“Is this the princess?”

The voice came from my left. The court officials lined up along the hall in their bright robes, smiling their practiced smiles. Their eyes moved over me the way men’s eyes do when they think looking is the same as owning.

“Rare beauty,” another one uttered. “The king is very lucky.”

I kept my face calm and my expression pleasant. My mother had taught me that before any of this happened, before the war, before the betrayal, before everything I had known was turned to ash. A woman’s face in a foreign court is its own kind of weapon. Show them what they want to see....