THE PRINCESS

CHAPTER 2

Chapter Two

The Art of Not Losing

He was a better dancer than I wanted him to be.

Kim led with his shoulder, not his hand, a soldier's instinct, always turning his strongest side toward threat. Or maybe toward me. I couldn't tell anymore. His palm sat flat against my spine, warm through the silk of my gown, and his other hand held mine like it was something precious. Something he might have to drop at a moment's notice.

"You're thinking too loudly," he said, barely above a whisper.

"I'm thinking about how easy it would be to stab you with my hairpin."

"That's the Damascus steel one?" He turned me smoothly, and the chandeliers blurred overhead. "The one with the emerald? I'd be honored."

I hated that he knew about the hairpin. I hated that he'd noticed. I hated the small, satisfied curve of his mouth when he felt me tense.

We circled the edge of the ballroom floor, past ambassadors from the Southern Confederacy, past a cluster of Balkan colonels who pretended very hard not to see their general dancing with the enemy, past my own lady-in-waiting, Mira, who was making a cutting motion across her throat with one gloved finger.

Mira had opinions.

"Your mother is watching," Kim observed.

"I know."

"The Empress looks displeased."

"My mother always looks displeased. It's the resting face of absolute power."

He laughed—a real laugh, low and surprised, as if I'd caught him off guard. That was the second problem with Kim Vince. He didn't just make me laugh. I made him laugh. And somehow that felt more dangerous than any weapon in his arsenal.

The song shifted into something slower. Neither of us let go.

"Tell me why you're really here," I said.

His grey eyes flickered just for a second and I saw it. The thing he tried to hide beneath the charm and the uniforms and the battlefield legend. Weariness. The kind that didn't come from lack of sleep but from carrying too many dead.

"The Northern Pass," he said quietly. "The incursion. You think I wanted it."

"I think you gave the order."

"I gave the order because my intelligence network told me your Third Army was massing on the other side. I gave the order because twenty-four hours earlier, your father's spymaster had a meeting with a known Kosovo financier in Croatia. I gave the order because if I didn't take the pass first, your generals would have, and we'd be having this conversation in a field hospital instead of a ballroom."

I stopped dancing.

The music kept playing. Couples swirled around us like we were a rock in a river. But I had gone very still, and Kim's hand had tightened on mine.

"What meeting?" I said.

"Ask your father."

"My father doesn't tell me anything."

"Then you're a better ruler than you know." He released me not roughly, but with care, as if setting down something fragile. "Because the worst thing about being in power isn't the lies your enemies tell. It's the lies your family tells. Goodnight, Your Highness."

He bowed a perfect, mocking court bow and walked away.

I stood in the middle of the dance floor for a full three seconds before Mira materialized at my elbow.

"Well," she said, steering me toward the terrace doors. "That looked intimate and terrifying in equal measure."

"He mentioned the Kosovo financier. The Croatia meeting."

Mira's face went blank. Professional blank. The kind of blank that meant I know exactly what you're talking about and I am not allowed to say.

"Mira."

"Princess."

"Whose side are you on?"

She looked at me then, really looked. And for the first time in ten years of service, her answer didn't come immediately.

"I don't know anymore," she said. "And that's what scares me."

The terrace was cold. The city glittered below. And somewhere across the border, Kim Vince was climbing into a black staff car, carrying secrets my own blood had kept from me.

Love and hate, I decided, were luxuries I couldn't afford.

What I needed was the truth.

And I was going to get it even if it kill me.