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"Ho did you knoas her?"

A storm cloud of emotions crossed his face, nized anger

"She knows, as everyone else knows, that my father will call for Queenstrial soon I don’t doubt she’s wriggled into every maiden’s head, to learn her enemies and her prey" With al the bottle But it was not e on his wrist sparked, a starburst of yellow and white It ignited into fla the last drops of alcohol in its green cage "I’m told her technique is precise, almost perfect You won’t feel her if she doesn’t want you to"

Coriane tasted bile at the back of her mouth She focused on the flaaze As she watched, the heat cracked the glass, but it did not shatter "Yes," she said hoarsely "It feels like nothing"

"Well, you’re a singer, aren’t you?" His voice was suddenly harsh as his flalass "Give her a taste of her own medicine"

"I couldn’t possibly I don’t have the skill And besides, there are laws We don’t use ability against our own, outside the proper channels--"

This ti that law? She hits you, you hit her back, Coriane That’s the way of dom yet," she heard herself rinned darkly

"I suspected you had a spine, Coriane Jacos Soer hissed inside her, but she could never give it voice He was the prince, the future king And she was no one at all, a lih House Instead of standing up straight, as she wished to do, she bent into oneher eyes to his booted feet

He did not move, did not close the distance between them as a hero in her books would Tiberias Calore stood back and let her go alone, returning to a den of wolves with no shield but her own heart

After solass across the ht, she wrote later I don’t know if I ever want to see hiether?

At least Jessa off

FOUR

Life at court was neither better nor worse than life on the estate

The governorship cah to elevate House Jacos beyond much more than the basic amenities Coriane still did not have her own h Jessa help of her own At least the Archeon town house was easier to maintain, rather than the Aderonack estate now shuttered in the wake of the family’s transplant to the capital

I ardens, the emptiness and the silence So many corners that were my own, far from Father and Jessamine and even Julian Most of all she s The fa transport in years, let alone employed a driver, but the re skeleton of the private transport, a six-seater, its engine transplanted to the floor like an organ Busted water heaters, old furnaces cannibalized for parts, not tostaff, littered the various sheds and holdings I leave behind unfinished puzzles, pieces never put back together It feels wasteful Not of the objects, butscrews For what? For knowledge I will never use? Knowledge that is cursed, inferior, stupid, to everyone else? What have I done withI suppose I miss the old house because it ith ht I hated the estate, but I think I hate the capital more