“I’m sorry,” she says again, because there is nothing else to say.
He nods once before looking at her, his silver eyes intent and red-rimmed. Star-touched, Daphne thinks, though this, too, was part of the spies’ information. She has never quite understood it—what woman would wish for a child only to give him up? Bartholomew wasn’t even king at the time of conception, just another soldier. So much about Bairre is a mystery.
He offers a brief, halfhearted bow. “There’s a guard at the end of the hall who will show you to your room,” he tells Daphne before turning on his heel and walking away, leaving her alone in a strange castle, in a strange country, with her world off-kilter.
* * *
—
Daphne paces the length of her bedchamber. It’s smaller than the one she had in Bessemia, but she’s grateful for that—the tiny room traps the heat from the fireplace better than a larger space would. The thick pine-green velvet curtains insulate the room from the bitter outside air, and the bed and chaise are piled high with furs in shades of white, gray, and brown. A woven gray wool rug, patterned with curls of green ivy, covers the stone floor nearly wall to wall.
It has been hours since she arrived, and the clock in the corner shows it is nearing two in the morning. Her attendants have come and gone after changing her into a flannel nightgown. Despite the late hour and the busy day, she can’t find sleep. She can’t do anything but pace while her thoughts unspool.
Prince Cillian is dead.
It doesn’t change anything, not really. She was sent here to marry a prince, and so she will. Nothing will change but the name on the marriage contract. It’s what her mother would tell her if she were here.
But that isn’t the whole truth. She’s spent her entire life preparing to marry Cillian, learning everything about him, figuring out how to make him fall in love with her so that he would be clay in her hands. She knew about his obsession with falconry and archery, that he once found a baby rabbit with a broken leg and nursed it back to health himself, how he forfeited a horse race when he realized his competitors were letting him win. She understood how Cillian worked, and how to use it to her advantage.
Bairre, though, is a mystery she doesn’t understand and doesn’t like—a feeling that seems mutual. The tactics she had planned for Cillian won’t work on him. She will have to start from scratch.
There is a part of her, too, that can’t stop thinking about Cillian’s letters, the boy she knew inside and out even without meeting him. She wasn’t Sophronia, losing her head and heart over a few kind words, but when she thinks of Cillian, cold and lifeless, she feels a pang of something deep in her chest that might be grief.
It won’t do. She shakes herself and tries to focus.
The seal.
She originally planned to give herself a few days to settle in and figure out how to steal the king’s seal while avoiding notice, but now, with everything feeling more tentative, Daphne latches on to the one solid thing she can do. And, she reasons with herself, given the late hour and the prince’s recent death, the castle will be quieter than usual, allowing her the perfect chance to snoop.
She slides her cloak on over her nightgown and picks up the candle from her bedside table. She slips from the warmth of her room into the cold and empty hallway.
The Bessemian palace never felt dark. Even in the early hours of the morning, it was always bright and bustling. Servants would start bringing coffee and breakfast to courtiers’ rooms even as other courtiers were just coming home from whatever ball or banquet had begun the night before. It was never quiet, not like this.
It’s unsettling to Daphne as she tiptoes down the pitch-black hall, the candle casting a small aura of light, just enough to see a few feet in front of her.
Part of her wants to return to her room, but she knows she might never get another chance like this—even if she is caught, she’s new enough that she can widen her eyes and claim she got lost trying to find a glass of water.
She knows her mother keeps her seal in her office, hidden away in the locked drawer in her desk. It seems as good a place to start as any. The layout of the castle is strange to her, but she remembers the way she came from the entrance, the same way Bartholomew went when he left, which means she must be in the royal wing. The king’s office should be here as well, but it will be more accessible, closer to the castle entrance, so that he can hold meetings without visitors having to pass through his family’s private halls.
Of course, it would be easier if it weren’t so dark. It takes nearly half an hour of wandering to find the entryway she came through, never passing another soul along the way. It sets her teeth on edge. For the last sixteen years, she’s seen guards posted outside each door—her own included. It’s all she’s ever known, so the sudden absence of them feels like a nagging fly, darting around forever just out of reach.
There are guards standing outside the front hall—she sees their outlines clearly through the windows—more than twenty of them in her line of sight alone, and each with a rifle in hand. Given the absence of guards inside the castle, that many outside strikes Daphne as strange. What sort of threat are they worried about?
She goes to the first door down the hall of the royal wing and presses her ear against the wood, listening for voices. It can’t be a bedroom—who would want to sleep so close to the entrance?—so when she hears nothing, she carefully pushes the door open.
A sitting room, with plush velvet furniture and floral curtains. A small harpsichord sits in the corner, though it looks neglected, the keys covered by the lid and the sheet music kept on a high shelf with a thick layer of dust over it.
A gallery is next, another sitting room, a library, but no sign of an office.
Daphne has all but given up when she finds a locked door—a promising sign. She pulls the pins from her hair and crouches so the lock is eye level. Lockpicking is a delicate process, and one that requires patience in spades, which is why Daphne has always enjoyed it more than her sisters. It takes time and effort to displace all the pins in the lock’s barrel, but nothing is more satisfying than when she’s finally able to lever the hairpins to turn the door’s handle.
She withdraws her hairpins from the lock as she steps into the room, hastily shoving them back into her hair. Her earlier instinct proves right: it is the king’s office––a moderate-sized room dominated by an oak desk, the walls lined with wood-framed paintings of various battles Daphne can’t name. The only paintings she recognizes are a cluster of smaller ones just behind the desk showing the queen, young and rosy-cheeked, a young Prince Cillian, and Bairre at six or seven. Even then he looked surly, seeming to stare at her straight through the painting.
There is no time to waste. The top of the desk is covered only with sheaves of papers, a feather quill and inkpot, and a heavy marble paperweight. Most of the drawers reveal nothing of note. More papers—orders for merchants, correspondence from a cousin in the north, several original versions of royal decrees that have been issued over the last decade.