Lovejoy stuck one foot in the air and bit his own bottom.

“I missed you too,” Giddon said. Then he pushed himself up and went to the bath.

—

Sometime later, his skin scrubbed white again, his dark hair combed, and his beard trimmed close, Giddon went searching for the queen.

He found her in her lower offices, standing beside her adviser Froggatt’s desk, looking over his shoulder, studying some papers with him. Small, gray-eyed, serious, her hair in its usual dark braids. Something inside Giddon relaxed and something else tightened.

She glanced up and her whole being brightened. “You’re back,” she said. “How was your trip?”

“It went well,” he said, then noticed a man at the far end of the room who was talking to two royal advisers. He was whip-thin, his light hair graying at the temples, his smile a humorless flash of teeth. His name was Lord Joff; he was from Estill’s south, near the tunnels; and he was one of the minor Estillan nobles who’d secretly sought the Council’s help deposing their king. And now he was one of many investing his personal fortune in the growth of Estill’s army, which kept expanding and strengthening. Recently Giddon had begun to wonder if liberating Estill from its king had been the Council’s first truly grave mistake. What if Estill retaliated against Bitterblue and Monsea for aiding the escape of its Gracelings?

Why was he here?

“That’s good,” said Bitterblue, who’d noticed Giddon’s fixation on Joff but wasn’t drawing attention to it. Then Joff glanced up. At the sight of Giddon, Joff’s eyes narrowed, pale blue chips of ice. Giddon stared back at him implacably.

“Giddon?” said Bitterblue.

“Do you have a minute?” he asked her.

The queen nodded at Froggatt, who was eyeing Giddon with displeasure. The advisers might not know all Giddon got up to, and they certainly didn’t know he was sneaking Estillan Gracelings across their borders, but they knew enough of the rumors about the Council to consider him an inappropriate friend for the queen. “Excuse us, Froggatt,” she said. “Giddon, come upstairs.”

She led the way up the spiral staircase to the castle’s highest tower, where she kept her private office. The light was always brilliant in this room, with windows facing every direction. Tonight, the western sky was painted with streaks of violet and orange.

“How are you really, Giddon?” said Bitterblue. “How were the tunnels? You look tired.”

“I’m fine, really, but why is that Estillan in your office?”

“I saw you trying to kill him with the power of your eyes,” said Bitterblue. “My advisers are harboring a delusion he’ll turn my head.”

“What?” said Giddon, honestly a little shocked. “They want you to marry a known Estillan revolutionary?”

“They want me to marry an Estillan noble with influence in the new Estillan government, which would make Estill our military ally.”