The hours ticked by slowly as the crowd became more intoxicated with drink and the lights slowly dimmed. Gay laughter and the delicious scent of tarts wrapped like lovers around those who sat and enjoyed the feast. Dinah was bored. She glanced over at her father, who was roaring with laughter along with Xavier Juflee. The King of Hearts did not notice Dinah staring, nor did he notice Vittiore gazing sadly off into the distance, looking at something Dinah could not see. She followed Vittiore’s gaze to the back of the room, but there was only the trace of a shadow, no one. Vittiore cast her eyes down, blushing. There was some movement in the periphery of her vision, and Dinah jerked out of her trance and looked down at the table.
Her plate was gone, and in its place was a steaming slice of berry loaf on a delicately thin plate. She blinked in shock. She had not seen the extra plate put down in front of her, and that was alarming in itself. Scrawled in lovely looping letters, someone had written “Eat Me” in raspberry jam on the side of the plate. Bewildered, she looked around, but there was no one acting suspicious, no one looking mischievous in the corner. There were only hundreds of people eating, dancing, and boasting with excitement about their own croquet games of that afternoon. Wardley was making his way to the other side of the room, drinking heavily out of a gigantic silver stein; Harris was talking with the Master of Music; and Charles would never be let anywhere near the royal feast.
She returned her eyes to the message on her plate: “Eat Me.” Was this an insult? A threat? Poison? Dinah quickly smeared the words with her silver spoon. Her every breath bursting with curiosity, she raised her fork and brought it down into the loaf. She heard the clink of metal on glass, and found a minuscule glass vial, smaller than a spool of thread. Hands trembling, she picked up the vial, keeping her hands low over her plate. The cork came out easily and a tiny piece of paper slid into her waiting fingertips. She looked around again.
The party continued to escalate. Fat white birds were running up and down the tables, being fed by amused guests. As always, no one cared about the king’s strange, black-haired daughter. Her hands shook as she unrolled the paper, wondering who could have possibly sent it. Five words, written in a lilting script, graced the square of parchment: Faina Baker, the Black Towers. Scribbled next to the words was a tiny picture of a triangle with a wave underneath it. The symbol was vaguely familiar, although Dinah couldn’t quite put her finger on it and didn’t have time to think about it at this moment. She turned the paper over. Nothing. The thudding of her heart was so loud that she was sure the entire room could hear it, yet no one even looked in her direction. Dinah closed her eyes, committing the name, the symbol, and the words to memory. Then she did as her plate instructed and ate the words, the paper pasty and tasteless on her tongue.
The stars were scattered that evening—sprinkled north over the Todren and also to the south, where they hung in vertical lines over the Darklands. Dinah stood alone on her balcony, wrapped in a thick sheepskin blanket.
“Your Highness, you’ll freeze out there!” nagged Emily from her chambers. Dinah rolled her eyes and silenced her servant with an upraised hand.
“Emily, I’m fine! I am warm enough; the winter is almost over.”
Emily made a face and silently retreated. Dinah turned her head back to the sky.
“Faina Baker, the Black Towers.” She murmured the words to herself, again and again. She couldn’t imagine what those words meant, only that she felt—no, she knew—that they were something of great meaning and consequence. She had been waiting for that tiny scroll all her life, without knowing it. The unspoken thread of unease that followed her every step in this palace—it had origins. It was present at the croquet game, at the feast, in the whispers of Cards and the court, especially since Vittiore had arrived. Was this tiny paper perhaps her answer, something to put her one step ahead?
Who was Faina Baker? What did she know? And most important, why was she in the Black Towers? Dinah bit at her lip, a nervous habit. Contrary to what she had told Emily, there was quite a bitter chill in the late-winter air; it ripped through her blankets as though they were as thin as linen. She gave a shiver. It was time. Dinah pulled a long burgundy scarf, embroidered with tiny pink flowers, out from beneath her blanket. She reached over the edge of the balcony and looped it around a tiny iron rung on the bottom of the railing. The scarf unfurled itself in the whipping wind, a red ribbon against the black sky.
She went inside, took her tea and bath in silence, and watched the steam gather in her dressing room. Harris and Emily retired for the night to their separate sleeping quarters, and Dinah paced back and forth in front of her windows. Patience had never been her virtue, and when she could wait no longer, she walked out to the balcony and stuck her head over the edge. She squinted until she saw it: Wardley’s scalloped silver shield, bearing a kneeling Corning, propped up against a water trough outside the armory.
Dinah’s skin gave a happy ripple—Wardley was coming! They had communicated in this manner since she was a little girl. Wardley was always outside by the stables, while Dinah was confined by lessons in the Royal Apartments, so they arranged the simplest form of the message: a shield or a scarf meant, “I need to see you.” The other would then put up a reply, and the message was complete. Dinah pulled a simple plum nightgown over her thin tunic and fastened her cloak over it. Pressing her ear to the door, she listened for the Heart Cards to make their way down to the end of the wing. Their metal footsteps grew fainter until they disappeared completely. Dinah knew it was a matter of minutes before they came back around. Stepping quietly, she slipped out the door and ran down the hall, the marble freezing cold on her bare feet. She made her way down the stone servant steps at the end of the wing, and from there began winding her way through different hallways toward the Heart Chapel.
When his reign first began, her father had ordered the construction of a tiny alcove that overlooked the Heart Chapel. While most found it bewildering that he would make any changes to this ancient room, one that beamed with light and whimsical architecture, the King of Hearts pressed on, though the construction included the destruction of a magnificent old lute that had been sealed into the outer wall. The alcove was nicknamed “the Box.” Its purpose was to enlighten and change the hearts of peasants by blessing them with the gift of worshipping inside the chapel, while still keeping them away from members of the court and the royal family. The king believed that granting peasants, undesirables, and orphans audience with royalty would someday inspire great things in a person of low standing.
Every Sunday, peasants were rounded up by the Cards and brought to the Box. They were forced to participate in the service at the Heart Chapel, and then given bread and soup, and sent on their way. After their departure, the Box would receive a thorough cleaning, so that it might be cleared for the next group of woodworkers, butchers, ladies of the night, or fishmongers. Dinah thought it the most terribly condescending idea—did the townspeople really desire to be yanked from their work to worship with those who were gifted with so much? Still, she was grateful that her father had unknowingly provided a private place for Wardley to meet her inside the castle.
As a princess, Dinah was never alone for very long, and she was rarely able to go anywhere in the palace anymore without dozens of people noticing. Just in the last few weeks, Heart Cards had begun accompanying her in places she usually occupied alone: the library, the kitchens, the atrium. Harris said it was because her coronation was drawing near and thus her father had ordered extra protection around her. To Dinah, it was a nuisance she had to learn to tolerate.
Her breath catching in her throat, Dinah pulled open the huge doors to the Heart Chapel. She was lucky tonight—normally there was a watch, but he must have been away on