When her shocked advisers had begged her to keep this plan secret, she’d relented, because she’d understood the ways in which such an intention might advertise more political instability in Monsea than actually existed. But she’d put it in writing and sent copies to her uncle, the King of Lienid, and her friends in the Council. Bitterblue saw no use in pretending that Monsea’s monarchy, as it stood, wasn’t facing a crisis. Bitterblue’s mother’s family was Lienid royalty, not Monsean. Her father had had no known family and one of his early acts after stealing the throne had been to eradicate anyone who might have a claim to that throne. “The world is changing,” she’d said to her advisers, with a steel in her eyes so hard and sure that they’d finally relented, or at least pretended to. She guessed they wouldn’t have, had they known what was going to happen.

Now her intentions would become public soon. How heartbroken Raffin, Bann, Katsa, Po, her aunt and uncle, her cousins, her advisers would be, and how overwhelmed. How sorry she was for going out to get some air.

But still—There’s something wrong with my kidnappers’ plan, she thought. Even if I die—even if they ransom me—I can’t see what Winterkeep has to offer Estill in a war with Monsea. Nor do I see Estill winning that war, no matter their allies.

With the unsettling feeling that there must be something she was missing, Bitterblue fell asleep once more.

Chapter Thirteen

The entrance hall of the Keep was unlike any building Giddon had ever seen.

He and Hava passed through gigantic doors onto a broad marble floor, into a space so bright and tall that their eyes craned upward automatically. Some four or five stories up, a dome of glass made the room’s ceiling.

The walls around were composed of stairways and balconies, full of moving people, all brown-skinned, dark-haired. Voices echoed. The floor displayed a disorienting pattern of dark stripes on white.

“I hate this place,” said Hava.

A woman at a long desk near the entrance was staring at them with high eyebrows and a bored expression. “Hello,” said Giddon in Keepish, approaching her. “Would you be able to tell us where we can find Periwinkle, the Lienid envoy?”

A few minutes later, they stood at a balcony that hung four stories above the Keep entrance hall. Behind them, an archway opened to a long corridor. A small, bronze placard on the wall said “Foreign Envoys” in Keepish.

Hava leaned on the railing, peering down. “See the monster on the floor?” she said.

Giddon glanced at the long drop below, thinking of how much Bitterblue would’ve hated their proximity to the railing. From this distance, he saw that the dark marble stripes on the floor formed tentacles, belonging to yet another representation of that sea monster from the Keepish fairy tales.