When Nora left to bring warm water, I sat down at my desk and gazed at the letter.
I did not open it. Not yet.
In my first life, this letter invited me to the palace for a "friendly talk" with the royal family. After that talk came the . After the engagement came seven years of smiling, studying, and waiting. Then the poison. Then the prison. Then the bell.
I took a deep breath. "Think, Elise," I told myself. "You have one chance. Be . Every move must be deliberate. Do not waste it, and do not trust a single . An assumption can kill."
I opened the drawer and found an old notebook with a green cover. In my first life, I used it for poems. Now I turned to a clean page, picked up a pen, and wrote at the top:
*Things That Will Happen.*
My hand was shaking a little, so I wrote slowly.
One: I will be asked to marry Prince Adrian.
Two: In the autumn of my twenty-fourth year, the royal family will hold a grand banquet.
Three: Someone will put Nightbloom in a cup. The prince will fall. I will be blamed.
Four: Nora will die in prison.
I stopped. For an instant, I could not breathe. Then I wrote the next line harder than the others, and the pen almost cut the paper.
Five: This time, I will not let it happen.
Then I made a second list. I called it *Rules.*
Rule one: Do not accept the engagement — at least, not the way I did before.
Rule two: Protect Nora. Never leave her alone with strangers.
Rule three: Learn everything about Nightbloom. Who can make it, who can buy it, and who can carry it into a palace.
Rule four: Verify every rumor with my own eyes. Never without proof. Never repeat as fact.
Rule five: Trust no one. Not my friends. Not my family. Not a smile.
I looked at the last rule for a long while. It was a lonely rule. But in my first life, I trusted everybody, and everybody let me die. My told me that the poison was only the beginning of something much bigger. Someone, or many people, had begun to conspire against my family long before that night.
Then I started a third list: *Suspects.*
I wrote Prince Adrian's name first, and then I crossed it out. He was the one who had been poisoned, wasn't he? But a small voice in my head asked: *Did he really fall because of me? Did anyone check?* The story was too neat. A plausible story is not always a true one.
I wrote: *Lady Vivienne Hart* — my best friend, who stopped visiting me in prison. She loved gossip more than the truth. Her sudden silence deserved scrutiny.
I wrote: *Marcus Dane*, the royal physician, who understood poisons better than anyone. He was clever and ambitious, and ambition makes some people cautious and others cruel.
I wrote: *Duke Edmund*, my father. Then I fixed my eyes on the name. My father was cold, but surely he would not… I put a small question mark beside it.
I tried to stay skeptical about everyone. I felt wary of every smile in Highmarch. But the list was longer than I wanted it to be, and my suspicion only grew.
I was about to close the notebook when I remembered one more name. It belonged to the face I saw last, in the square, with pale lips and strange eyes.
*Kael Rowan.*
The man who arrested me. The man who watched me die. The man who might have said, "I'm sorry."
Was he my enemy? Or only a man who followed orders? He was an , and I hated an enigma. In my , I could not afford to guess wrong.
I wrote his name at the very bottom of the page. I drew a line under it. Then — I don't know why — I drew a circle around it.
Outside, a small bell rang. It was the servants' bell for breakfast. But when I heard it, my heart jumped, and I held the notebook against my chest for ages before I could stand up.