An attendant opened the door for Safi as soon as she and her Hell-Bards appeared in Leopold’s dedicated hall. He lived in the oldest part of the palace—even older than where Henrick resided. So old, it looked halfway to ruins despite the lush carpets and flickering sconces. As a girl, Safi had never understood why Leopold chose to live here, and she did not understand it now. There was no power to be played here as there was in Henrick’s quarters, and the crumbling black stones sucked up all warmth, all light.

In fact, the tower in which he lived was more fortress than living quarters. No dressing chamber, no sitting room, no space for guards or attendants to comfortably spend the night. Yet Leopold had chosen this rounded stretch of granite as his home for as long as Safi had known him.

The only advantage, Safi supposed as the door into Leopold’s room swung wide, was that no one ever traveled this way. It was secluded from the rest of the palace, and the number of hallways needed to reach it—not all of them even indoors—was an inconvenience no one ever willingly made.

Two steps in and she realized there was another advantage: the stone walls were too thick to allow for spying. The entrance into the room alone was a solid three paces deep, all of it contiguous black granite. Presumably every wall in the room was the same. There could be no hollow spaces here, no peepholes, no listening horns. Aside from the fireplace on the left and a single window on the right, the room was completely impermeable.

“Safiya,” Leopold said with a smile, rising from an armchair before a blazing fire. He opened his arms to her, and she hurried forward as if all she wanted was to be wrapped in his embrace.

Even after the door shut behind her, she allowed him to pull her tightly to him. He wore a blue dressing robe over what she assumed must be his nightwear, and he smelled fresh, as if he’d just bathed.

Safi pretended to melt into him, looping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his shoulder. “Can anyone see us?” she murmured.

“Yes.” He spoke at a normal volume. “There are a handful of spies with glasses trained on my window. No one can hear us, though. And as soon as I draw my curtains, they will not see us either.”

Safi lifted her face toward his and offered what she hoped was a suitably in-love smile. “Then close it please because I have no desire to continue holding you.”