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“The lights are still burning in the windows of the town,” he said. “How can so many things have happened and yet it isn’t even midnight?”

“What has happened?” I asked, as I sat down upon a padded stool. “Tell me.”

“I’ve been speaking with all of them,” he said. “My father.” His voice stumbled slightly on the word. “My mother and brother. Do you have any idea what it’s like to look into someone else’s face and see your own gazing back?”

“No,” I answered quietly. “Everyone says I look like my mother, but it’s not the same thing.”

“I have been given my own suite of rooms,” Raoul said. “Not far from Prince Pascal’s, A guard to keep me safe.”

“Safe,” I said. “From what?”

Raoul turned to face me then, and I could see the strange and tortured expression in his eyes.

“I have just come from speaking with the queen,” he said. “She wanted us to speak, privately. No one was present, except for your father. She says, the queen, my mother says . . .” Raoul’s voice faltered, then steadied. “That I am the elder son. That is why your father took me, all those years ago. To keep me safe. It is I who should be king when my father dies and not Pascal.”

So,
I thought.
It is as my stepmother and Niccolo thought.
The queen would try to place Raoul upon the throne. Use him to perform a coup, now that her brother’s armies had been destroyed.

What kind of a woman could do such a thing?
I wondered. To achieve her own ambition, she had deprived one son of his childhood birthright. Now, she would pit him against the brother he had barely begun to know. If she broke the king’s heart in the process, so much the better. And Etienne de Brabant had been her instrument. My father, who no longer seemed to have any heart at all.

She does not care about you, Raoul
I thought.
All she cares about is that we are all under her control.

“You say you have just come from her?” I said. “She has just sent for Pascal. I wonder how she will tell him what she has told you.”

“You have seen the prince?” Raoul asked, surprised. And I could not help but notice that, in spite of what he now believed he could claim for himself, he still spoke as if there was only one.

I nodded. “I came from him just now. We did not plan to meet. It just sort of . . . happened.”

Before I understood what he intended, Raoul crossed the room and caught my face between his hands, tilting it toward the candlelight.

“You love him!” he exclaimed. “I can see it in your face. You met him for the first time tonight, and yet you love him already.”

“It didn’t take you much longer to fall in love
with Anastasia,” I remarked. “Let go, Raoul You’re pinching my chin. Besides, you know what I look like.”

“No,” he said, drawing out the syllable as he released me. “I don’t think I do. Not altogether. Not quite.” He stepped back, but his eyes stayed on my face. “Does it hurt, this newfound love?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” I admitted.

“Does he love you?”

“I think he does.”

“You might be queen someday then,” Raoul said. “If not for me.”

“Oh, will you stop being so stupid?” I exclaimed crossly, as I stood up. “I don’t care about that and you should know it. Neither will you, if you are smart. You have only the queen’s word about the fact that you are firstborn, Raoul. If she’s demonstrated anything, it’s that she’s someone its not safe to trust.

“What will you do if Pascal and your father object to this sudden rearranging of things? Will you fight them?”

“I don’t know what I’ll do!” Raoul cried out, his voice anguished. “How can I? For as long as I can remember, I’ve wished for just one thing, and you know it as well as I do. The same thing, year in, year out. Now, in the blink of an eye, my wish has been answered. I know who I am. I woke up a stable boy, but I’ll go to bed a prince. Who is to say that I might not be king one day besides?”

“So you would fight, “I said. “You would make war
on your father and brother. The queen will have no more need for foreign mercenaries. She will get you to do her fighting for her.”

“Rilla,” Raoul said, and at the sound of my childhood nickname, my heart gave a pang. “Don 11 have the right to claim what is mine?”

“Of course you do,” I said. I went to him, my feet awkward with only one shoe, and laid a hand upon his arm. I felt the way his own trembled as he laid it over mine. “But surely not at any cost. That day we stood in the pumpkin patch and saw the ships, we made a wish together, the only time we’ve ever wished for the same thing in all our lives. We wished to find a way to make the fighting stop.

“The queen is just trying to use you, don’t you see? She doesn’t love you any more than my father loves me. She is the one who has deprived you of your birthright, not your father or brother. She sent you away, when she should have kept you close.”

Raoul stood absolutely motionless, staring down at me with devastated eyes. “I thought you would be happy for me,” he said. “I thought you would want what I want.”

“Not if it means you’re going to fight your own brother, Raoul,” I said. “Not if it means starting a war and tearing the country apart.”

“It’s because you love him, isn’t it?” he asked. He dropped his hand from my arm and stepped away. “It’s because you love Pascal.”

“It’s because I love
you.”
I said at once. “Of course
I am happy that you have finally discovered who you really are. But I can hardly rejoice if you plan to fight the father and brother you’ve only just found. How can that be what you want for yourself? How can that be who you truly are?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Raoul said.

“No,” I replied. “You don’t. But no matter who you are, you are answerable to yourself.”

“You’ll go to him, won’t you?” he suddenly challenged. “As soon as I leave this room, you’ll go to Pascal. You’11 find him and warn him.”

“I honestly don’t know what I’ll do.” I sighed. “You’re my oldest and dearest friend, Raoul. I have loved you for almost as long as I have been alive. Don’t ask me to choose between an old love and the new. That’s no choice at all, and in your heart, you know it.”

I watched the struggle come and go across his face. “I will think about what you have said,” Raoul answered finally. “Please—I would like to ask you to do nothing tonight. Please wait, give me time to think, and let us speak again in the morning.”

“Is it the new prince or my old friend who asks me this?” I said.

“It is both,” Raoul replied. “I’m trying to find the way to make them both fit inside my skin. It’s harder than I thought. I haven’t learned how to be both yet. Please, Rilla. Give me some time.”

“Very well,” I said. “I will give you until tomorrow, as you ask.”

“Thank you, Rilla.” Raoul said. “You are a good friend.”

“And you are good at getting your own way,” I replied.

For a moment, I thought he would say something more, then I saw the way his eyes shifted to take in something over my shoulder.

“It must be midnight,” he said. “The lights are going out.”

I turned to face the city then, and saw that he was right. Through the window of our suite of rooms, I could see the lights in the town below us begin to go out, one by one. Then, as if a great wind had suddenly come up, the streets went dark, all at once. I felt a quick shiver slide straight down my back.

It looks like an omen,
I thought. Of what, I wasn’t sure I cared to guess.

I turned back toward Raoul, and heard the click of the closing door.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Anastasia’s voice said.

“Yes,” I said. “He’s gone.” I turned to face her, saw the tears upon her cheeks. “If you love him, go after him,” I said. “Don’t let him go.”

“How can I?” she said in a low and tortured voice. “I made so much of the differences between us. What will he think if I go after him now?”

“You’ll never know unless you do it,” I said. “Help him, Anastasia. Don’t throw away love.”

“I’ll never understand why you don’t hate me,” she said. “But I’ll tell you this. I’m grateful that you don’t.”

She moved swiftly to the door and pulled it open. “Raoul,” she called in a low voice.

The moment she stepped into the hall, I knew he had turned back. Anastasia darted forward, and I moved to stand in the open door. I saw the way she moved toward him swiftly, then faltered. And as she did, Raoul stepped forward in his turn, and pulled her into his arms. She put her head upon his shoulder. He, an arm around her waist. Entirely heedless of the guard who still stood several respectful paces off, they moved off together down the hall.

I’ll never know what made me sense the danger. A change in the air, perhaps. A strange scent. An unexpected hint of sound. It didn’t matter, as it turned out. Because I wasn’t quick enough. Before I quite realized what was happening, something thick and dark and stifling was being thrown over my head. Strong arms banded around mine from behind. I felt myself being lifted, kicked out once, and felt my second shoe go flying. I heard the chime of broken glass as it crashed to the floor.

And then, nothing.

It was Anastasia who first told me the story of what happened next, who helped me see what I could not. How, after settling things between them, pledging to love each other now and forever, no matter who they were or might become, she and Raoul had walked back to the rooms we shared and there discovered the heel of one glass shoe and a scatter of broken glass outside our door.

When a quick and frantic search failed to produce any additional sign of me, Raoul did not hesitate, but, accompanied by my stepmother and stepsisters, went directly to the king and Prince Pascal, He told them of the queen’s treachery, of his fear that my father had seized me and carried me from the palace. The king sent for my father at once. When he did not answer the summons, when he, too, could not be found, Raoul knew his worst fears had been realized.

“Where would he take her?” Pascal asked, the fear in his eyes and in his voice telling anyone with eyes and ears of their own all they needed to know about what was in his heart, “He could be anywhere by now. Where would he go?”

“I think I know the answer to that,” Raoul had
said. “He will take her to the great stone house by the sea. He will take her home.”

“Then we must go after her at once,” Pascal said.

“If I may, Your Highness.” Amelie had surprised them all by speaking up. At a gesture from Pascal to continue, she turned to Raoul. “You should take Niccolo. He will want to help. And he knows the road better than you do.”

“That is a good thought,” Raoul said at once. “And let us send for Old Mathilde.” He turned back to Pascal. “She raised Cendrillon. No one knows her better or loves her more.”

“I will trust your judgment in this,” Pascal said.

And so Niccolo and Mathilde were sent for. As soon as they arrived, the party set off, the two princes and Niccolo taking swift horses and riding ahead, my stepmother, stepsisters, and Old Mathilde following in a carriage. Only the king stayed behind. His first act once the others had departed was to see that the queen was close confined. Save for the members of her immediate household, all carefully selected by the king, she was never seen in public again.

The story I told in return goes like this: That I awakened to find myself slung across the back of my father’s horse like an unwanted parcel. All that night, and all the day that followed, Etienne de Brabant spurred his horse along the road. His only concession to my presence was to allow me to sit up behind him once he knew I was awake.

Just before nightfall at the end of the second day,
we came to the great stone house. The journey had taken a full day less than the one which had brought me to the palace in the first place, so great was my father’s desire to reach his destination. Etienne de Brabant dismounted, pulled me from the horse, carried me up the steps. With one booted foot, he kicked open the front door, all but scaring the wits out of Susanne, who had come to see what all the commotion was about, and had gotten no farther than the great hall.

At a sharp command, she scurried to get out of the way. My father set me down. Then, with a yank that had my head rocking on my shoulders, he set off across the great hall and up the stairs that led to the second story. Down the corridor to the very end we went, until at last we stood outside my mother’s door.

“Open it,” he commanded.

But I heard what was in his voice. I had been frightened when my father first seized me, and for many moments on our long, wild ride. But I was not afraid of anything within the great stone house, not even him, and it was fear that I heard inside my father’s voice. Fear of what he had tried, without success, to lock away from the world, and from himself. And so I lifted my chin and stepped back.

“I am not the one who is afraid of what lies beyond that door,” I said. “Open it yourself.”

He started then, staring at me as if seeing me for the very first time. Not as what he had imagined for nearly sixteen long years, but as what I truly was:
Constanze d’Este’s daughter, his own true child. For the time it took my heart to beat six times, he did not move. Then, slowly, my father reached out, seized the latch, lifted it up, and opened my mother’s bedroom door.