“You could make it look however you wanted it to look,” said Giddon, for Hava was a Graceling who was Graced with a kind of hiding that allowed her to change what people thought they saw when they looked at her. If she wanted to, Hava could stand in a room with Saf and Skye pretending to be a curtain in the window while they said and did all sorts of things, never knowing she was there. Every Grace was different, and each was variably useful. Saf had the Grace of giving people wonderful dreams, which Giddon found irritatingly romantic. Hava’s Grace, on the other hand, made her an excellent spy.

But of course she would never spy on Skye and Saf.

“I don’t use my Grace without my sister’s permission,” Hava said in a scathing voice. “Can you see her asking me to spy on her own cousin? Especially on his love life?”

“No, of course not.”

When Giddon sank into silence, Hava took a few sidelong looks at him and seemed to thaw into a more sympathetic person. Taking charge, she led him around corners and up and down several flights of stairs. Eventually, she brought him to the art gallery that Giddon knew was her favorite place in the castle. Hava’s mother had been a sculptor. Her father had been Bitterblue’s father, King Leck, though this was a secret. Giddon was one of few people who knew. Hava’s mother was dead, for King Leck had killed her, many years ago. He’d killed Bitterblue’s mother too. Then he himself had been killed, turning Princess Bitterblue into a ten-year-old queen.

In a room crowded with her mother’s sculptures, Hava sat on a raised section of floor and patted the place beside her.

Sitting numbly, Giddon held the plate out between them. For a while, they did nothing but eat pie.

“Anyway, Bitterblue doesn’t care about Skye and Saf,” said Hava, finally picking up the dropped conversation.

“How can you say that? Didn’t you see the expression on her face just then?”

“Because she was surprised, you blockhead. Not because she’s still hung up on Saf. That was over four years ago!”

“Was it really?” Giddon said, scratching his head in confusion.

“You’re hopeless,” Hava said, holding a forkful of pie out to him, even though he had his own fork. He opened his mouth, deciding to accept the pie as a shameful token of his hopelessness, which Hava had laid bare in that way Hava always had. Bitterblue’s half sister didn’t look like Bitterblue. She was tall, pale, and straw-haired. Hava also had one eye copper and the other bloodred, for Gracelings had two-colored eyes. Hava was only twenty years old, but often seemed older and cleverer than Giddon, who was thirty-one. Except when she was being a brat, which was often enough. Though even her brattiness left him feeling six years old sometimes.