Allegra had been a prisoner in her own palace for the entirety of her seventeen years.

The person most disturbed by her countenance was her captor, her very own father, King Xander the Firm. Sadly, it was not guilt that caused his disquiet, Allegra knew. It was not knowing. Not knowing his own daughter’s mind. Not being able to read her thoughts.

It must be a characteristic of kings, Allegra decided, the need to know all.

The proof of his paranoia was obvious and unavoidable, what with the constant presence of guards and the many surveillance cameras in every room. Upon puberty, Allegra had been forced to beg for a pittance of privacy, pleading with her parents to remove the cameras from her bedchamber. It was the only battle Allegra ever remembered winning, and even then only with the intervention of her mother, Queen Nor.

No, her father had not been christened King Xander the Firm by happenstance. And so Princess Allegra took not-so-secret satisfaction in her father’s discomfort whenever he was in her presence. She knew, with bitter clarity, that the only privilege she possessed was the privacy of her thoughts and, hence, the power to project herself beyond these palace walls.

So lost was Allegra in her ocean of discontent that she failed to sense the presence behind her until she heard an urgent whisper in her ear.

“Princess Allegra, King Xander has summoned the Four Tellers.”

The princess calmly turned toward Geneva, her handmaid and also her best friend.

Allegra’s eyebrow arched upward with insouciant disinterest. “Why should I care?”

“They might change their minds. There might be something new.”

Her parents had given Geneva to her when Allegra had become a teenager, to ease the solitude of her confinement. They had chosen her carefully, an orphan who would view life in the palace not as imprisonment but providence. It was a wise decision, born of kindness and, once again, Queen Nor’s idea. Geneva was a balm to Allegra’s melancholy.

Even so, Allegra knew that her friend saw the world within the palace as a place of bounty and boundless luxury only because she had seen the worst of the real world. Gratitude could only come from comparison, and that was a luxury Allegra herself had been denied. Still, she remembered with tenderness and more than a little guilt of privilege that it had been several days before Allegra had realized that Geneva had assumed she could eat only what Allegra had left behind.

“Geneva, I adore your optimism,” Allegra said. “But I’m afraid I’m destined to remain a prisoner until the day my father or I become Inflamed.”

Geneva seemed near tears at the thought. “Don’t speak so, Allegra.”

The princess softened. “Come then. Let’s see if we can take a listen anyway.”

The pair swept silently down a deserted hall with the pretense of secrecy, even though Allegra knew it was little more than a game of make-believe. The ubiquitous eye of the camera in the corridor meant that anyone could easily be monitoring their movements.