As Raisa watched, Fiona tilted her head up, smiling at something Han said. She didn’t have to tilt far, she was so bloody tall.

Don’t you know how risky it is, getting that close to Fiona? Raisa thought. She’s just after your amulet, you know. Anyway, I thought you hated the Bayars. Don’t you even know how to hold a proper grudge?

Traditionally, the princess heir spent the night before her coronation ball sequestered, praying to the Maker and her ancestors for guidance. Raisa dutifully dressed in temple trousers and a tunic and instructed the guards outside the door to admit no one.

After Magret left, Raisa knelt before the altar in her sitting room and tried to focus. It wasn’t that she couldn’t use a little divine intervention, given her present situation. But her mind kept straying to other things, bouncing from present to past.

Raisa couldn’t help thinking of her name day, almost exactly a year ago. Waiting with Magret for her father to come, to escort her to the temple. Gavan Bayar had come instead, which had precipitated a whole chain of events that was still playing out. She would be seventeen tomorrow. She’d been just a year from name day to coronation.

Raisa felt claustrophobic, much as she had a year ago. It was as if once again a trap was closing around her, doors closing on possibilities. She was suffocating. She needed fresh air.

Pushing to her feet, Raisa hurried through her bedroom, past the elaborate temple robes laid out next to the bed, past the dress form in the corner draped in her ball gown. She plunged straight into her closet, raking aside dresses until she reached the back wall. Clawing open all of the latches and bolts Amon had insisted on installing, she pressed her hands against the hidden door. It swung silently outward.

Raisa flew down the dark tunnel, finding her way by touch, not bothering to light a torch. Finally the corridor widened, and she knew she’d reached the bottom of the staircase to the garden.

Groping blindly, she found the ladder and began to climb.

When she reached the top, she pushed with both hands, wrestling aside the stone covering the entrance. When she emerged in the garden temple on the roof of the castle, it was full dark, though the moon was on the rise.

Raisa walked out into the garden, under the glasshouse roof, breathing in the moist air of the conservatory, redolent with summer hyacinth and mountain jasmine. The great starry dome of the sky soared overhead, making Raisa feel very small. Too small for the job she’d taken on.