The royal court expected the crystal hand to choose a wealthy bride for the prince—until it fit a mocked and forgotten maid perfectly, and the queen realized the girl standing before her might be the daughter she lost TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO...

The woman disappeared before the corridor lamps returned.

Elia stood between two guards who had drawn their swords and were now arguing about a failing circuit of ancient lanterns. Her wrist still tingled where the stranger had held it. In her palm lay a brass key with a small blue thread tied through its bow.

She closed her fist around it.

"There was someone here," she told the taller guard.

He peered down the corridor. "Who?"

"I don't know. A woman. She spoke to me."

"No one passed us," he replied, not quite meeting her eyes.

Elia might once have believed him. But she had learned that palace servants were expected to notice every stain and pretend not to notice every secret. Guards learned a similar trade.

The men escorted her back to the chamber. They locked the door from the outside. The sound of the bolt settling was quiet, almost courteous, and it made her angrier than shouting would have.

She sat on the edge of the enormous bed and inspected the key. It was old, the kind used for narrow locks in the servants' staircases. A tiny crown had been stamped on one side, and on the other was the number seven.

The seventh stair, Tomas had shouted.

Elia approached the wardrobe. She dragged it an inch away from the wall and found the maintenance hatch exactly where she remembered. Its little iron latch resisted, then gave. She crawled into the dusty space with the key between her teeth.

Beyond the hatch, a ladder descended to the linen storage. She knew the route because once, during a winter storm, the dumbwaiter had jammed and the head housekeeper had ordered her to retrieve an entire banquet's tablecloths by hand. She had descended this ladder with a candle clenched in her teeth and been paid with a bowl of soup that had gone cold.

Tonight she climbed down in darkness, counting each rung.

At the bottom, someone had left a blue apron draped over a crate. She tied it over her gray uniform and carried a stack of towels out of the storeroom. A guard passing the corridor barely glanced at her. A servant with linens was furniture that moved.

The old chapel stood in the western wing, beyond a covered courtyard where stone saints stared down with faces worn smooth by rain. Elia entered through the service passage and passed the last row of pews. The chapel smelled of old wax, damp limestone, and the sweet smoke of incense.

Seven stairs led to a lower crypt. Elia counted them twice. On the seventh, a small carved rose marked the riser. She knelt, pressed her fingertips beneath the edge, and felt a narrow opening.

The brass key slipped into a concealed lock. Something clicked deep in the stone. The riser swung outward, exposing a hollow no larger than a bread oven.

Inside were a sealed leather packet and a child-sized shoe, blue velvet with one missing ribbon.

Elia knew the shoe.

Mara had kept its matching pair in a wooden box under their bed. Elia had found it after Mara died and asked why she owned a shoe too small for any child in their village. Mara had told her it belonged to a baby whose family had lost her. She hadn't said more.

Elia lifted the packet and opened it with trembling hands. It contained three letters, a nursery register, and a page of numbers written beside the names of household staff. The first letter was addressed to Her Majesty but had never been sent.

My Queen, the child was not killed. They took her through the eastern kitchens with the nurse's assistance. I did not help them willingly. They threatened my son. The pendant remained with the baby. The other child was removed from the nursery before dawn. I believe the records have been altered. Please believe me. — Sabine Ardent.

The ink faded toward the bottom as if the writer had been crying.

The second letter was dated eighteen years ago, four years after the disappearance.

Mara, I received the payment, but I will never ask you to return the girl. Tell her that her family loved her. If the court finds her, they will use her to settle debts that belong to dead men. I have hidden the register where the queen used to pray. May the world forgive what we allowed. — S.

Elia stared at Mara's name. Her mother had not merely known about the lost princess. She had been involved in hiding her.

The final letter bore no signature. Its edges had been burned. One sentence survived near the center:

There were two infants, but only one royal birth was announced.

A floorboard creaked above her.

Elia slipped the letters inside her apron and turned toward the narrow stairs. A lantern appeared at their top. Behind it stood Prince Rowan, carrying no sword and looking deeply displeased.

"I told them to keep you safe," he said. "Not imprison you."

"They did both."

"How did you get out?"

"If I tell you, someone will seal the route."

He considered that, then nodded. "Fair."

She studied him. "Did you follow me?"

"One of the guards reported an escaped maid with an armful of towels. I guessed she'd be going somewhere with a laundry room or a secret. This palace is mostly secrets."

Elia almost smiled. "Your Highness, did you know your mother had a second daughter?"

Rowan went very still.

"No."

"Someone told me the palace lost two children. There's a letter here saying two infants were in the nursery."

"My mother gave birth once during that period," he said. "I remember her being ill. I remember the bells. I remember a sister whose name I was forbidden to say afterward."

"What was her name?"

He looked down at the blue shoe. "Aurelia."

Elia's throat closed. Mara used to sing her to sleep with a song about the moon and a little girl called Lia. She had always assumed it was a common name in an old folk tune.

"My mother called me Elia," she said. "She told me she chose it because it sounded like sunlight."

Rowan crouched beside her, leaving respectful space between them. "If we're related, the Hand of Accord choosing you as my bride is a terrible joke."

"It didn't choose me," Elia said. "It recognized my hand. Those aren't the same thing."

He looked surprised. Then he laughed, a short, relieved sound. "You are going to make the council miserable."

"I don't want the council. I want to know why Mara died. And why Tomas was arrested."

Rowan's smile vanished. "Who is Tomas?"

She told him. He rose immediately, then stopped when she caught his sleeve.

"No guards," she said. "Not until we know whom they answer to."

"I command the royal guard."

"Do you? The chancellor ordered them to arrest me while you stood in front of the Hand. They moved anyway."

For a moment Rowan looked less like a prince and more like a young man discovering that the walls of his own home were not his.

He took the nursery register and turned it toward the lantern. A page had been torn from the middle. The surviving entries showed an infant princess born on the twelfth of August, with a note naming her nurse Sabine. Beneath it, in a different hand, was an entry for a baby labeled Ward B-13. The child was recorded as transferred to the infirmary; the mother field was blank.

"A ward, not a royal child," Rowan said carefully. "We can't assume more."

"But someone wanted us to," Elia replied. "The note said two children. If they meant two princesses, why hide one under a number?"

"Perhaps she wasn't a princess."

They were still studying the page when voices sounded from the chapel above.

"The lower door was opened," a man said.

It was Garrick Varrick.

Another voice answered, "The prison ledger shows no visitors. Sabine hasn't spoken to anyone."

"Then search the stair. If the key has resurfaced, we're out of time."

Rowan blew out his lantern. Elia led him into a narrow alcove behind a memorial tablet. They stood shoulder to shoulder in the dark as footsteps descended.

"The queen is demanding access to the records," Garrick said. "And now Rowan insists on an independent inquiry. He used to be easier to direct."

"What about the maid?"

"The maid is the least of our concerns. The pendant is the problem. If Marienne believes the girl is Aurelia, she'll open the sealed archive."

"And if she does?"

A pause.

"She'll learn who authorized the second transfer."

Elia covered her mouth with one hand.

Garrick's shoes scraped against the seventh step. For one awful second she thought he had seen the open panel. Then a bell rang from the chapel tower and someone hurried down to whisper urgent news.

"My lord. The queen has summoned the council. Tonight."

"At this hour?"

"She has the original pendant from the nursery portrait. She wants to compare the two."

Garrick swore softly and went back upstairs.

When the sound of footsteps faded, Rowan relit the lantern. His face had gone gray.

"The sealed archive is beneath the throne room," he said. "Only the sovereign and the chancellor have keys."

"Then your mother can open it."

"Unless Garrick gets to her first."

He led Elia through a back passage to the council wing. Before they reached it, they found a servant collapsed beside the wine cellar, conscious but weak. Her tray was overturned. A silver cup lay on the tiles.

"The queen's night tonic," the servant whispered. "Lord Garrick's assistant insisted it be delivered before the meeting."

Rowan knelt. "Did she drink it?"

"I don't know. I spilled it when I became dizzy."

Elia caught the faint, bitter odor rising from the cup. She had smelled it once before in the physician's room, where Mara's medicine had been prepared.

She looked at Rowan. "Don't let your mother drink anything."