway.” She shuddered, and droplets of wine spattered on the stone floor, red as blood. “I worry about you, Raisa, with no one to protect you.”

“We have protection,” Raisa protested, bewildered. What had come over her mother? She seemed panicked, desperate. “Captain Byrne and the Queen’s Guard.”

“Captain Byrne cannot be everywhere,” the queen said.

“Right,” Raisa said. “For instance, where is he now? And where is my father? When I get married, he needs to be there.”

She was watching Gavan Bayar as she said this, and saw something flicker across his face. Maybe it was her imagination, but it was almost as if he knew something about her father’s absence.

Both he and Captain Byrne had been sent away just before her name day, when she would be formally named heir to the throne, when she would be eligible for marriage for the first time. Like a cold stone under her breastbone, the realization settled in: if both the queen and Lord Bayar wanted it to happen, she would be married before the night was over.

“Speaker Redfern!” she said, though she had little hope of rescue from that quarter. “You’re the representative of the temple, of the old ways. You know I cannot marry a wizard. Tell them.”

She strode toward the speaker, and he retreated, holding his wineglass out like a shield. “Not at all, not at all. This should not prove an impediment to your marriage, Your Highness,” the speaker said. “I have issued a dish…a dispensation.”

While Raisa was thus distracted, Micah struck, launching himself over a small settee and wrapping his arms around her. Holding her fast in the circle of one arm, he reached into his neckline and gripped an amulet at his neck while Raisa did her best to struggle free.