Prince Ruven, however, greeted his guests with perfect manners, a vision of civility. He cut a genteel figure in his impeccable blond ponytail and high-collared coat of soft black leather. The angular designs of its violet embroidery set off the matching ring of the mage mark in his storm-gray eyes.

The Vaskandran ambassador danced attendance on him like a fawning servant. Perhaps two dozen guests, split between young Raverrans of patrician birth and visiting nobility from other cities of the Empire, milled around the ambassador’s great hall. The architecture was far more austere than the town houses of Raverran nobility, with dark beams and a high, vaulted ceiling. Candles flickered on little round tables set with silver and draped with violet brocade.

I didn’t want to be here. False laughter floated up to the rafters, and the stuttering candles and weak sunlight streaming through the high windows did nothing to appease the gloom of the hall. The place might look nothing like the Raverran drawing rooms I knew, but it was yet another party my mother was making me attend, full of near strangers with whom I had nothing in common.

For this, I’d called off my training at the Mews. I’d gone out to Raptor’s Isle in the morning to try to make up for it, but Marcello was with the colonel and a handful of other senior officers in a meeting, and Zaira refused to see me.

“Lady Amalia Cornaro.” It was the prince himself, his Raverran accented but flawless. “It’s time to sit for tea. Won’t you join me at my table?” He laid his fingertips against my elbow, in diffident guidance.

Time to be charming. What did charming people do? I tried a smile. “I’d be delighted.”

The tables were set for four, but no one else sat at ours. A Raverran lordling veered in our direction, eyeing an empty seat; the Vaskandran ambassador himself graciously directed him elsewhere.

Glancing from this interception to the avid glitter in Ruven’s mage-marked eyes, I had the sudden, gut-tightening feeling this was a trap.

“So.” Ruven laced his fingers together and set his chin on them, staring at me. “You are the unexpected Falconer I’ve heard so much about these past few days. The rule breaker.”

I shifted uncomfortably. My corset stays dug into my lap. “I never intended to become one, I assure you.”

“Ha!” He flashed his teeth in a vulpine smile. “You and I, we are beyond the reach of rules. They are beneath us. Don’t you agree?”

I doubted the doge would. “There are those who would argue law is the foundation on which the Serene Empire stands.”