Safi raked her gaze over Henrick’s storm-shadowed figure. A single sword, unadorned, hung at his hip.

“Surrender,” he said. “There is no escape.” He didn’t smile as he spoke, didn’t gloat. There was only the hardened, perhaps even tired frown of a soldier too long in the snow.

Safi fought the urge to glance at Caden. As doused in darkness as he was, she hoped Henrick hadn’t noticed him. He had, of course, noticed Iseult, but he offered her only a cursory glance, as if he recognized she was no threat to him in her current state. “You are surrounded, Safiya, and more forces approach from all sides.”

She flashed him a smile. The same smile she’d been wearing for the last two weeks. “But it was never escape I sought, Your Imperial Majesty.” Keep him talking, keep him busy. “I sought to protect my family, you see. My uncle. My Threadsister and all the Hell-Bards”—she motioned vaguely toward the forest outside—“bound to me in a way we didn’t ask for.”

Henrick said nothing. Snow gathered on his shoulders, glistened on his crown.

So Safi pushed on, sliding into a saunter around the tower, hands behind her back. The perfect distraction, and as hoped, his eyes remained on her. “I know you have a family. Sons you’ve never seen and a nephew you love. I know you understand what I feel for my own family, but—”

“Enough,” he barked, and Safi expected his sneer to return at any moment or for his hand to grab at the chain on his belt. Instead, he raised his chin and said, “We all have our burdens to bear. I will not shirk mine.” He grasped for the blade at his hip. “The fon Cartorran line will continue, and you will continue it. I am sorry, though, that it had to come to this.”

He unsheathed his sword.

And in that moment, as steel breathed free from its sheath, the full picture finally locked into place. Safi paused her amble. Her hands fell loose to her sides.

The Emperor’s crown was too tight. Not by choice, but by the confines of family—a different family than the one he kept tucked away in Praga. This burden came from his parents, his ancestors, his title passed down from mother to son in a cold castle wreathed in scarlet.

Which was not so different from Safi in the end. She’d tried to outrun her uncle and her Hasstrel blood, yet here she was, running right back to it.

“Surrender now,” he said, no cruelty in his tone, “and I guarantee neither you nor your Threadsister will be harmed.” He advanced a single step.

And Safi softened her stance. “No.” She offered him a sad smile—a real one. “You have your duties, Henrick, and I have mine.”