The Queen of Galland had ruled for four years, since her coronation at fifteen. She was well accustomed to her duties and the expectations that came with her throne. But it does not make them any easier, she thought, adjusting herself in her seat.

Though it had been only an hour in the council chamber, she was already sore, her back kept ramrod straight by an ornately carved chair and the tight lacing of her green velvet gown. The low ceiling of the round tower room did not help matters either, pushing down the oppressive heat of afternoon. At least today her head was bare; she did not have to suffer the weight of heavy gold or silver. Her ash-brown hair lay unbound, falling in waves over pale white shoulders. Behind her stood two knights of the Lionguard, in their ceremonial golden armor and bright green capes. How they stood the heat, she did not know.

Erida always held Crown Council in one of the high towers of the keep, the fortress heart of the New Palace, even in high summer. It was a round room, stern and gray like a grizzled old guard. The windows of the chamber were thrown wide to catch the breeze off the water. The palace was an island in the delta of the Great Lion, surrounded on all sides by river channels and canals. Gates kept the water around the palace clear, but the rest of the delta was jammed with galleys, trade cogs, merchant ships, barges, and ships of the fleet, all coming and going throughout the sprawling capital.

Her councillors listened in rapt attention, seated around their table with Erida at its head. Lord Ardath stood, leaning heavily as he read another letter aloud with a laborious wheeze. He paused every few moments to hack into a handkerchief. The old man lived perched on the cliff edge of death, and had done so for a decade. Erida didn’t bother to fear for his health anymore.

“And so, I am humbled—” He gasped and coughed again. Erida winced, feeling her own throat twinge. “To offer Your Majesty my hand in marriage, to join our lives and futures together. I pray you accept my proposal. May they sing of us from the Gates to the Garden. Yours unto death, Oscovko Trecovik, Lord of the Borders, Blood Prince of Trec . . . and so on with all the other titles that muddy troll likes to trumpet,” Ardath finished, dropping the letter onto the council table.

An apt description, Erida thought. She had met Prince Oscovko only once, and that was enough. Covered in shit after passing out in a military camp latrine ditch. If he was handsome, she could not tell under the layers of fetid grime and wine stink.

Lord Thornwall picked up the letter quickly. He was a small man, thin and shorter than Erida herself, with graying hair and a red beard as furious as the armies he commanded. Even in the council chamber, he insisted on wearing armor, as if a skirmish might break out at the table. He squinted at the untidy scrawl of the letter, then at the seal and signature.

From her seat, Erida could easily see the mark of the crowned white wolf, the sigil of the Treckish royal family. She could also see the varied misspellings and cross-outs marring the page, as well as several inky fingerprints.

“Written in the Prince’s own hand,” Erida surmised, twisting her lips.

“Indeed it is,” Thornwall said gruffly.

He slid the letter to Lady Harrsing, a veteran of many years in the royal court. She sneered at it, deepening the lines on her face. Bella Harrsing was just as old as Ardath, though far better preserved.

At least she can breathe without losing a lung.

“Don’t even bother putting his name on the list,” she said, refusing to touch the paper.

Across the table, the fortress of a man named Lord Derrick scoffed. “You champion that infant still learning his letters in Sapphire Bay but won’t consider a king’s son on our own doorstep?”

Lady Harrsing eyed him, and his flushed, round cheeks, with distaste. “I’d wager Andaliz an-Amsir knows his letters better than this pestering oaf, or you, my lord. And he is a prince too, of a nation far more useful.”

Their bickering was endless and familiar. Though it felt like putting a spike through her own skull, Erida let Harrsing and Derrick carry on like rival siblings. The longer they argue, the longer I can draw out this distasteful process of selling myself like a prize cow, she thought. And the more time I have to think.

It had been weeks since Andry Trelland had returned to Ascal alone, speaking of Spindle doom and a conqueror from nowhere. Taristan of Old Cor. The blood and blade of Spindles, with a rabid army hidden in the mountains, horrific beasts under his will.

She sat in silence, her face still and unreadable. Like a scale, she weighed the squire’s words, as she had every morning and every evening since. Did Trelland speak the truth? Is there a devil on the horizon, meant to swallow us whole?

She could not know for sure.

The lie is the right choice, the better option. For me and my kingdom.

Harrsing and Derrick continued their sniping, weighing their chosen candidates for marriage. Truthfully, Erida despaired of both Oscovko and the Ibalet princeling, as she did every other name on that wretched list.

Lord Konegin remained as silent as the Queen, sprawled in his chair at her right hand. He was a cousin to Erida’s father, and he too had the piercing blue eyes and thoughtful manner of the royal line. The ambition too, Erida thought. While the rest sat on the Crown Council to advise the Queen, hand-selected for their value, she’d chosen Konegin to keep an eye on a potential usurper to the throne.

He watched Harrsing and Derrick as one would a game of rackets played down in the garden. His eyes moved between them while they volleyed jabs back and forth. With his blond hair, striking glare, and strong, bearded jaw, Konegin looked too much like Erida’s father. He even dressed like him, done up in simple but fine green silk, with a gold-and-silver chain hung from shoulder to shoulder, wrought lions roaring its length. It made her heart ache for a man four years gone.

“Put the name on the list,” Konegin eventually said, his voice flat and final.

Derrick shut his mouth at once, an action Erida did not miss. But Harrsing drew herself up to argue, a foolish endeavor where Konegin was concerned.

Erida reluctantly cut her off. “Do as my cousin says.”

Dutiful Ardath dipped his quill in a pot of ink and scratched the Prince of Trec’s name onto the long parchment that would decide her fate. She felt every letter carved into her skin.

“But we must have a care for his position,” she added sternly.

“He is a second son, yes, but this would secure our northern border,” Thornwall began. He was never without his battle maps and was quick to point to the Gates of Trec, a gap in the Mountains of the Ward that cut the northern continent in two.

Erida resisted the urge to tell her military commander that she knew geography better than he did. Instead she stood and walked slowly to the massive, magnificent, painstakingly made map of Allward hung on the wall. It filled her vision, and she stood close enough so that all she could see was Galland, her birthright and her destiny. She looked over the familiar rivers and cities, their detail exquisite in the curved painting. Ascal itself stood at the center, her wall of yellow stone picked out in real gold leaf and chips of amber. Even the trees of the great forests of the Ward were drawn. It was the work of a master cartographer and master artist both, using swirls of paint and flecks of stone to create the realm of Allward.

“Our army is five times the size of their own, by a conservative count. If the butchers of Trec wish to try the Gates, let them. But I will not wed myself to a kingdom that needs me more than I need it. And, you’ll notice,” she said, reaching up to trace her fingers along the map, “Trec has quite an unfortunate border of its own. Wedged between the glory of Galland and the wolves of the Jyd, not to mention the Temur emperor.” She pointed to each nation in turn, gesturing from the frozen wastes to the western steppe.