The handful of people gathered in the oak-paneled room had the power to order executions, mobilize armies of spies, or start wars. I’d often heard their voices murmuring downstairs late into the night when I was a child, as golden light filtered in through my bedroom window from the drawing room below. Sometimes, when the voices kept me awake, I’d crept to the long balcony at the top of the stairs to listen, pressing my cheek against the cool marble balustrade. I’d only caught occasional words: snippets of espionage and assassination, machinations and stratagems, negotiations and judgments. To my young ears, those words that governed and shaped the Empire had sounded so impenetrably dull they’d soothed me into sleepiness, like a lullaby.

One of my few memories of my father was of him finding me there, half asleep on the balcony floor, and laughing as he scooped me up to carry me back to my room. That talk is not for you and me, little one, he’d said. Leave it to your mother.

But now my mother beckoned me in among them. Jaded old eyes assessed me, some glancing to compare me to La Contessa, as if wondering how we could possibly be related.

The doge himself occupied my favorite chair. Beside my mother sat the marquise of Palova, a white-haired woman who’d once ordered the bloodiest assault of the Three Years’ War, and who was well into her sixth five-year term in one of the elected seats on the Council of Nine. She swirled the wine in her glass, little finger extended to trace her thoughts in the air. Baron Leodra greeted me with a sniff of disdain.

“I suppose she’ll do,” the marquise said.

That was not a reassuring start to the conversation. I swallowed a sudden dryness.

“Do you know Prince Ruven of Vaskandar?” the doge asked.

Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t that. “Ah …” Was Ruven the general who’d led the Vaskandran invasion of Loreice during the Three Years’ War? No, that was Halven. I tried to remember the names of the seventeen Witch Lords who ruled Vaskandar, but with half the Council staring at me, I could only recall six of them. “No, Your Serenity. Should I?”

My mother’s fingers flicked up from her lap, a creamy envelope tucked between them. “The Vaskandran ambassador has invited you to meet the prince, who is his guest, in an informal gathering at his town house.”

A tired flare of anger warmed my chest. “I was unaware of the invitation.” Because you intercepted my mail.