“But then Prince Heinrich came to my room.” Oliver reached under his jacket and pulled out the dull purple cape he had stuffed there for safekeeping. “Wearing this. It makes you invisible.” Karl’s daughter clapped her hands in delight, and Simon looked like he would have done the same if not for his crutches. “King Gregor had decided to execute us.” This did not make Karl’s daughter clap. “But Heinrich owed Father his life. He claims that once the king has had time to think, he will go easier on us. He and Crown Prince Galen will argue with the king on our behalf.”

“It was the crown prince himself who set us free,” Johan said. “He marched right into the jail, and all the guards went to sleep like new lambs. He opened our cell, told us where to meet young Oliver, and then saw us out the door like we had been guests in his home.”

“So, it’s good news,” Ilsa said doubtfully.

“We’re wanted men,” Karl told her.

“You have been for years,” she scoffed.

“But now we’re wanted men who’ve escaped jail,” Karl clarified. “And who are to wait and see if two princes can argue their father-in-law to amnesty.”

“Princes can be rather flighty,” Ilsa said sagely. She had been born and raised in the forest, and Oliver’s parents were the closest she had ever come to nobility, let alone royalty.

“So, now what?” Simon looked disgusted. “We all just sit here and wait to see if the king forgives you?”

“More or less,” Oliver said. “They’ll send someone with the new verdict to the place where Petunia’s coach got smashed.” He turned to Karl. “We’ll have to keep a watch on it. But not for a few days. The king is hunting, and the princes will be at the grand duchess’s estate with their wives.”

Karl grunted. “We watch that spot anyway,” he said with a shrug. “It’s not far from where we wait for likely coaches.”

Oliver shook his head. “Just have the sentries watch that one spot. We won’t need to know about any other coaches.”

“What do you mean?” Simon looked from Oliver to Karl. “Did they give you money?”

“Think, Simon,” Oliver said. “We’re trying to convince the king to forgive us for robbing all those coaches for all those years. In order to show him that we’re penitent, we need to stop robbing coaches.”

“But what will we live on?” Simon wanted to know.

Oliver rubbed his face, wondering if he had lines etched at the corners of his mouth the way Johan did. He felt like it. He felt like he was a hundred years old. He took a breath and let it out.

“Well, you tell me,” he said to his little brother. “Haven’t you begun taking over the steward’s duties? What have we got? How long will it last?”

Simon thought for a moment. “We’ve got potatoes,” he said. “Lots of dried things. You’ll still let us poach game, I hope? And there’s some money in the strongbox.…”

“We’ll be fine,” Lady Emily said.

And abruptly Oliver was done. He was tired. He wanted to lie in his own bed, in his own room, and never come back out. He spun on his heel and made his way up the creaking staircase, not looking back at the circle of faces below, watching him.

When he got to the top of the stairs, however, Karl’s little daughter called out, “Nighty-night, Earl Oliver!”

He leaned over the banister and waved to the child, not meeting her or anyone else’s eyes, and then went into his room and shut the door.

Fingering the invisibility cloak, Oliver sat down on his bed. Then he lay down, boots and all, and went to sleep. When he woke up it was dark in the room except for a single lamp near the one chair. His mother was sitting in the chair, darning a stocking.

“Are you ready to talk?” Lady Emily asked as he blinked at her.

“I hate the king,” Oliver said. It surprised him.

It did not, however, appear to surprise his mother.

“He changed when Maude died,” she said. She bit off the thread and rolled up the stocking, putting it in her sewing basket and taking out another. “But then, you’ve always hated Gregor.”

“I didn’t meet him until four days ago,” Oliver protested weakly.

“Don’t think that I don’t know why you and your men have gone after every coach with a crest on the doors,” she said in a reproving voice. “It was only a matter of time until you robbed one of the princesses, or Gregor himself. You’ve been trying to get the king’s attention.”

“And now I’ve succeeded,” Oliver said bitterly. “And I didn’t even have to let that fool of a Russakan prince hunt me down.”

“For which I will always be grateful,” Lady Emily said.

The real fervor in her voice made Oliver look at her more carefully. The golden lamplight couldn’t hide her pallor or the strain around her eyes.

“I don’t like the sound of this Prince Grigori,” she said, and Oliver nearly laughed. “And if the King Under Stone is the father of the Nine Daughters’s children, then Prince Grigori is the nephew of Under Stone’s sons.”

“Which means what for us?” Oliver asked.

He shifted uneasily on the bed, sitting up and fussing with the pillow behind his back. Oliver pictured Grigori roaring through the forest on his black horse, sitting impossibly tall, dark-haired, white-skinned—he didn’t look human. But he was, wasn’t he?

“I don’t know what it means,” Lady Emily said, “except that we must be cautious.”

“I am,” Oliver began.

“You are not,” his mother countered. “Now, you cannot just lie here until the princes send word. And you did not just throw in that link between the grand duchess and the King Under Stone as a point of minor interest to your story. What is happening?”

“You’re too clever,” Oliver told his mother.

“It’s why your father married me,” she said with a small smile. “Now talk, boy.”

Oliver did smile now, but it soon faded as he related the rest of the story to her. How he had told Heinrich about the shadows in the garden, and how Heinrich had taken the matter very seriously. He told her about meeting Rose and Galen, and how they, too, had seemed haunted by something.

“The King Under Stone wants them for his sons, if not for himself,” Oliver finished. “I know it. He wants Petunia.”

“I can hardly blame him,” Lady Emily said. “Beautiful girls—beautiful women, I should say—all of them.” She eyed him. “If you were a properly landed and titled earl, you would make a fine match for Petunia.”

Oliver opened his mouth and closed it again. He wasn’t thinking such things. He only wanted to help.

Didn’t he?

“Thank heavens you still have the crown prince’s invisibility cloak,” Lady Emily said with a heavy sigh. She finished darning the second stocking and put it away. Getting to her feet, she shook her head. “Just try to be careful, sneaking onto the estate. Prince Grigori, as we’ve said, is not to be trifled with.”

Oliver opened his mouth and closed it yet again, feeling like a fish gasping on the bank.

“I—I’m not—” he finally managed.

“Of course not,” his mother said drily. She bent over and kissed his forehead on her way out of the room. “I’m just glad that Simon’s injury keeps him from following you.”

Assassin

That night, for the first time since Rionin had declared he would marry Lily, Petunia dreamed she was back in the Palace Under Stone. She didn’t know why they weren’t returning there every night, but knowing Rionin, it was probably just another way to toy with them.

In this dream she was not in the ballroom, however, but in a room that contained furniture made from worn ebony, upholstered with faded violet silk. It was a bedroom, but not one she had been in before. Before, when she and her sisters had been trapped there overnight, they had all slept in one long room furnished with six narrow beds.