“I’ve got a secret,” Valka says, stepping up beside me. We stand at the edge of the roughly cobbled courtyard before the hall, mud sticking to our boots and our cloaks flapping in the chill spring breeze.

The last of this morning’s departing carriages rolls toward the gates. Edlyna nods regally through the carriage window at us.

“Wouldn’t you like to know it?” Valka presses.

I glance around helplessly, as if someone might appear to rescue me. But of course, Valka has timed her approach perfectly: Mother has already departed with her coterie of vassals, and my brother hasn’t bothered to come at all. There are a few other nobles who have yet to leave for their lands for the summer, including Maralinde. But, along with the rest, she’s busy packing. Unlike Valka, unfortunately.

“If it’s a secret, you shouldn’t tell anyone,” I say, shifting uneasily.

“You’re such a mouse, Alyrra.” Valka gives a sweet, tinkling little laugh. The sound of it makes my skin prickle. I’ve heard that laugh enough times now to know that what she has to share will hardly be innocent.

“Come on,” she says, sliding her arm through mine and tugging me forward. Valka may be only a year older than my own twelve, but she’s also taller than me, and prettier, with her red curls and green eyes. She carries herself with the sort of authority that leaves the rest of us bobbing in her wake. You would think she was the princess, not me.

Not that I’m some sort of a grand lady. We’re a small kingdom ringed by forested mountains, mostly ignored by our much wealthier and larger neighbors who have no need for the scanty resources our land proffers. Still, our home is a worthy wood-framed structure, with a great receiving hall and two whole wings of rooms attached, as well as a tall wooden boundary wall to protect it. Though walls can’t protect from everything.

“Do you remember how that little pest Edlyna fell off her horse last week?”

I pull to a stop, staring up at Valka. “You didn’t.”

Her green eyes glint back at me, all malicious glee. “Alyrra, dear, don’t you remember how she made such a fuss about her new boots, right after I had my own commissioned? As if she was so much better than me? I couldn’t let that stand. You wouldn’t either, would you? Such arrogance! What better way to put her in her place than to cut a leather strap or two and let her fall right off her horse, pretty riding boots and all?”

“She could have been injured,” I say, a sick feeling in my stomach. I already know there’s no point in arguing; the deed is done and we both just watched Edlyna and her family depart. They won’t be back till fall, and all of this will be long past by then.

“Oh, hardly! That hostler caught her easily. What’s the use of a hostler to help you mount if they aren’t there to catch you, anyway?”

“Yes, but it was mortifying for her!” I can still remember the girl’s face, red with humiliation as she snatched herself free of the hostler.

“I know,” Valka says, beaming. “Utterly mortifying, and, really, one of the most satisfying outcomes I could have hoped for. It was just so fitting, don’t you think? And oh, how your brother laughed!”

I hunch my shoulders. He would laugh, of course. “Does he know it was you?” I ask.

“Does he know? Really, you are too precious!”

I am not precious at all. “Well?” I ask, as she tugs me forward once more, following one of the wooden hallways. “Does he?”

“How do you think the straps got cut? I could hardly do that on my own! I convinced your brother to create a distraction for me, and oh, he was so very good at it.”

“The . . . the oats?” A whole sack of oats had been spilled across the back path to the stables. I’d heard about it only because it was all my peers could talk about: how my brother discovered it and demanded the culprit be found and punished for causing such waste. As if he were a hero, standing against the delinquent behavior of servants. No one had confessed—of course they hadn’t, I realize now. He’d done it himself. But every hostler in the stable had taken a pay cut to cover the cost of the oats.

“Brilliant, wasn’t it?” Valka says.

“What was brilliant?” A voice asks from behind us.

Valka turns a bright smile on my brother, her grip loosening on my arm. I slip free and take three steps back as she says, “Oh, that little incident with the oats.”

My brother grins. At fifteen, he is taller than us both, his chest just starting to broaden but his body still a little gangly. He brushes a hand through his hair, combing back the blond locks he inherited from our father. My own mousy brown locks are a washed-out version of our mother’s shining chestnut hair.

“Were you telling Alyrra about that?” he asks, glancing toward me dismissively. “You know she doesn’t appreciate such things. Hasn’t the spirit for it.”

“She can still learn,” Valka says, as if I weren’t standing right there. “And she’ll have to at least a bit. You can’t go through life all wide-eyed and expecting the best of everyone and not get hurt.” She turns to me. “You really must start learning to politick. Your brother and I can’t always be protecting you.”

I force my lips into a smile and dip my head. Protecting me? I suppose it must feel like that to them, since they don’t visit their little jokes upon me. At least not much—only when they cannot help themselves, as Valka has said before. Or when I incite my brother’s annoyance.

“Did you not like Edlyna’s boots either?” I ask, just to gauge his reaction.

He eyes me as if I am stupider than mud. “Her boots? What do I care for those?”

Valka rolls her eyes, but there’s a tightness to her expression that tells me she’s hoping I’m just smart enough not to blather her reasons to my brother. “Edlyna is always putting on airs, Alyrra.”

I nod knowingly. “So then . . . ?”

My brother huffs a sigh, annoyed to have to explain even this to me. “You know how her family was going on about their new luminae stone—Edlyna made sure to tell me it was fashioned by the mage of the Faransin court, and spelled to last at least five years. Now you tell me, why would she say that to me?”

I shrug. The luminae stone arrived a good two or three weeks before Edlyna’s new boots. I doubt my brother realizes how he was used. I say only, “Perhaps Edlyna was happy about it?”

“She was rubbing in the fact that she has one in her room, and I do not!”

“She does share a room with her parents,” I point out. “And Mother has two, so we still have more than they do.”

“Valka,” my brother says, turning to her with disgust written across his features, “why do we even try?”

“Because she’s your sister,” Valka says philosophically. “We can’t exactly give up on her.”

“I have to go back to my studies,” I say, to stop their discussing me again. “My tutor is waiting.”

“What, right now?” Valka asks, her eyes flicking to my brother.

He catches my arm as I make to step around him. His grip is tight, ungiving, but not hurtful. It’s just a warning. “Don’t go, little sister. You know I’ve only just joined you, and if you leave now, Valka must as well. You had better stay.”

“As you like,” I say, looking away.

He laughs and drops his hand, and a moment later he and Valka are arm in arm. I follow along a foot or two behind, and try not to listen to their words.

The natural consequence of our hall not being like the storied greater castles and palaces of other lands is that there are not all that many places to wander—nor can you escape notice for too long. We make a circuit past the little temple, then take the stairs up past the meeting rooms and lesser nobles’ bedchambers, and then back around to the other wing with its hallway where our family and closest vassals have their rooms. Beyond that, there’s only the great hall, and the kitchens—where such vaunted personages as Valka and my brother would hardly deign to wander.

By the time we make it down from the meeting rooms again, a servant has caught up with us. He bows to my brother, who strides right past without acknowledging him. I dip my head apologetically, but the man isn’t here for me. Instead, he bows lower and says to my brother’s back, “Your Highness, I beg forgiveness for the interruption.”

With a sigh, my brother turns back. “Do you really? Then why have you interrupted at all?”

The man maintains his bow, his expression hidden from view. “His Highness’s tutor wishes to inform you that he is ready for you when you are available.”

“Well, I am not quite available. You see, my sister has ignored her lessons altogether. I shall have to speak with her about that first. You may tell the old man I will come once I’ve seen to my family responsibilities.”

I feel my cheeks burning, but I keep my gaze lowered just as the servant did, and at least I do not have to watch his expression.

Valka titters as the man departs. “You really are too easy a target, Alyrra.”

“Convenient,” my brother agrees, turning his gaze on me. I keep my focus on the wooden floorboards. “And such a shame that you can’t be trusted to see to your responsibilities. Really, little sister. Ignoring your studies! What will happen when we want to sell you off to a neighbor in marriage, and you don’t know how to run a hall or speak their language? You’ll be as useless to them as you are to us, and they’ve no cause to look out for you as we do.”

I hunch my shoulders and dart a look at Valka, although it’s not as if she’s my friend. She laughs. “Oh, let the poor girl go. She doesn’t know the first thing about marriage, or anything else. At least there’s a hope she might learn something from her tutor.”

My brother frowns. He cares enough for Valka that he won’t keep her company alone—at least not publicly so. After all, they must have planned Edlyna’s downfall and coordinated their distractions somehow. But he won’t walk openly through the halls with no one but her; not until, as he told me the other night, they’re betrothed. His words hint at a future I find difficult to imagine: my brother as king one day, and Valka beside him as queen. A queen who knows exactly how to use him. There won’t be much of mercy or kindness in their reign.

“And we shall meet again at lunch, shan’t we?” Valka says, smiling sweetly at him. “After all, I don’t want it said that I’m a distraction to you.”

“Of course not,” he says. “Come, Alyrra, I’d better deliver you to your lessons, or you might try to weasel out of them again.”

I bite my lip and let him lead me on, Valka’s laughter ringing in my ears.