“So the Fells has gained a better queen, while I’ve lost a…friend that I trusted,” Han said, his voice low and bitter.

“From what I’ve seen, she cares about you, in spite of everything,” Dancer said. “She just lost her mother, yet she’s been looking after you every day since she left her own bed.”

“I am interesting, no doubt,” Han said, mimicking a blueblood tone. “Streetlord turned wizard. How intriguing. I must tell all my blueblood ladies. Maybe we can share around. I hear these gutterbred tatterdemalions are lusty between the sheets.”

Cat snorted, rolling her eyes, and Dancer laughed too. “Does she know you’re very distant relatives?” he asked. “Hundredth cousins, or something?”

Han considered this. He didn’t know what had been said out of his hearing, but Raisa hadn’t mentioned it during the big reveal. Elena Cennestre and the others wouldn’t be eager to highlight the fact that he himself carried Hanalea’s blood. That he, in fact, might have a tenuous claim to the throne.

Hmmm. His mind raced off in extravagant directions. Ambitious directions, as Cat would say.

“What does he mean, you’re related?” Cat asked, pulling Han back to the conversation. “Does he mean related to the queen?”

Han shook his head. “Never mind. It’s nothing. We’re probably all related to the queen.”

“Anyway,” Dancer said, “my thinking is this: I don’t want us to die in a war between the clans and the Wizard Council. The only way to avoid a war is to keep the Wizard Council from using force to get what they want. That’s going to be hard to do.”

He flexed his hands. “They’re probably feeling powerful right now, if what we think is true. They likely killed the queen, they think they killed the princess heir, and they’re about to put their own candidate on the throne and marry her to a wizard. That will start a war with the clans for sure. We have to convince them to back off. The only way to do that is to persuade them that we have more firepower than they do.”

Han was impressed with Dancer’s reasoning. And ashamed. Given his feelings of betrayal, his impulse had been to do the minimum to keep his end of a bad bargain. It was no swag out of his pocket if Mellony ended up on the throne in the end. And a wizard king? He had no desire to see Micah Bayar as king of the Fells, but maybe it wasn’t his business. Han had no business swimming in the blueblood lake anyway.

That’s your problem, isn’t it, Alister? Han thought. You thought you were the player. You thought you were the street-smart gang lord who knew how to take a warm mark. Who knew how to stare down a rival and take care of his own.