There in the middle of the bakery, carefully licking frosting off her fingers, is a little girl no more than three or four years old. Her clothes are filthy and ragged, her curly hair a wild mane of tangles that reach her waist.
No Alek. No soldiers. No Lady Karyl.
Oh good. Now I have more questions.
I ease down a few more steps, and she spots me. Her eyes grow wide and she gasps, her expression trapped in that moment between fear and curiosity. I know it well from Nora.
I may not know how to stop an assassination, but I know how to be a big sister. I don’t want her to be afraid of me, so I smile. “Where didyoucome from?” I whisper, peeking around like we’re co-conspirators.
“I’m sneaking,” she says.
“I see that.” I hesitate. “Can I have a sweetcake, too?”
She studies me for a moment, then must decide I’m acceptable, because she smiles back and nods.
I come down into the bakery and take one off the platter. The fire in the hearth has gone to embers, but up close, I can see that the girl’s hair is as red as Alek’s. “I’m Callyn,” I say. “What’s your name?”
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Callyn,” she says prettily, then curtsies as perfectly as a noble from one of the Royal Houses, completely at odds with the stained and wrinkled skirts she’s wearing—or the fact that we’re standing in the middle of my littlebakery, and I’m no lady. I smile, bemused, until she adds in her tiny voice, “My name is Sinna Cataleha, but that takes too long, so everyone calls me Sinna.”
My heart stops before she gets to the end of that sentence. I’m frozen in place. That bite of sweetcake turns to stone in my mouth.
I have to force myself to speak. “Sinna?” I say, and my voice is strangled. “Sinna, like the princess?”
She nods emphatically and takes another sweetcake. “Mama says we’re playing a game with Da, but I don’t like it very much.”
I don’t know what to do. Why would the princess be inside my bakery in the middle of the night? Where did she come from? We’refour hoursfrom the Crystal Palace!
While I’m standing there deliberating, I hear a shout from outside—followed by a woman yelling. The voice is raw and strangled—andloud. “Where is she? What did you do to her?”
Soldiers are shouting now, too. They’re going to wake Nora.
Sinna’s face turns white, and she drops the sweetcake. Her voice is a whispered rush. “Mama is cross.”
Mama. The queen.
I’m suremyface is white.
I don’t know what’s happening, but I do know I don’t want to be a part of it.
The woman outside is still shouting, her tone turning panicked. “I have done as you asked! You willgive me back my daughter!” she screams in rage. “You willlet me go!”
Sinna’s lower lip begins to tremble.
I scoop her into my arms. “Let’s go make sure your Mama is all right.”
I expect her to struggle, but she wraps her arms around my neck, tangling her sticky fingers in my hair. I burst through the door and a dozen crossbows are suddenly pointed in my direction.
A dozen more are pointed at the woman standing in the barn doorway. Her skirts are as rumpled and filthy as Sinna’s, but there’s no mistaking the power in her stance, the assuredness of her expression, as if being queen was a quality that could fill the very air around her.
“Don’t shoot!” I cry. “The princess snuck into the bakery.”
“Oh, Sinna,” the queen says, her voice half relieved, half a sob.
One of the guards approaches me. “I’ll take her.”
Sinna cringes away from him, clutching my neck and squealing.
“Don’t youtouchher,” the queen says, and there’s a vicious note in her voice that makes me shiver—and makes the guard hesitate.
