A lice comb? Why did they need a— “Lice comb!” Larkin stormed after her. “I do not have lice!”

“I’ll not take any chances with the linens.” Iniya opened the door to a wide back porch hemmed in by ivy. Beyond was a courtyard vegetable garden and pots of herbs. “Tinsy!”

The maid opened a door under the porch and hurried up, a tray of tea in hand.

“Never mind that,” Iniya said. “Send one of the linen girls to scrub out the game room from top to bottom.” The maid took off. “Oben!”

A beat later, the huge servant stepped from a long house on the other side of the yard. “Start a fire under the tub.” She looked over Larkin’s clothes. “We’ve some things to burn.”

“What gives you the right—” Larkin began.

Iniya stepped nose to nose with Larkin. “If you want my help, you will not spend one more moment in my house in those filthy rags.”

Larkin looked down at the stolen dress in disbelief. “This is a fine dress!”

Iniya snorted. “For a country wife, perhaps.”

Larkin gripped the full skirt in her fists. “I’m not going another step until you tell me what you’re planning.”

Iniya opened her mouth to argue before seeming to decide against it. “The equinox celebrations begin tonight with Black Rites. I will be expected to make an appearance with my family. It will give everyone a chance to see you and speculate on who you are—better that they come to their own conclusions than be told outright. They’ll have less reason to question me. Plus, there’s someone I need to speak with, and I need to do it in person.

“Tomorrow is the festival in the city—it’s more for the peasants, so we needn’t attend. And the final day …” She paused and drew a deep breath. “The final day is the feast in the keep. You will either find the things you need or you won’t—there won’t be another opportunity until the next equinox.” Iniya eyed Larkin. “If you want to pass as Nesha, you’ll need your ridiculous hair and freckles tamed.”

“How do you know what Nesha looks like?” Had the old woman kept an eye on them all these years?

Iniya turned on her heel and started down the stairs.

Tam shot Larkin a frustrated look before trotting after her. “You’re a political adversary,” Tam said. “I don’t understand why the druids let you live, let alone participate.”

Iniya’s gaze was sharp enough to cut. “You seem a strapping boy. You can help Oben.”

Tam lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll stick with Larkin.”

“That will be awkward,” Iniya said. “As she’s about to be naked, and you are not her husband.”

Tam turned a brilliant shade of red.

Iniya’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly are you to her?”

“I’m her guard,” Tam said.

Iniya hummed low in her throat. She scrutinized Larkin before rounding back on him. “Well, if you’re going to stay here, you’ll have to endure the lice comb as well. In the meantime, stay out of my house.” She brushed past him to the yard. “Errand boy!”

“Mistress?” a voice called from above. A boy of no more than twelve peered down at them from the roof. His hands were filthy.

“Whatever are you—oh, never mind,” Iniya said. “Fetch me a basket full of walnut shells. Quickly now!”

He scampered down the side of the house like a squirrel, bounded over the low wall, and took off.

Iniya reached the garden and turned to a heavy door behind the stairs. Beyond was a huge space divided into five crude rooms, two along each side and the fifth, center room taken up by the enormous cistern. To the right were the kitchens and the laundry rooms. To the left was a long room filled with pallets and some sort of bathing room with a long copper tub partially in a fireplace. A couple of spigots protruded from one wall.

As this was all mostly underground, it should have been cool, but the fires in the kitchen and laundry made everything humid and hot. Oben built a third fire beneath the tub filled with water from the cistern.

Iniya circled the cistern, peering in at the women kneading bread and tending the stove. Two more women stirred what looked like sheets in a huge tub. Iniya hmphed in approval.

“Not one nit left,” she said to Tinsy before clicking back outside and shutting the door behind her.

“This way, miss,” Tinsy said. She motioned to a battered wooden chair before a vanity. Above it lorded a fancy silver mirror corroded black around the edges. Her own hair covered with a tight rag, Tinsy retrieved a comb and started on Larkin’s scalp, parting and combing, parting and combing.

“I’m not finding anything,” the maid said.

“I already told you that,” Larkin huffed.

“I had to check, miss.” Tinsy attacked Larkin’s ends with a comb.

After only a few strokes, Larkin’s scalp stung, and her hair had exploded into a wild bush. Tinsy jerked and tugged and grumbled until the comb snapped in half. Tinsy blew a tendril of her own hair out of her face and glared at Larkin’s hair, which stuck out like a head full of dandelion seeds—or a pissed-off tabby cat.

“When was the last time you combed this?” Tinsy asked.

Larkin frowned at the maid’s silky-smooth locks. “I don’t.”

Cook brought in a pot filled with a paste made from boiled walnut husks. They made Larkin soak her hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows in it for nearly an hour before rinsing it out over the drain in the floor. Her hair had shifted from vibrant red to a rich auburn. Larkin had always hated her hair, but it was as much a part of her as her fingers and toes. Seeing it in a different color felt like a lie.

Huffing, Tinsy motioned for Larkin to undress.

“I can bathe without you here,” Larkin said.

“Mistress insists I make sure it’s done properly. Besides, I can massage your scalp.”

Grudgingly, Larkin slipped out of the stolen dress. Tinsy immediately threw it in the fire. Larkin snatched it out of the coals. Thankfully, it was still damp, so it wasn’t singed.

“You don’t waste a perfectly good dress like this!” It was finer than anything she’d ever had in Hamel. She glared at Tinsy, daring the girl to try something like that again.

Rolling her eyes, Tinsy gathered a collection of soaps and oils onto a tray and turned around. Her gaze landed on Larkin, and she gasped.

Larkin looked down at herself, at the bruises that bloomed up her side and had turned the toes of her right foot black and green. Thankfully, her wrist didn’t appear swollen, and it didn’t hurt as much as it had—probably just sprained.

But it wasn’t her bruises the girl’s eyes lingered on, but Larkin’s pale, raised sigils. Her wedding sigils formed cuffs of twinning vines. Her right hand and left forearm bore geometric sigils for her sword and shield.

The sigil on her upper arm formed a vine filled with ahlea flowers that trailed down until it mingled with her wedding vines, blossoms peeking out here and there. The one on her neck formed diamond facets that surrounded her spine from the base of her skull to below her shoulder blades.

They were beautiful.

“Wh-What are they?” Tinsy asked.

Larkin opened her mouth, but the word sigil wouldn’t leave her lips. Neither would magic or pipers. The curse’s dark work. No wonder Idelmarchians thought the taken enchanted. Instead, Larkin flared her sigils, colors flashing beneath her skin. Her sword and shield were a comforting pressure in her hands. “This is what they are.”

Tinsy took a step back. “How?”

Larkin let her weapons fade. “The beast is not what you think it is.” It explained nothing, but it was all the curse would allow her to say.

Tinsy recoiled. “Your water is getting cold.”

Steam curled across the top. Clearly not, but Larkin didn’t push the girl. She stepped gingerly onto the wooden platform that spanned the bottom of the tub, eased gingerly down, and scrubbed herself with the bar of vetiver soap Tinsy provided.

She sighed in relief. She hadn’t been truly clean since Denan had taken her to the waterfall. Delightful memories made her cheeks flush with embarrassment.

Thankfully, Tinsy didn’t seem to notice as she poured water over Larkin’s head. As she’d promised, she lathered it and massaged her scalp. When she was finished, she poured more water. Rivulets of brown suds slipped down Larkin’s skin, staining the water. Larkin closed her eyes and allowed herself to relax.

By then, the water was practically boiling her alive, even though Tinsy had raked the coals. Larkin rinsed and oiled her hair. Stepping out, she wrapped linen around herself and gently scrunched her hair. Someone knocked on the door. Tinsy opened it to three girls. Larkin tightened her hold on her linen. The trio ignored her as they brought in a table, chest, and a horrible black dress with pearl buttons before leaving as quickly as they’d come.

“Put the dress on,” Tinsy said without looking at her.

Larkin pulled it down from where the girl had hung it on a spigot and stepped into it. It turned out to be skirts divided for riding and a shirt with pearl buttons rather than a traditional dress. The material felt stiff and uncomfortable.

Tinsy loosely tied the corset, did up the tiny row of buttons, and motioned to the chair. Larkin sat. The woman tugged Larkin’s hair into an elegant twist, curls framing her face. Then she rummaged through the trunk and pulled out an assortment of jars.

She eyed Larkin, then the contents of the jars, then Larkin, then the contents. She mixed some of the powders into an empty jar, dabbed it with her finger, and ran a streak of powder on Larkin’s cheek. She made a sound low in her throat and mixed in another powder. After shaking it, she put another streak on Larkin’s other cheek.

“That’s it,” she said in satisfaction. She dipped a brush in the powder and dusted every inch of Larkin’s exposed skin. One stroke at a time, Larkin’s freckles disappeared behind a thick layer of makeup.

Finally, Tinsy stood back and frowned at Larkin. “You’ll have to be careful in the palace. Dour as the druids pretend to be, all men like beautiful girls.”

Larkin looked down at herself. “I don’t understand.”

Tinsy motioned to the mirror before stepping aside.

Bracing herself, Larkin stood before it. She blinked at the image of her sister, Nesha, peering back at her.

No. Not Nesha, but Larkin’s own face.

Her hair had gone from frizzy copper to curling auburn. Her skin from mottled with freckles to smooth as cream. Even her plain brown eyes gleamed, though they were still the wrong color.

Larkin shifted uncomfortably. She’d always disliked her hair and her freckles. Until Denan had traced them with his thumb like he was drawing constellations, had spun her curls around his finger. She’d begun to realize that maybe what made her different also made her beautiful.

“Will it wash out?” Larkin tried to pretend the answer didn’t matter.

“Eventually.” Tinsy pulled the drain on the tub, the water splashing into a channel in the floor that led toward the yard.

The heavy door pushed open. Oben stepped aside; Iniya clicked into the room behind him. She looked Larkin up and down. “Well, you’re no great beauty, but covering those ridiculous freckles and taming that hair has helped.”

Larkin understood why her father had been so willing to leave all this wealth behind. “What does what I look like matter?”

Iniya hmphed. “Even here we have heard stories of the traitor girl allied with the beasts of the forest and her beautiful sister who drove her from the village, not once, but three times.”

Larkin winced. “Nesha is pregnant.”

Iniya held out a dome-shaped pillow.

The only way the old woman could know that … “You’ve been keeping track of us.”

Iniya stiffened, clearly affronted. “Can I help it if your father talks?” She turned on her heel, the click of her boot heels and cane forming a cadence.

Not quite believing her, Larkin hurried to catch up to the old woman as she stepped outside. “Where’s Tam?”

Iniya pointed to a black lump under one of the trees and started up the stairs. “It’s his turn to be thoroughly inspected for nits.”

“Tam,” Larkin called.

The black lump shifted. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Tam took one look at her and bolted to his feet, his hand on his ax hilt. He stared at her hair, then her skin, then back at her hair.

Hating that she’d woken him from sleep, she raised an eyebrow. “What?”

He settled and brushed detritus from his stolen clothes. “You look just like that evil sister of yours.”

Larkin’s first instinct was to argue—defending Nesha was as ingrained in her as never wasting a single scrap of food. She rubbed at the headache starting at her temples.

“You’ll frizz your hair!” Iniya called from the doorway.

Larkin jerked her hand down and muttered something not very nice under her breath.

Tam strode to her. His eyes were puffy, as if he’d cried himself to sleep. “I can see why your father ran away.”

As much as Larkin hated her father, she couldn’t disagree. She rested a hand on his arm. “Tam …”

“Come,” Iniya demanded from the house. “Dinner is ready.”

Tam pulled away from her touch, his face transforming to an impish one. “Do you think they have more meat puffs?”

Larkin swore she could feel the weight of Talox’s hand on her shoulder, his voice in her ear. “Humor is how Tam deals with the fear and pain.”

Ancestors, how could Talox be gone?

She wished Tam would talk to her—she missed Talox too. Instead, she rolled her eyes as she followed him inside.

“I don’t think meat puffs are fancy enough for—” She stopped at the sight of her father’s new wife seated at the table.

Raeneth’s gaze fixed on the tablecloth. Everything about the woman was round, from her breasts to her arched shoulders and her belly to the bottom of her buttocks. Even her face was round. She didn’t look like a willing accomplice in tearing Larkin’s family apart and nearly destroying her mother.

Larkin turned on her heel. “I’ll eat outside.”

Iniya banged her cane on the ground.

Oben instantly blocked the doorway. He glared at her from under his craggy brows. Where had he come from?

Larkin glared over her shoulder at her grandmother. “Do you honestly think he can stop me?”

Iniya calmly spooned soup into her bowl. “Are you in the habit of murdering servants simply because they’re in your way?”

Larkin rounded on her. “He spent the money meant to buy our food on cheap beer and her.” She jabbed a finger at Raeneth. “You want to negotiate with me? I want her gone.”

Raeneth winced. Harben rose to his feet, his face the furious mask Larkin knew so well. His hands balled into fists at his side; he took a menacing step toward her. Relief surged through Larkin. This was the moment she’d been waiting for. The fight—the release—she’d needed ever since she left Denan. She took a defensive stance, all the lessons Denan, Talox, and Tam had drilled into her filling her head.

Raeneth’s hand shot out, gripping Harben’s forearm. “Don’t.” She looked up at him, brown eyes pleading. “You promised.” She pushed back from the table. “I’ll go.” She left without a backward glance.

The fight sloughed off Harben like a snake shedding his skin. “This fight is between us, Larkin. Leave her out of it.”

Larkin shook her head in disgust. “You have them all fooled, but not me. You won’t stop drinking. You’ll never stop.”

Harben held out hands that trembled. “Look at me, Larkin. Really look.”

He wanted her to see his clear gaze. His face was pale, lacking the flush of drink. His actions and words were crisp. She wasn’t fooled.

“He hasn’t had a drop since he came to this house,” Iniya said. “Nor will he.”

“As if you could stop him,” Larkin said.

His hands fell to his sides. “I—” He shook his head. “I’m trying, Larkin. That’s all I can do.”

Larkin trembled with pent-up rage that had nowhere to go. “The fact that you’re trying now is more of a betrayal than anything.”

Head down, he left the room.

Tam eased a step closer. “Larkin, you don’t have to like them to make a deal with them.”

“Raeneth is part of the plan,” Iniya said.

“How?” Larkin demanded.

“Sit down and find out.” When Larkin hesitated, Iniya buttered her scone. “I don’t like her either—a barmaid may well be a step down from your trollop of a mother—but she gave me a grandson, so I tolerate her presence.”

Like she wouldn’t tolerate Larkin’s or her sisters’ presence. That baby held more weight to the old woman than any of them, just because he was a boy. She was wrong. So wrong. Sela was the most important person in all the Alamant—and the Idelmarch, for that matter.

And I am a warrior. As well as a princess, though Larkin didn’t feel she’d done anything to earn that title, aside from being kidnapped by a prince. She considered rubbing all of that in her grandmother’s face, then decided the old woman didn’t deserve to know the details of her family’s life.

Let her believe her lies.

Larkin folded her arms, wincing at the soreness in her wrist from punching her father. “You don’t need a grandson anymore.”

Iniya’s gaze sharpened. “Someone has to rule after I am gone.” Her voice was as smooth as the butter she spread.

Larkin didn’t believe her for a second. She let out a long breath and released the tension from her muscles. She plopped down at the table. “Fine. Let’s hear this plan of yours, Grandmother.”