News raced through the kingdom that Prince Etianiel had retaken Siu Ferel and hung the Helat invaders from its ramparts. Every peasant from the delta to the City of Blood celebrated the second coming of the warrior strong god. Josean had returned. Wild, glorious tales of the crown prince’s victory circulated throughout the kingdom.

  Following on the heels of this news, Pasiona received a missive from her husband.

  Etian’s only reference to the battle was, The Helat are stunning warriors. The letter contained nothing of his own exploits, though this was no surprise, as Etian rarely had anything to say about a fight or match after it concluded. The rest of the missive simply informed her that there were no women in Siu Ferel with whom he had been intimate or planned to be intimate, and urged her to stay away from the queen and her Thorns.

  Etian had warned her of the woman before they parted as well, but thus far his concerns had come to nothing. Pasiona and the queen rarely crossed paths. She had seen Jadarah twice since Etian left—at the feast the day the king returned from grafting his new Royal Thorns and again during the Festival of Springlight.

  The victory at Siu Ferel called for another feast, albeit a slightly less well-attended one than the Springlight celebration. Except for the dispossessed Lord of Siu Ferel, most of the lords of the Kingdom of Night had returned home for the summer to assemble entirely new standing armies from the dregs of their populace. In the absence of their fighting men enforcing law and order, highwaymen and marauders were becoming an increasing problem. The peasants were growing restless. They served their lords under the promise of protection, but their crops were burning and their families were being slaughtered while their lords did nothing.

  Pasiona heard little of this discussed at the feast, however. When the noblewomen spoke of their husbands’ absence, it was only as a welcome relief on household gambling and whoring expenditures, which soared when the men were daily in one another’s company. Not to mention it gave the ladies undivided time to devote to their own torrid liaisons.

  Briefly, Pasiona had considered taking a lover until Etian returned. Her desire had been running wild in her pregnancy, sending her orgasmic dreams that woke her in the depths of the day, which somehow only fanned the flames.

  Etian’s letter hadn’t asked whether she was refraining from other men, and she doubted he would object anyway. Except for that one brief, terrifying moment when she had asked about his sister, he’d never demanded anything of her.

  And yet he was refraining from other women.

  In the end, Pasiona couldn’t bring herself to indulge. There was a chance that Etian loved her, and that his firm resolve against taking a mistress was a manifestation of that love.

  Perhaps she was deluding herself. The Josean-blessed were not known for their romantic fancies. But there was the letter to her alone, brought by a Royal Thorn who had claimed to carry only it and a report for the king. And Etian’s concern that she could be somehow hurt by Queen Jadarah.

  A strange fear, indeed. The queen was disgusting, but hardly frightening. Pasiona had heard of women who suffered nausea during their pregnancies; she hadn’t experienced that ailment until Jadarah took Etian’s empty seat beside Pasiona.

  “A glorious feast, is it not?” The queen waved her goblet at the merriment. “Minstrels, performers, dancers rejoicing in blood-soaked victory. All that’s missing is the blind prince to absorb his worship.”

  Pasiona set aside the soft bit of bread she’d been dipping in her garlic soup, her stomach revolting at the mingled scents of death and sex that hung around Jadarah like a shroud. She swallowed the sudden rush of nauseous saliva and switched to breathing through her mouth.

  “I am certain my husband prefers the battlefield to celebrations.”

  Jadarah hmmed, a parody of sympathy in her tone. “But what does the princess of ice prefer?”

  “Are you referring to me or Princess Kelena?”

  “Don’t play coy. You’ve heard what they say about you in the court.” Jadarah leaned closer and whispered, “Of course, we both know they couldn’t be more wrong, don’t we?”

  Pasiona fixed a bored expression on her face. “I cannot imagine what you mean.”

  Jadarah chuckled.

  “She can’t imagine and she doesn’t wake up crying out from passionate dreams that show her exactly what I speak of.” The queen traced the shell of Pasiona’s ear and down her throat, making the princess’s skin crawl. “But no blind prince to soothe the ache. Poor frozen flame.” She stroked Pasiona’s hair. “Doesn’t she know a lover could quench the fire until her blind prince returns? Thorns are abundant here, and they crackle and burn hotter than any other.”

  “I have finished with this conversation.” Pasiona stood, her stomach roiling, and bowed coldly to the queen. “Your Majesty.”

  “Watch them sometime, princess of ice.” Jadarah’s purring voice somehow managed to follow Pasiona through the music and the noise of the crowd. “Open the hidden door in the Corridor of Portraits, and you’ll see how hot Thorns burn.”

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  ***

  Pasiona had no intention of finding out what the queen had meant. Unfortunately, with Etian on the northern front, she also had little to occupy her time. The renovations to the Sangmere nursery had been completed swiftly and efficiently, even with her myriad demands. Reading, art, and embroidery failed to hold her attention, and she couldn’t stand to parade around with the other nobles, making sure she was seen in her best dresses and gossiping about what everyone else had chosen to be seen in.

  She was restless and bored. Although she was disgusted by the queen’s attempt to pry into her affairs, the thought of finding a hidden door was intriguing.

  The Overlook, her family’s mansion in the heart of the House Skalia holding, contained a handful of hidden passageways, though they weren’t truly secret, just cleverly concealed shortcuts to allow servants to move from the kitchens to the ballroom or dining hall without being seen. As a child, she had used them to eavesdrop and spy on festivities she had been too young to attend.

  She had been in Castle Sangmere’s Corridor of Portraits on multiple occasions, but she had never seen anything that hinted at a hidden door. Furthermore, she could see no logic in connecting a remote and rarely used hallway full of old paintings to anywhere else in the palace.

  To search the door out might be diverting. An intellectual exercise. In any case, it would be better than another hour of boredom.

  The passage was better hidden than she expected. There were no telltale gaps or drafts as there were around the secret doors in her former home. It took four nights of scouring the walls before Pasiona spotted the worn gilt on the lower corner of the frame enclosing a portrait of some ancient king whose name she did not care enough to wonder at.

  She pressed the corner.

  The frame shifted. There was a click inside the woodwork that she felt more than heard.

  The bottom half of the portrait and the wall below it swung open silently. Perhaps the servants kept the hinges oiled in order to come and go without disturbing the nobles.

  Suddenly, Pasiona felt eyes on her back. She looked down the corridor first one way, then the other. No one. The only ones watching her were monarchs long dead, their eyes shiny and crazed by cracking paint.

  Casting a final glance over her shoulder, Pasiona stepped into the dark passageway.

  ***

  Exploring Sangmere’s secret passages proved to be more than the brief diversion of a single night. Unlike the short servant corridors Pasiona had known as a child, this was a sprawling network of routes through the castle. The tunnels narrowed in some places, widened in others, climbed and burrowed. She found exits in the tower, the dungeons, the corridors outside the feasting hall, the royal residences, and the courtyard. Whenever she believed she had explored the passages to their limits, she found a new offshoot.

  She never once saw evidence of another person using the passages. The queen obviously knew about them, but Pasiona never caught sight nor scent of the woman there.

  During her second week of exploring the secret passages, Pasiona’s shoulder brushed a strange protrusion on the wall, eliciting a grating sound. A sliver of light appeared.

  She ran her hand over the area and found a small knob. Sliding it farther opened a narrow slot. She leaned down to look through.

  The slot opened high on the wall of the castle kitchens. The scent of baking bread wafted through, making her mouth water. Below, cooks rushed to prepare the upcoming meal while boys fed the fire and maids scoured pots. One boy snatched a pastry, unseen, while a cook’s back was turned. A cook shoved a spoon down the back of her collar and scratched between her shoulder blades before returning the spoon to the pottage she was stirring. A maid and young man made meaningful signs at one another whenever they believed they were unobserved, then finally made separate excuses before skulking out, no doubt to meet and argue somewhere more private.

  It wasn’t until the food transitioned from the ovens and fires to tureens and trays that Pasiona realized how long she had been enthralled by the simple domestic service.

  The secret passage became more interesting every night. She found dozens more view ports. She saw visiting dignitaries hunched over writing desks covered in parchment, listened to them plotting with their spies. She watched nobles in residence using bloodslaves as if they were living whores. Or beating them. Or hacking them to pieces. Or, in one case, hurling hideous verbal attacks that were clearly meant for someone else until the noble was red in the face.

  One port revealed a handsome tower room furnished in blues and pinks, but completely uninhabited. She tried it several times of night and day, but no one ever appeared.

  The barracks of the Royal Thorns were particularly entertaining. As disgusted as she was by the queen, Pasiona could now understand what she’d meant by Thorns burning hot. Some of the men went through three or four women a night when they were off duty—and not all of those were common girls or servants. Ladies of the peerage visited as well, many of them leaving behind valuable tokens of their satisfaction that, Pasiona learned from listening to the men badger each other, were frequently pawned to supplement their wages.

  When they weren’t fornicating as if the world were about to end, the Thorns gambled, drank, joked, squabbled, read, mended their uniforms, or sharpened their swords. Pasiona found herself caught up in their petty inter-guard dramas. Things like who had a new sweetheart, who had lost his shirt at cards, and who was ploughing lady rivals and would get their eyes scratched out if either noblewoman found him out.

  The day she opened a view port and saw King Hazerial on the other side, her heart stopped. But the sovereign didn’t immediately lock eyes with her and use the Blood of the Strong Gods to turn her body inside out. He was occupied.

  Young, beautiful men and women were scattered across the floor of his bedchamber, their skin white as snow, their throats torn out. One straddled his lap, her arms and legs hanging limply, while he gulped the blood directly from her neck.

  The queen’s chamber, when Pasiona found it, was infinitely worse. Bodies littered the floor, some so bloated with decay that she couldn’t tell whether they were man, woman, or child. Rays of ghostlight flickered off the walls, making the corpses look as if they were gasping for air. The queen and one of her Thorns were making vigorous use of the chamber, though Pasiona couldn’t imagine how the young man kept from vomiting. A glimpse of his face showed he entertained similar doubts as to whether he could keep down his gorge.

  When Jadarah plunged the knife into his bowels, the matter was decided for him.

  Choking back a startled scream, Pasiona fled the passage. She barely made it back to the garderobe in her own chambers before violently emptying her stomach.

  If she lived a thousand years, Pasiona vowed as she wiped her mouth with a shaking hand, that was one section of secret passages she would never return to.