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I could tell that she spent these empty hours imagining the most painful ways to exact retribution.

“Is that why you keep asking for me?” I kept my voice mild as I approached the table, my little carrying case bobbing against my thigh. “You wanted a card partner?”

Stian smiled around a sigh. Then he lifted his eyes.

My grip contracted around the carrying case. Now that I’d made the connection, I couldn’t deny how similar those eyes were to Erik’s. Not just their pale shade, but their shape and intensity.

“Actually,” he said, that piercing gaze roaming over me, “I wanted to see how you were faring.”

“And?” My voice took on its honeyed courtier’s lilt. “What’s your professional assessment?”

“Tiredness around the eyes. Pallor to your skin.” Stian set down his cards, his forehead creasing with concern. “I take it he still hasn’t woken?”

My specter flurried, pained. But I kept my expression neutral as I glanced at Osana. She nodded, and then looked pointedly at the guards, who filed out in a clank of armor.

Osana looked over her shoulder at the doorway, her bonestone hair ring poking from the back of her braids. She gave me a look that said, I’ll be right outside. Then the door clicked shut.

Stian’s soft chuckle filled the silence. “The Verenian outfit,” he mused, “the emptying of the room . . . You certainly know how to make an impression.”

“I learned from the best.”

“Erik?” he asked.

“Carmen,” I corrected, then watched with satisfaction as Stian’s smile fell.

As I pulled out the opposite chair, I glimpsed the thick chain that connected Stian’s ankles. They’d taken his Gallery brooch, along with the penny blossom brooch behind it, but not for any symbolic reason. The brooch’s sharp pin would’ve been more useful to him than the actual immunity. As I’d known from my first day in Ansora, the Gallery protected a person from every territory except the empire itself.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t come here to play.” I swept the cards aside, ruining his game, and reached into the carrying case. I withdrew a folded paper and set it before him.

He eyed it warily. “What is this?”

I took out the quill and inkwell, followed by fresh parchment. “Your next letter to Erik.”

Stian’s gaze flicked up, skewering me over the rims of his spectacles.

Erik had inadvertently done me a service by returning every letter his father had sent him. We’d found their correspondence stashed in Stian’s private chambers—the evidence Mara would have used to prove Erik’s ancestry and dethrone him for good.

But that was not how I intended to use the letters.

For days, I’d been studying the correspondence, analyzing how the father and son spoke to each other. The words I’d written inside this folded parchment sounded as close to Stian’s as I could manage. Yet I couldn’t fake his handwriting.

Stian clasped his hands over the table, giving another faint smile. “You know I won’t write this. Just as I know that you won’t attempt to force me.”

“Erik would want me to.” I ran the quill’s feather through my fingers. “However much he despises the Hunters, he’s always liked the side of me that most resembles them.”

Stian nodded slowly and sat back. “Go ahead, then.” He made a flourishing gesture. “Torture me into it.”

I looked him over. He’d apparently been a perfect prisoner these last few days—cooperative, composed, as amiable as ever. I didn’t need to wonder why.

He thought his imprisonment was temporary. He may have lost the battle, but he believed his son would win the war.

I pushed the parchment closer to him, matching his smile. “Read the letter first. You might change your mind.”

“There is nothing you can say—”

“Read the letter, Sebastian.”

He flinched.