Roxa woke, groaning and heartsore, from another dream of Mariah. Early sunlight flooded through the floor-to-ceiling windows, turning the curtains a brilliant white. She peeked to make sure her roommate, Mi, was already up and gone, and then threw aside the messy tangle of sheets, and stumbled naked out of bed, rubbing her face and cursing.

  In the dream, Mariah and Roxa had been out riding together, under fern-covered cliffs of glittering quartz granite that trickled and streamed with a thousand snow-fed waterfalls. And then they’d returned to the Rose Keep, the hearth and seat of Roxa’s mother, Countess Sasha Monir, and climbed the stairs to Roxa’s tower room, and fallen ughing into her silk-sheeted bed.

  Except, Roxa had felt unbearably sad, because Roxa-in-the-dream somehow knew Mariah was leaving.

  “But Mi likes you,” Mariah-in-the-dream had assured her. “She won’t leave.”

  Roxa squeezed her eyes closed.

  Oh, Lady’s glittering tits, when would she get over that girl?

  And why was her traitorous mind mixing her new roommate into her heartbreak?

  Grumpily, she pulled on a shift and began warming up for her morning routine. Some honest sweat would excorcise her lingering emotional muddle. Finishing the stretches, she dropped down to the floor to grimace her way through some pushups.

  What’s more, if the real Mariah were here, would never have said such a thing!

  The way they had parted had made that abundantly clear.

  ~ ~ ~

  The mountain sunlight falls like warm honey on her skin, and heats the sappy, fragrant bark of the giant fir tree behind her. Roxa inhales deeply through her nose, and sighs, conscious of the girl beside her, of the lengthy silence growing between them.

  They sit at the top of a steep meadow, watching their horses graze.From up here,high on the slopes of theLady, they can look down on Tintagel, the high seat of the Duchess Lapita herself.

  Steep, shingled rooftops, slender stone towers and squat millsand longhalls follow the white, rushing course of the river Ignata down the valley. The narrow city is cradled between the forested crags and pinnacles of the great mountain’s ridged arms. Dozens of waterfalls crash down the steep walls of the valley, through the sluiceways of limestone keeps, to join the crooked bolt of the river.Roxa watches the shadows of clouds race over the forest canopy that hems the city, and the thousands of crows and hawks and raptors that soar on the thermals in towering kettles.

  But for all the beauty of it, Roxa cannot help feel uneasy here.

  Roxa is here, far from her own mountain valley, as part of her mother’s retinue, as a courtier. The word itself becomes more and more nauseating to her every day. The Countess has reminded her sternly that this is an essential part of her training, her preparation to follow in her mother’s footsteps, and Sasha Monir’s daughter will not, under any circumstances, shirk or shy away from her duty.

  Roxa retes this to Mariah with a practiced roll of her eyes. She is disgusted by the court, she tells her old friend, how fake it all is, how contrived.

  Mariah listens with a closed mouth. Shearrived in the city yesterday, her boots and the fnks of her horse spattered with mud, bearing a message, and she is due to ride back to the border tomorrow, with the reply.

  Almost a year ago, with her own silver, the Countess bought Mariah an officer’s commission at a garrison that guards one of the passes into the lownds controlled by the Imperiat. This is the first time Roxa has seen her since she rode away from the Rose Keep on the mare they trained together as girls, the roan named Marrow.

  When Roxa first saw her descending the steps from the war council room, in her soiled riding leathers, her heart leapt, and she ran to greet her friend, but Mariah’s gray eyes were oddly guarded.

  “Not now, Roxa,” she muttered, gncing around.

  Defted, Roxa apologized. “Of course, you need to rest. Perhaps tomorrow?”

  Mariah nodded coolly.

  Now Roxa is trying to breach this new distance, to reconnect with her, but it is proving harder than she anticipated. Mariah seems reluctant to talk about herself. She keeps veering their conversation firmly back towards Roxa.

  All Roxa has to talk about right now is her frustration, though. She stares down at the city below, wreathed in blue woodsmoke.

  “And the worst thing is, everyone is so righteously, virtuously uptight about it! The court feels like a hopelessly out of touch mirror world illusion, where we’re following these totally ridiculous scripts for how to talk to each other, that are utterly made up! I’ve been here for months, and I’ve met a few people—a few—who can talk like actual human beings, but most of them seem so incapable of being real with each other!”

  She shakes her head in disgusted amazement. “It’s so bleak, Mariah, so confining. It’s like living without air. When I think of this as my world, my life, my duty? Everything in me want to shrivel up and die.”

  She turns to Mariah to find her gray eyesstaring at her with something only one or two shades away from contempt. “Are you seriously telling me this right now?”

  Roxa frowns at her. “What?”

  “Don’t—Roxa, don’t act as if you won’t just take your home and title the instant something finally makes you grow up.” Mariah shakes her head in disgust. “Don’t pretend to me that you truly don’t want to be Countess, because we both know you won’t hesitate when the time comes. You think the court is fake and suffocating? Let me tell you, listening to you posture is ten times worse. At the very least, don’t ask me to humor your childish mood swings. It shames you, and worse, it belittles your mother’s sacrifice. Not all of us are so lucky that we get to throw away what you apparently don’t care for, you know.”

  Roxa is shocked into silence. She stares at the older girl, her mind reeling, as she abruptly sees herself through this new gaze.

  They have been friends since childhood, when the Countess took Mariah, a promising orphan, into her own household, and began training her alongside Roxa and a handful of other girls, mostly the offspring of her hearthsworn. Then, a few years ago, despite the shadow of her mother’s disapproval, the twobecame lovers.

  Mariah has told Roxa off before, certainly, has spoken sharply and in strong terms to her about the imbances between them. Roxa has always done her best to bite her own quarrelsome tongue and listen carefully, andcompensate for her friend’s less secure position.

  This, though? This feels different.

  “So that’s it, then?” says Roxa quietly. “That’s what I am?”

  “We are what we are, Roxa,” Mariah retorts bitterly. “Your mother has given me a lot, and I’m grateful to her, but I don’t have a title waiting for me like you do. I’ve had to grow up and earn my pce. And you have the pce you’ve always had, whether you earn it or not.”She looked away and swallowed hard, her next words biting. “I lost my mother, and you’ve always gotten to have one, whether you appreciate her or not.”

  Roxa groaned and held her head in her hands. “Mariah, please!I miss you! What if we could find our way back to each other, on our own terms? Why do you have to...roll over for them, and let them dictate your pce to you?”

  “That’s your highborn nobility talking.” Mariah’s voice snaps like a whip. “Not all of us have that luxury.” She lifts her chin. “Midy.”

  “Now you’re just refusing to engage with me,” says Roxa angrily. “You’re circling at a distance and sniping at me with potshots. Answer the question.”

  “You’re not in my chain of command, Roxa, and I don’t take orders from spoiled brats,” Mariah says coldly. “Especially ones so dangerously close to speaking treason.”

  Every word from Mariah’s mouth is a chisel blow to Roxa’s heart. “Chain of command? I was your friend, remember?”

  “Were you? Could you have ever been, given my position in your household? Could I have ever really afforded to share my true self with you, my true feelings?”

  Roxa closes her eyes in pain. I thought you did. “What are you saying, Mariah?” she manages, throat so tight it aches. “Was none of it real? Please, if you just want to hurt me, then say that. Tell me anything, so long as it’s the truth.”

  There is a stony silence. Then Mariah shakes her head, sighs, and rises. She whistles for Marrow, and when the roan sidles nimbly over, she swings into the saddle.

  “Goodbye, Roxa,” she says stiffly.

  Roxa stares at her. “Mariah…”

  Mariah turns the horse with practiced ease, and canters away.

  ~ ~ ~

  After a stifling formal dinner with half the court, Roxa flees the greathall to the edge of one of her favorite waterfalls, and attempts to drown her thoughts with the comforting bst of noise and churning whitewater. For a time she simply stares into the pure chaos of stone and water and air, while hundreds of swifts swoop and flit, drinking the beads of mist that cloud the evening air.

  It helps, a little.

  Eventually she breaks away and strides back up to the gate, where a sentry catches her attention and tells her of the summons in a low tone.

  Roxa nods numbly, and makes for her mother’s office. In the stone passages of the keep, she passes a few courtiers she recognizes, some of whom try to greet her. She barely manages not to snap at any of them.

  Sasha Monir is drafting a letter, when she knocks and enters.

  “Roxa,” she states, without looking up.

  “Mother.”

  “I’m sure you’ve noticed Mariah’s presence here since yesterday.”

  Roxa does her best not to wince. “Yes.”

  “She brings urgent tidings,” says the Countess briskly, her quill hand still scratching away. “One of our assets in the Imperiat Admiralty managed to get his hands on a draft of some invasion pns.”

  Sasha looks up for the first time, and mother and daughter’s identical green eyes meet. “Recent ones.”

  Roxa stiffens. “War?”

  Sasha’s gaze flicks back down. “Perhaps. I’m to be dispatched to Drago immediately, with a small handpicked staff. As routine diplomatic envoy, of course.”

  Roxa inhales sharply. “But if there is an invasion—”

  “Yes.” Sasha sets down her quill, and scatters sand on the paper to dry the ink. “In that case, the odds of my survival are thin. But this is an existential threat for all of us, and I may be able to chock the boulder before it tips and begins rolling down the mountain, as it were. Or turn it aside to strike somewhere else. We urgently need more information, and we need someone up on that damned capitol hill who can bring the Hierophant himself to the table and hold her own.”

  Roxa swallows, a dry click. “You volunteered.”

  Sasha waves dismissively. “I’m the most powerful sorcerer we have, and that is all they respect there. Pure lineage and the blood talent that proves it.” She rolls her eyes. “And a cock. But they’ll soon learn that I can compensate for that with my bde, after a few of them lose a finger or two. It never takes more than a few duels to establish some useful fear in the local chauvinists. Remember that.”

  She gnces wryly up at Roxa as she shakes the sand off the paper and folds it neatly. “This is Mariah’s field promotion, by the way. I have asked her to join my staff as one of my lieutenants, and she has accepted.”

  Roxa masters her face in silence.

  “She hinted to me that you and she had a…” the Countess pauses carefully. “…parting of ways?”

  “Mother,” Roxa grates out. “I’d really rather not talk about it right now.”

  “Very well. It’s just that I’ve always hoped you could learn from her example—”

  “Mother.”

  Sasha sighs.

  “Are we talking about my duties?” Roxa’s voice is tight as a steel cable. “Or can I leave?”

  “Yes.” Sasha studied her daughter, drumming her fingers on her desk. “I’m curtailing your current training here for the time being.”

  “That’s a relief,” Roxa muttered.

  “Hush. I want to offer you an assignment.”

  Roxa blinked. Her mother had always told her in no uncertain terms what her duty was. “Offer me?”

  “A foreign field assignment.”

  Roxa’s stomach did a little flip. Finally, some elbow room. Finally, a chance to stretch her wings. She waited, trying not to let her eagerness show.

  “It’s…rather complex and dangerous,” her mother warned. “You’ll be tossed to the Inquisitors if you’re caught, just as I will be, if the tide goes against us. I hope for both our sakes and the sake of the Duchy that we find a way to die by the bde before we meet that fate.”

  “Where?” Roxa is fairly vibrating with curiosity.

  “I believe we have discussed continuing your education in sorcery, have we not?”

  Roxa’s eyebrows shoot up. “You’re sending me to Harmine? Now?”

  Sasha nods. “But not to learn, though I do hope you will take the opportunity to sharpen your sorcery. I want you to identify potential assets, gain a hold over them, and recruit them to serve our ends. We need more ears and eyes there, especially now.”

  “You want me to recruit? At a school?” Roxa frowns, trying to recall what she has heard of the University. Some of the Duchy’s most formidable nobles have attended the institution, including her mother, but her own impressions of the pce have all been gleaned second-hand.

  The Countess leans back, pursing her lips. “Tell me why the Imperiat is so powerful. Why have they grown to such dominance in the st century?”

  Roxa sighs. Another test. “They hold a chemical edge in naval—”

  “Incomplete.”

  “They’ve mastered the economic destabilization of foreign—”

  “Insufficient.”

  “Pervasive networks of informers fool civilians into disciplining and policing themselves!”

  “A sadly limited view.”

  “They introduce pgues in neighboring nds that kill off mothers and elders, then offer inocutions in exchange for the right to build residential schools that strip the orphans of any meaning besides propaganda and social purity.” Roxa snaps.

  “True,” agrees the Countess grimly. They share a moment of heavy silence. “But not what I was driving at.”

  “What, then?” grouses Roxa.

  The Countess frowns at her and Roxa feels an urgent desire to strangle something.

  “You have merely named the limbs of the leviathan that seeks to enclose the world we know. Who pulls the strings that advance its dead and grasping hulk across nd and sea?”

  “The Senate, in Drago,” Roxa shifts impatiently. Trust her mother to unch a didactic tangent and drag her along.

  “Perhaps once, after the overthrow of the st Dragonian king. We’ve neglected your history, Roxa. When the royalist purge was still in full swing, and during the bloody, fratricidal aftermath, the Senate was a convenient theater for the masses, but as the Hierophant has ascended to rabid popurity, it is rapidly becoming an unnecessary sideshow.”

  Roxa has read some reports on the secretive Arcane Hierophancy, mostly because her mother has been tracking it for years now. It is variously cimed as an ancient cult of sorcerers, or a remnant of the Dragonian nobility that survived the purge, or the political party that orchestrated the anti-royalist revolution in the first pce. Whatever the case, the current Hierophant is said to be an incendiary sb of a man named Barca Stagbrawn, who rails at packed rallies against ‘degeneracy’ and ‘foreign rot’.

  “But the Hierophancy doesn’t govern,” she protests. “The Hierophant is popur, yes, but he’s a mouthpiece. He spews ideologies of social evolution and progress and vital will, but that has nothing to do with building fleets and training soldiers.”

  “Finally,” says the Countess with satisfaction. “You’ve struck upon it at long st. Though you shouldn’t underestimate the Hierophant—his speeches are the weathervane for Ministry policy.”

  Roxa narrows her eyes, miffed. “The Ministry bureaucracy.”

  “Correct. The Imperiat machine is like nothing the world has ever known.” The Countess spoke with a grim intensity. “It is a vast clockwork engine, and to function at all, let alone reproduce itself from one day to the next, it requires legions of clerks with clockwork minds and clockwork hearts to pour their entire waking lives into it. How else would a hungry, young city set up payroll for navy officers, hire shipwrights, and write purchase orders to build and arm a fleet? Print a currency and set economic policies? Produce inocutions at scale—or grain, or chemical rocket arrows, or sailcloth—and stockpile the surplus for when it is needed most?”

  “You’ve made your point, but what does this have to do with the University?”

  “Where do you think the Ministry was first conceived of and developed?” Her mother retorted acidly. “Surely you don’t think its easy to hire a trained, literate staff from any old valley of millers, foresters and bargemen, do you? The bureaucracy was produced by Harmine.”

  Roxa ignored the barb. “So you want me to recruit clerks?”

  “I’ll take whoever you can give me. The important thing is that they are embedded at the University, because Harmine is the hub where all the Imperiat’s methods of control are researched and developed, and from which they are distributed. It is the drafting board of the architect, and we must have the blueprints, Roxa.”

  The Countess’s voice lowers, becomes insistent. “War is coming, one way or another. If luck and skill are with me, I may soon be across the negotiating table from the most predatory sociopaths in the world, and I assure you that when I am, the arithmetic of who can field the most trained killers will not compel me so much as the prospect of having leverage. The destructive power of the Imperiat war machine is unprecedented in history, and yet its very intricacy, centralization and scale make for bottlenecks, and bottlenecks beg for saboteurs, but saboteurs must know when and where to be. That is the kind of leverage that could prove to be the difference between our survival and our subjugation, rather than a garrison or ten.”

  Roxa’s brow furrows in understanding.

  Her mother watches her carefully. “There are one or two other candidates, Roxa. If you wish to say no, I’ll simply ask Countess Vara to attach you to her staff at Dropwater Pass.”

  “Vara?” Roxa frowns. “She was Mariah’s commander.”

  Sasha’s green eyes are intent. “She was.”

  “I’ll go to Harmine,” says Roxa simply. She turns to go. “Anything else?”

  Her mother doesn’t even blink. “We ride for Drago in two days time. Come say farewell?”

  Roxa packs her bags that night, and leaves at dawn.

  ~ ~ ~

  Catching her flushed and panting reflection the wall mirror, Roxa grimaced. In the term since her arrival, she hadn’t even tried to begin her assignment.

  Well, that wasn’t strictly true—she’d made a half-hearted appearance at one ga, thrown at the Harmine Equestrian Club a few weeks ago, tried to mingle, scan the room, eavesdrop, identify the factions, and map the flows in the ndscape of power, both informal and explicit.

  She’d barely been able to st half a bell before fleeing, first to her room and then to the Archives to search out Mi’s company and sink into it with barely concealed relief. When Mi had asked, Roxa made up some offhand lie about where she’d been, then immediately felt a crush of shame. Mariah must have been right about her, after all—she truly was a blind hypocrite, compining of false seemings and masks upon masks upon masks in others that she apparently couldn’t stand to see in herself.

  Roxa turned away, jaw tightening. She dropped to the wood-paneled floor and began huffing her way through push-ups.

  She felt so mixed up inside, caught between the looming imperatives of her duty and her mother’s iron will on one hand, and the tumultuous, roiling hurt and grief that seemed to flood her ribcage with unpredictable abandon on the other.

  Between what she was supposed to be and who she actually was.

  Rising, Roxa snatched her practice bde from the wall, took the wolverine guard, and began to flow through a sequence of thrusts and parries.

  Inside, she felt so raw and resentful towards her own sworn loyalties, so stripped of any motivation to compose her appearance, to dissemble, to court her enemies under the pretenses of allyship. Even worse, she was aware that her very reluctance to court connection among her peerage here was an anomaly, and she had already become an object of gossip.

  Roxa dropped into crow guard, and began another sequence, trying to move as smoothly as a pour of warm honey. It was ironic, she reflected bitterly, that since Tintagel she’d lost even more of her stomach for maneuvers of power as a result of Mariah’s harsh censure. What would her former lover think of that? What would her mother think?

  Roxa already knew. Weakness, caprice.

  Yet, she growled to herself as her arms began to ache, what was so weak about wanting to be herself for once? Not to be her mother’s daughter, nor the dutiful heir everyone seemed to want her to be, to the point of sinking barbed grudges into her flesh when she didn’t measure up, nor a trained and sworn bde of the realm, just...her.

  Just Roxa.

  And yet, who was that? She hardly knew what to make of herself in this strange University, this vast mechanism of an even vaster power. She’d not sat atop a horse in months, nor loped across a meadow in the purple dusk holding a brace of rabbits and a shortbow, nor whistled down the wind to soaring hawks. Nor, she thought ruefully, had she tumbled into bed with anyone in months, to match heartbeats and make music out of mingled passion.

  She put up her practice sword and paced the room, panting.

  She was used to being informed of exactly who she was, while ranging the hills and forested vales with her mother’s hearthsworn, while embedded in her mother’s retinue on diplomatic assignments, while assisting Luka, her mother’s spymaster, with assembling endless portfolios of reports and analysis.

  Now that solid ground—and confinement, she reminded herself insistently—was suddenly gone, and repced by gss shard memories, by muddles of hurt and confusion.

  The only salve she was finding amid the knives of doubt was the company of her new roommate. If Roxa was sure of anything, it was that Mi wasn’t vying for anything from her, didn’t need her to be anyone, had no context for her as anything other than a new and somewhat surprising friend.

  The stubborn set of Roxa’s frown melted as she remembered their first meeting.

  ~ ~ ~

  Roxa looks up at the knock. The door pushes open, and there is a slim girl with a tawny complexion and a gleaming fall of ringlet hair standing there, clutching a copy of the bursar’s room assignment chart in one hand. She is panting from dragging her trunk up the three flights of stairs and her face is carefully bnk.

  Roxa brightens, and unches an enthusiastic salvo of greetings, to which Mi responds neutrally, agreeable and bnd. Roxa helps her heave the trunk over to the foot of the bunkbed, then hovers around her like a nervous mother duck, trying to exude helpfulness.

  Is Mi hungry? Thirsty? How has her journey been? The roads are bumpy in a carriage, aren’t they? Roxa always feels so much better atop a horse, she’s practically grown up atop one—why did she say that? Stupid, stupid, only a spoiled noble brat would brag such a thing, totally unretable. Does Mi need anything? No?

  Gradually Mi’s bnk look eases, enough so that Roxa knows it to be a clever mask.

  “You don’t have to be so anxious,” she tells Roxa firmly. “I’m fine, really. Go sit down, there.” She points to the couch. “And no more clucking from you.”

  Roxa is so relieved to be bossed around, and not treated with distance or formality, that she obeys, sprawling out and watching Mi unpack her trunk.

  “Do you py cards?”

  Mi gnces up at her, and seems to come to a decision, because the gnce becomes a look, complete with a raised eyebrow and a dash of pity. “Everyone pys cards, dummy.”

  Roxa feels an easy grin spread across her face. “Not like me, they don’t.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Roxa hefted her bde and, gritting her teeth at the ache, extended her arm in a sloppy stop-thrust that would have made Verault, her mother’s master of arms, hiss at her in frustration. The weeks were slipping into months, with no progress made and no assets identified and her coded replies to her mother’s letters filling up with invented reasons, infted obstacles and contrived excuses.

  Part of her reasoned that there was some strategic value in deying work on her mother’s assignment—as a ranked noble from a foreign power, she was doubtlessly being watched, and how better to throw Ministry operatives off her trail and lull them into compcency?

  If she was being honest with herself, however, a rge part of her dey was the fear that Mi would realize who Roxa really was. Who she was letting herself be.

  (Hypocrite, the voice in her head spat at her, the one that sounded so much like Mariah.)

  Mi was no fool, Roxa knew. The serious-eyed Opali girl would retract from her as soon as she realized the risk. After all, Mi was well aware of how vulnerable she was at Harmine. It would be all too easy for someone in Roxa’s position to find something to hold over her head and use to exert power over her. She would certainly close herself off from her new friend, would have no choice but to transform their lively banter into guarded, stony silences.

  Roxa couldn’t bear the thought. She hated herself each time she imagined the newfound distance in Mi’s eyes, the quick, bleak shock and loss of newfound trust. It lingered like foul taste in her mind, a horrifying nightmare she couldn’t shake.

  And their trust was so tender and tentative, new and precious, dawning and easeful. Yes, Mi was clearly holding part of herself back, but Roxa couldn’t bme her for that. This wasn’t a safe pce. Roxa’s name and wealth allowed her to stay here in a particur way, and she tried as much as she could to extend that shelter, such as it was, but she knew that when she wasn’t around things could get scary for Mi.

  ~ ~ ~

  The steam rolls off the mugs as Roxa pours from the kettle.

  “Tea’s up!” she chirps.

  Early on, Roxa had noticed how much tea Mi drinks and decided she liked the ritual of it, so tea has fast become the thing they do together while studying, while pying cards, while gossiping, while getting ready for bed.

  She passes the mug and Mi reaches for it absently, her eyes flicking up from her notebook. As she does, the sleeve falls away from her wrist and Roxa sees the fresh bruising, the mottled imprint of fingers.

  “Mi,” she says quietly.

  “Hmm?” Mi looks up, catches the dark look on Roxa’s face, and realizes what has been seen.

  “Oh.” She takes a deep breath. “That.”

  “Um, yeah. That. What happened?”

  “A boy grabbed me in the refectory,” Mi mutters. “Threw me out of line.”

  “Fuck that.” Roxa’s fury is mounting. “Fuck that.”

  Mi looks at her oddly, mouth twisting. “It’s what happens here, you know.” She clears her throat. “To me.”

  “Not anymore,” Roxa announces hotly. “Whenever you go to the refectory, from now on, I’m going to. I don’t care if I have to skip csses. And if anyone tries to y a hand on you, I’ll rip their throat out.”

  Mi blinked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “Thank you, Roxa,” she said quietly, and Roxa’s heart thudded hard at the surprised warmth in her dark eyes.

  Right then and there, she promised herself she wouldn’t let Mi down like she had Mariah.

  ~ ~ ~

  Roxa sheathed her practice bde, breathing hard, and slumped down onto the floor to stretch. Admittedly, she was feeling quite dreamy-eyed about the pretty Opali girl. She knew that there was some delightful frisson of attraction between them, but Mi was especially close-mouthed about herself when it came to sex, and Roxa was not about to pry or push.

  Besides, there was that growing fear, sharp and acrid behind her aching breastbone, that Mariah’s parting shots had begun to haunt her with—what if Mi couldn’t ever really be herself with Roxa? And wouldn’t ever really trust her?

  Groaning, Roxa rose to her feet and headed to the washroom at the end of the hall. She had tried to be vigint about accompanying Mi to the refectory, but she was painfully aware that the Opali girl probably didn’t expect the streak to continue.

  And yet Roxa so badly wanted to make Mi’s firm, serious mouth turn up at the corners, to make her roommate’s eyes fsh hopeful like that again, to hear her voice catch with unexpected gratitude.

  Mariah’s voice in her head, muttering that anything Roxa didn’t have to do, she probably wouldn’t, because she didn’t need to. Soon enough she would be a Countess, after all.

  No, Roxa argued fiercely back. I will. I will protect my only friend.

  Is she really your friend, if she doesn’t trust you? That’s not a retionship, it’s a transaction. Sound familiar?

  Roxa heaved a sigh, and headed back to her room to dress. There was no parrying that jab. Good touch, Mariah. That’s a point.

  ChaoticArmcandy