“For the unusual sum of money offered,” Royce replied.
“No, that’s why you took it. I wanted to go because it seemed like the right thing to do. For once I had the chance to help someone who really deserved to be helped, or so I thought at the time.”
“And becoming an actor is the answer?”
Hadrian untied his horse. “No, but as an actor, I could at least pretend to be virtuous. I suppose I should just be happy to be alive, right?”
He did not answer. The nagging sensation was surfacing again. Royce hated keeping secrets from Hadrian, and it weighed heavily on his conscience, which was amazing, because he had never known he had one. Royce defined right and wrong by the moment. Right was what was best for him—wrong was everything else. He stole, lied, and even killed when necessary. This was his craft and he was good at it. There was no reason to apologize, no need to pause or reflect. The world was at war with him and nothing was sacred.
Telling Hadrian what he had learned ran too great a risk. Royce preferred his world constant, with each variable accounted for. Lines on maps were shifting daily and power slipped from one set of hands to another. Time flowed too fast and events were too unexpected. He felt like he was crossing a frozen lake in late spring. He tried to pick a safe path, but the surface cracked beneath his feet. Even so, there were some changes he could still control. He reminded himself that the secret he kept from Hadrian was for his friend’s own good.
Climbing onto his short gray mare, Mouse, Royce thought a moment. “We’ve been working pretty hard lately. Maybe we should take a break.”
“I don’t see how we can,” Hadrian replied. “With the imperial army preparing to invade Melengar, Alric is going to need us now more than ever.”
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But you didn’t read the dispatch.”
CHAPTER 3
THE MIRACLE
Princess Arista Essendon slouched on the carriage seat, buffeted by every rut and hole in the road. Her neck was stiff from sleeping against the armrest and her head throbbed from the constant jostling. Rising with a yawn, she wiped her eyes and rubbed her face. An attempt to straighten her hair trapped her fingers in a mass of auburn knots.
The ambassadorial coach was showing as much wear as its passenger, having traveled too many miles over the past year. The roof leaked, the springs were worn, and the bench was becoming threadbare in places. The driver had orders to push hard to return to Medford by midday. He was making good time, but at the expense of hitting every rut and rock along the way. As Arista drew back the curtain, the morning sun flashed through gaps in the leafy wall of trees lining the road.
She was almost home.
The flickering light revealed the interior of the coach; dust entering the windows coated everything. A discarded cheesecloth and several apple cores covered a pile of parchments spilling from a stack on the opposite bench. Soiled footprints patterned the floor where a blanket, a corset, and two dresses nested along with three shoes. She had no idea where the fourth was, and only hoped it was in the carriage and not left in Lanksteer. Over the past six months, she had felt as if she had left bits of herself all over Avryn.
Hilfred would have known where her shoe was.
She picked up her pearl-handled hairbrush and turned it over in her hands. Hilfred must have searched the wreckage for days. This one came from Tur Del Fur. Her father had given her a brush from every city he had traveled to. He had been a private man and saying I love you had not come easy, even when speaking to his own daughter. The brushes were his unspoken confessions. Once, she had owned dozens—now this was the last. When her bedroom tower had collapsed, she had lost them and it had felt as if she had lost her father all over again. Three weeks later this single brush appeared. It must have been Hilfred, but he never said a word or admitted a thing.
Hilfred had been her bodyguard for years, and now that he was gone, she realized just how much she had taken him for granted.
She had a new bodyguard now. Alric had personally picked him from his own castle guards. His name began with a T—Tom, Tim, Travis—something like that. He stood on the wrong side of her, talked too much, laughed at his own jokes, and was always eating something. He was likely a brave and skilled soldier, but he was no Hilfred.