Nina wasn’t sure how to answer. For a long while she’d startled every time she glimpsed herself in the mirror, when she caught sight of the pale blue eyes, the silky fall of straight blond hair. But the longer she played Mila, the easier it became, and sometimes that scared her. Who will I be when I return to Ravka? Who am I now?
“I’m beginning to forget what I looked like,” she said. “But trust me, I was gorgeous.”
Hanne took her hand. “You still are.”
The door flew open and Ylva bustled in, trailed by maids, their arms full of dresses.
Hanne and Nina leapt up from the bench, watching the maids heap piles of silk and tulle onto the bed.
“Oh, Mila, you’ve worked wonders!” Ylva said when she saw Hanne’s gilded cheeks. “She looks like a princess.”
Hanne smiled, but Nina saw the way her fists clenched. What have we gotten ourselves into? Heartwood might give them everything they wanted—access to Vadik Demidov, a chance to locate Queen Tatiana’s love letters. But what had seemed like a straight path felt more like a maze. Nina picked up the amber curl Hanne had dropped onto the dressing table and slipped it into her pocket. Whatever happens, I’ll find a way out, she vowed. For both of us.
* * *
Maidenswalk took place in the grand ballroom in the royal palace, just a short walk from their rooms on the White Island. Nina had been here before in a different disguise, dressed as a member of the notorious Menagerie. That had been during Hringk?lla, a raucous party full of indulgence. This afternoon was a more staid affair. Noble families packed the alcoves. A long, pale gray carpet stretched the length of the room, pausing at a giant fountain in the shape of two dancing wolves, and then rolling on to the dais where the royal family sat. Gathered there, the Grimjers looked like a beautiful collection of dolls—all blond, blue-eyed, and sylphlike. They liked to claim Hedjut blood, and the evidence could be seen in the tawny warmth of the king’s complexion and the younger son’s thick curls. The little boy was tugging on his mother’s elegant hand as she laughed at his antics. He was sturdy and rosy-cheeked. The same could not be said for the crown prince. Prince Rasmus, lanky and sallow, looked almost green against the alabaster throne he sat beside his father.
Through a tall, peaked window, Nina could just see the gleam of the moat that surrounded the White Island, covered in a thin skin of frost. The moat itself was ringed by a circle of buildings—the embassy sector, the prison sector, and the drüskelle sector—all of them protected by the Ice Court’s supposedly impenetrable wall. It was said the capital had been built to symbolize the rings of Djel’s sacred ash, but Nina preferred to think of it the way Kaz had: the rings of a target.
The young women participating in Heartwood gathered with their parents in the back of the ballroom.
“They’re all staring at me,” said Hanne. “I’m too old for this.”
“No, you are not,” said Nina. It was true that most of the girls seemed to be a few years younger, and they were all shorter.
“I look like a giant.”
“You look like the warrior queen Jamelja come down from the ice. And all these little girls with their simpers and blond curls look like undercooked puddings.”
Ylva laughed. “That’s unkind, Mila.”
“You’re right,” said Nina, then added beneath her breath, “But it’s also accurate.”
“Hanne?” A pretty girl in pale pink wearing enormous diamonds approached them. “I don’t know if you remember me. I was at the convent two years ago.”
“Bryna! Of course I remember, but I thought … What are you doing here?”
“Trying to catch a husband. I’ve been traveling with my family since I left the convent, so I’m a bit late to all of this.”
Ylva smiled. “Then you can be late together. We’ll leave you now, but we’ll be waiting for you after the processional.”
Nina gave Hanne a wink, and then she and Ylva went to join Brum, where he stood with a general and an older drüskelle named Redvin, who had trained with Brum in their youth. He was a spiteful, humorless stick of a man, and his constant demeanor of bitter resignation entertained Nina to no end. She delighted in being as ridiculous as possible around him.
“Isn’t it all glorious, Redvin?” she exclaimed breathlessly.
“If you say so.”
“Don’t they all look just splendid?”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
He looked like he wanted to hurl himself over a cliff rather than spend another minute with her. A girl had to take her pleasures where she could.
Brum handed Nina a glass of sickly sweet punch. If he was troubled by the Fjerdan defeats at Nezkii and Ulensk, he hid it well. It would have been nice to string up the fox on our first hunt, he had said when he returned from the front. But now we know what the Ravkan forces can do. They won’t be ready for us next time.
Nina had smiled and nodded and thought to herself, We’ll see.
“Is it hard to watch another woman swathed in silks and made the center of attention?” he asked, his voice low and uncomfortably intimate.
“Not when it’s Hanne.” That had come out with an edge on it, and she felt Brum stiffen beside her. Nina bit her tongue. Some days meekness was harder than others. “She is a good soul and deserves every indulgence. These luxuries are not meant for such as me.”
Brum relaxed. “You deal unfairly with yourself. You would look most fetching in ivory silk.”
Nina wished she could blush on command. She had to settle for a maidenly giggle and staring down at the toes of her shoes. “The fashions of the court are far more suited to Hanne’s figure.”
Nina expected Brum to wave away her talk of fashion, but instead the glint in his eye was calculating. “You are not wrong. Hanne has flourished under your tutelage. I never believed she could make much of a match, but you’ve changed all of that.”
Nina’s gut twisted. Maybe she was jealous. The idea of Hanne being paired off with some nobleman or military commander tied her stomach in knots. But what if Hanne could be happy here, happy with her family, with a husband to love her? What if she could finally find the acceptance she’d sought for so long? Besides, it wasn’t as if she and Nina were going to have a future together, since Nina had every intention of murdering her father.
“You look so fierce,” Brum said with a laugh. “Where do your thoughts carry you?”
To your prolonged humiliation and early death. “I hope she finds someone worthy of her. I only want the best for Hanne.”
“As do we both. And we shall have some new dresses cut for you as well.”
“Oh no, that isn’t necessary!”
“It is what I wish. Would you deny me?”
I would push you into the sea and do a jig as you drowned. But Nina turned her eyes up to him, wide and thrilled, a young woman flustered and overwhelmed by a great man’s attention. “Never,” she said on a breath.
Brum’s eyes strayed slowly over her face, her neck, and lower. “Fashion may favor a trimmer figure, but men do not care for fashion.”
Nina wanted to crawl right out of her skin, but she knew this game now. Brum wasn’t interested in beauty or desire. All he cared about was power. It excited him to think of her as prey, pinned by his gaze as a wolf might trap a lesser creature with its paw. It pleased him to think of offering Mila gifts she could never afford, of making her grateful.