“Sergeant Major Keyes.” Sir Levon, Hand to the King, leaned back in his throne. The leather of his black jerkin creaked over his stomach like a beetle’s carapace. “So glad you could join us.”

“Pleasure.” Her teeth chattered. She clamped her jaw, twitches jolting down the muscles of her throat.

Levon raised an eyebrow. “Of course. In a moment, King Ingomar and his wizard will arrive. It would behoove you to give me any information you have before they do.”

“Information?”

“On the girl.”

“What girl?”

In a moment he was before her, raising his craggy hand. The slap stung worse than she could have anticipated. No one had slapped her in years, and the indignity burned even more than the act. For a moment, she was back in her mother’s shack, on the wrong end of Purpose Keyes’s long-nailed claw. It was enough to send her heart speeding, her eyes blinking away shameful moisture.

She breathed herself back into her body as Levon glared down at her, his teeth bared.

“I’m sorry, Sir Levon,” she tried once more. “But I don’t know what girl—”

Another slap, this time to the other cheek, and she hit the floor. It would have been better to be punched. She could take a punch. She did, regularly. But there was something about a slap—like Levon didn’t respect her enough to close his fist. Like he was scolding her.

She generally didn’t mind being a woman, but there was something jagged and painful at the juncture of woman and slap and it tore at her, uncomfortably deep.

“Ah,” said Levon. “Your Highness.”

She struggled back to her knees. Behind the wobbly wetness obscuring her vision, she watched King Ingomar and Sir Gorn take their thrones. The king still wore the celebratory crimson he had worn at dinner, thick ropes of golden brocade lining every seam. The red of his cheeks, usually a sign of joviality, glowed with barely-contained rage.

The wizard was watching her with narrowed lavender eyes, made all the more vivid by the purple cloaks he was never seen without.

“Keyes. Ursus.” Gorn sneered down his sharp-edged nose. “You stand accused of aiding in the abduction of Princess Frances. How do you plead?”

“This isn’t a damned trial, Gorn.” King Ingomar vibrated in his throne. “We know they’re guilty. They have taken my daughter and I demand to know where!”

Scratch’s skin turned to icy gooseflesh. Her stomach sank down past aching ribs to throbbing knees. Beside her, James let out a whimper.

What was the word? Panic.

“You heard your king, girl,” Levon hissed. “Tell us where the princess is and we might spare your life.”

A lie. She’d be killed no matter what she said. It didn’t help, of course, that she had nothing at all to say.