Embarrassed for him, she spoke quickly, calling out to Sara Varana nearby. “Are you ready for the gala, Prime Minister?”

Sara called back, smiling. “Not even slightly,” she said. “But we will be. It’s a party that takes place in the Keep,” she added to Giddon, as explanation. “It happens this time every year to celebrate the first snows. I trust you’ve received your invitations?”

“I’m sure we have,” said Giddon politely.

“We hope you’ll make it,” said Sara, “but of course we understand if you don’t feel like coming to a party. If you do come, we promise it’ll be a very nice party.”

The conversation continued in its usual mundane, tedious way, no more sniping. Lovisa noticed that neither Varana sister seemed visibly upset about the theft from their sister Minta’s safe. Giddon, she thought, had a nice smile, though it sat in an unhappy face. The Graceling’s eyes were lowered. Lovisa wondered what a girl so young and inconsequential-looking did at the Monsean court. What was her role? She had a quiet way of avoiding the attention of others that Lovisa had been trying to put a finger on. It had to do with her plain, nondescript looks, her silence and her small movements, all of which Lovisa understood, but there was something else too. It was almost as if . . . no, that was impossible. Lovisa turned her head away from the girl, looked back again. Turned her head away again, in the other direction, and looked back.

Yes. There was a way in which the girl, whenever she was in Lovisa’s peripheral vision, took on a fuzzy, blurry appearance, and almost disappeared.

The Royal Continent, Lovisa thought. Magic. Then she stared at the Graceling directly, with no attempt to be tactful. Hava was thin, with a long, narrow mouth. Her hair was pale, but dull. She was not pretty. Lovisa wanted to see her eyes, to see what colors they were, and she wanted to know what her Grace was.

She leaned toward Hava and spoke quietly, in Lingian. “How are you doing that?”

To her absolute shock, Hava flickered into a stone sculpture of a girl. An instant later, she looked like a real girl again. Lovisa gasped so hard that she began to cough.

Giddon paused in his speech, glancing at Hava once, then returning to his conversation with the prime minister. No one else at the table seemed to have noticed, and Lovisa was already doubting what she’d seen. The inside of her head felt like it was expanding with cold air.

Then Hava looked right at her and Lovisa was staring into a face that had one glimmering, copper eye and one that was red like blood.

“You’re shocking,” Lovisa said quietly, still speaking in Lingian.

“It’s impolite to stare,” said Hava, in perfect, barely accented Keepish.