Chapter 2: A Game Worth Playing

The oak doors clicked shut behind Lady Elowen, and with them went every trace of wild rose perfume and chaos from the room.

Silence held for a long moment. Then Cassian, resplendent in ivory and blue silk that did nothing to disguise how tired he looked, let his forehead fall forward onto the mahogany desk with a dull thud.

Valerius stayed by the entryway, arms folded over his black coat, watching the prince with something close to sympathy.

"So," he said.

"Don't." Cassian's voice came out muffled against the wood. "Do not start."

He lifted his head just enough to smooth his collar and slump back into his chair. "I am going to age forty years before my coronation. My cousin has the mind of a war strategist and the impulse control of a badger."

"She seemed energetic." Valerius's eyes drifted to the desk. "That was an imperial wax seal on the paper she left with. What, exactly, did you just sign?"

"A royal decree declaring her officially insane. Unfit for society." Cassian dragged both hands down his face. "She overheard something about a marriage match this morning and decided, without further evidence, that she's being sold to some balding seventy-year-old in a foreign court who reeks of mothballs."

Something in Valerius's expression went very still. His hand rose, unbidden, to check that his hair was in order.

"Balding," he repeated. "Old."

"Her words. I tried to correct her — I said, Elowen, it isn't some old man, it's Grand Duke Valerius, he isn't even thirty — and she threatened to tell my mother whose idea the rosebush fire actually was." Cassian spread his hands. "I signed the decree. What was I supposed to do?"

Valerius let that settle, then moved to lean against the bookshelf, one hand resting near the hilt of his sword. "So the most sought-after woman in the capital just blackmailed the heir to the throne to escape marrying me."

"Correct."

"Fascinating." His gaze went to the door she'd disappeared through, gold eyes narrowing with something that wasn't quite offense. "She called me a financial catastrophe."

"She called you a balding mothball. Let's not soften it."

"I have a full head of hair, Cassian."

"Tell her that. You can't — she's already halfway to packing a bag for the lower district."

Valerius was quiet for a moment. Then the corner of his mouth curved, slow and certain, like a man reading the opening move of a game he already intended to win.

"Let her run," he said, straightening his mantle. "If Lady Elowen wants to play, I'll play."

The study doors slammed open hard enough to shudder the chandelier.

Empress Evelyn filled the doorway, silk skirts still swaying with the force of her arrival, eyes bright with fury.

"Cassian." Her voice didn't need volume to carry. "Did you burn my rosebushes three summers ago?"

The prince's quill slipped from his fingers. He stared at his mother the way a man stares at an avalanche he has no time to outrun.

"Elowen," he breathed, "I will end you."

Valerius said nothing. He simply stepped around the Empress with practiced ease and slipped out into the hall, leaving the Crown Prince to his fate — and allowing himself, once safely out of sight, a slow and thoroughly satisfied smile.