“Halt!” one of the men at the front shouts. Sophronia recognizes his uniform by the gold epaulets and the three yellow stripes on his sleeve—the head of the king’s personal guard, though what he’s doing here she isn’t sure. The three thieves must know it too, because they all freeze, their hands going up. The guard dismounts, still holding his pistol, and walks toward the thieves. “You are under arrest in the name of His Majesty, King Leopold.”
He grabs one of the thieves by the back of the neck, yanking his mask off. The boy can’t be more than fourteen and looks on the verge of tears. The guard removes the masks of the other two and they look even younger, though the guard seems unfazed by this. “Cuff them!” he shouts, and his men dismount and do as he bids, binding the boys’ hands behind their backs, more roughly than seems strictly necessary. One of the boys cries out when his arm is bent at what looks to be an unnatural angle.
“King Leopold wanted to surprise you by meeting the carriage,” Duchess Bruna says. “And what fortuitous timing he has.”
“Princess Sophronia, are you in there?” the head guard shouts toward the carriage. “You’re safe now.”
Sophronia’s hand tightens on the door’s handle and she thinks that perhaps the guards are more frightening than the thieves were. But she knows her role in this play, so she opens the carriage door and allows the footman to help her out into the afternoon sun, lifting her gloved hand to shield her eyes. She beams at the guard, offering him a bright smile that shows all of her teeth.
“Oh, thank you, sir,” she says to him in Temarinian. “We were so frightened.”
The guard bows low. “I’m sorry your first impression of Temarin was so coarse, Princess,” he says.
“Sophronia!” a voice calls. She turns her attention back to the retinue of guards, and then she sees him and despite everything, her heart stutters. She knows him right away even though he looks a bit different from the last portrait, which was sent two years ago—his bronze hair is longer, curling around his ears, and his features appear sharper, most of the boyish roundness whittled away, but more than that, he’s real. Not oil and canvas, confined to two dimensions and to stillness, but flesh and blood and life. She didn’t know he could smile like that.
She gives herself a mental shake. Did he smile like that when he sentenced the artist to death? When he forced those villagers from their homes?
In seconds he’s off his horse and coming toward her, and then she is caught up in his arms, her arms around his neck. Somehow, he even smells like she imagined he would, like cedar and some kind of spice.
When they pull apart he has an embarrassed smile on his face and Sophronia belatedly remembers their audience. She glances around to see the two duchesses, Violie, and Leopold’s guards all watching them, their expressions a collection of amused and bemused. Even the thieves are staring, though they only look afraid.
“Apologies,” Leopold says, dipping into a bow and kissing the back of her hand. “I just can’t believe you’re actually finally here.”
Sophronia forces a smile, trying to control her rapidly beating heart and the flush she feels working its way over her cheeks. “I can’t believe it either,” she tells him.
And that, at least, is true.
* * *
—
Leopold helps her onto his horse in front of him, holding the reins on either side of her waist as they make their way through the woods and toward Kavelle and the palace. Word of their arrival must have spread, because people are pouring out from the villages on the outskirts of the city, waving and cheering for Leopold and Sophronia, who wave back. Not everyone cheers, though. She notices that a good quarter of the crowd stands in silence, watching them go past with stony expressions and hard eyes. But they don’t dare to jeer—not that Sophronia can blame them. The execution of the illustrator served as a dire warning.
Leopold’s guards surround them on every side, and the carriage holding the duchesses and Violie brings up the rear of their entourage. The three thieves are still cuffed, walking beside the guards’ horses.
“What will happen to them?” Sophronia asks Leopold through her smile. Her cheeks are beginning to ache, but she holds on to it, smiling at the peasants who line the pathway, her hand raised in a constant wave.
“Who?” Leopold asks, confused.
“The boys,” she clarifies, nodding toward one of them, trailing beside a guard on their right.
“Oh, the thieves,” Leopold says, and she feels him shrug. “Not to worry—crime is taken very seriously in Temarin. They’ll be properly punished.”
He says the words like a reassurance, but Sophronia is far from reassured. Did he think the illustrator was properly punished as well?
“They’re so young,” she says, forcing her voice to stay light and airy. “Perhaps some mercy would be appropriate—no one was hurt, after all.”
“But you could have been,” Leopold says. “And my mother says it’s important to set an example or the crime rate will only climb higher.”
Leopold’s mother, Dowager Queen Eugenia, was only fourteen when she was sent to Temarin from Cellaria to marry King Carlisle and secure the truce that ended the Celestian War. Sophronia knows this because her mother often used it as an example of her own kindness in waiting until her daughters were sixteen to marry them off. Their spies have reported that, since King Carlisle’s death a year ago, Queen Eugenia has become more involved in Temarinian politics, helping to advise Leopold, who was only fifteen when he took the throne.
“They’re about the same age as your brothers,” Sophronia points out, thinking of the younger princes, Gideon, fourteen, and Reid, twelve. “Surely your mother would be sympathetic.”
“My brothers would never rob a coach and threaten to kill a footman,” Leopold replies.
“I can’t imagine these boys did it for fun. Look at that one,” she says, nodding toward the youngest-looking of the three. “He’s skin and bones. When do you think the last proper meal he ate was?”
Leopold doesn’t speak for a moment. “You have a soft heart, I admire that, but they made their choices. There must be consequences.”
Sophronia tries to mask the unease working its way through her as her mother’s words come back to her, echoing in her mind with each clip of the horse’s hooves. He is our enemy, and you will not forget that again.
For Beatriz, the carriage ride to the Cellarian palace in the city of Vallon passes in a blur. The ladies in her carriage—tired from the first several legs of their journey—fall asleep soon after they depart the last inn, leaving Beatriz to stare out the window, looking for hints of Vallon in the distance.
She knows she’s going to miss her sisters. She already feels the space left by them in her heart the way she used to feel the space in her mouth after losing a baby tooth. She can’t help but prod it and marvel at the loss, but she’s also hungry for Cellaria, hungry for change, hungry for a taste of the power her mother has always guarded so carefully, like a dragon in a children’s story.