Maelyn turned the pages of An Unlikely Lady, trying to focus on the words. She loved this book, but had read it so many times she could recite whole passages from memory. She wished she had a new book to read, a new world in which to steep her mind.

Books were scarce in Runa Realm, expensive, and hard to trade. Maelyn's library, though impressive, remained far from complete, and the shelves around her suffered sad gaps like missing teeth. Most of the bookmakers worked in Grunwold, and King Jarrod preferred commerce with Kurzha to the south, or those greener realms across the sea, rather than with Maelyn and her little land. Lumenera, it had once been called. Until her father changed it.

Maelyn shifted in her chair and tried again to concentrate.

The library door cracked open. "Mae?"

Maelyn turned her head and smiled. "Come in." Of all her sisters, she felt the most motherly toward Ivy, and not just because of her lame foot. Ivy was docile as a lamb, and just as fragile. She inspired protectiveness in those who knew her.

"Thought you might be here. This came for you." Ivy held out a rolled parchment.

Maelyn recognized the vibrant blue seal. "Uncle Jarrod has written back to me."

Ivy nodded, lowering herself into a nearby armchair. "Would you like me to stay with you while you read it?"

Maelyn shook her head and forced a smile. "It's only a letter." Was it so obvious that she was afraid? Or just Ivy's uncanny perceptiveness?

She thought of something else. "Why are you delivering this? Where's the messenger?"

"Oh... he's with Heidel. Needed some treatment."

"Is he hurt?"

Ivy smiled. "Only a little." She used her crutch to push out of the chair and back onto her feet. It made its familiar thump as she walked to the door. "Do you ever hear from Roald?" Ivy asked in a soft voice.

"Never." Maelyn stared at the wax seal, now anxious for Ivy to leave. She needed to get this letter behind her.

"We've never known him very well, have we?" Ivy said.

"Nor do I wish to. I've always said he's going to turn out as awful as his father."

"Yes, I remember you saying that," Ivy said. The library door closed with a stiff grunt.

Maelyn broke the seal and uncurled the parchment. As she always did with Uncle Jarrod's letters, she made a quick skim to check for horribleness, then went back and read it slowly. Good – he had accepted the delay. Travel was proving inconvenient at the moment, next month would suit him much better. Coralina's play sounded amusing, he might even bring his wife to enjoy it.

The new wife. Maelyn had almost forgotten about her. She had seen her only once, at the wedding, almost a year ago. Last time she'd seen Roald, now that she thought of it, though Maelyn hadn't spoken to him, and he had pointedly ignored every one of the nine princesses. Too enamored with his lovely betrothed – the fourth lady to hold that position. Would he actually marry this one? Maelyn didn't care at all. Like a sickening fog, Uncle Jarrod poisoned those around him and she had no interest in anyone connected to him. That included this new messenger.

She flicked the letter at the writing desk and didn't care that it fell short. This messenger was a puzzlement, wasn't he? Never, never had Rowan allowed anyone but himself to place a letter in her hand. Why would Uncle Jarrod employ such a careless young man? What did he stand to gain from it?

The thought chilled her. She didn't know the answer, but if Uncle Jarrod had passed over Alder, the legitimate choice, to appoint the youngest brother – youngest adopted brother – as his messenger to Runa... then he definitely stood to gain something. Uncle Jarrod had always implied that Maelyn and her sisters did not deserve their royal titles due to their lowborn origins. Yet he'd just granted a position of honor and trust to Willow – an orphan.

A highborn orphan? Or a low one? Who was this Willow fellow who claimed to have never seen the king? Why had Uncle Jarrod chosen him?

Maelyn would have to find out.

She could write to his mother, Lady Aspen of Grunwold. She'd been thinking about it anyway, to offer condolences for the death of Rowan. He'd been a good and faithful messenger. She could then express concern about why Alder hadn't been appointed – she hoped he was in good health? That might elicit an explanation from Lady Aspen as to why Willow had been given the position instead. It might be for the simplest of reasons.

But she would not write today. This was Sunday, and Maelyn devoted her Sundays to reading. Trouble was, she couldn't concentrate anymore, not when she already knew everything that would happen. She needed to not know what the next page would hold.

Tucking the book beneath her arm, she left the library and hunted down her sister Shulay, who was brushing down her cats on the floor of her bedchamber.

"Can you drive me back to town?" Maelyn asked. The princesses had already gone into town once that morning, for church.

"Why? Nothing's open." Shulay stroked the brush over the dense, black coat of Romulus, her largest cat, with her careful brown hands. Her braids reached the floor on either side of her.

"I want to see the Book Miser."

"Oh FUN!" Shulay laughed. "Can I stand beside you while you talk to him? Please?"

Maelyn managed a smile. "Sure."

Shulay – the only princess who enjoyed driving – managed the horses so well they seemed to know her thoughts, and she barely twitched the reins as they rolled down the hill from the castle. Maelyn sat inside the carriage on a bench of white velvet. Though she didn't sleep, her eyes stayed shut. She wanted to forget about Uncle Jarrod's visit. And the distressing rumors of bandits in the realm. And the memory of what the servants had done. She would face those problems tomorrow, sure as sunrise, but for now, she just wanted to forget.

A visit to the Book Miser wouldn't help that, though.

Maelyn hated the Book Miser. Because he so clearly hated her. He was among the few – the very few – who'd seen Maelyn in her time before. In those almost-forgotten years when she was just a peasant child in a poor village. Shun it as she might, the Book Miser always awakened that memory.

**********

She had been too young to understand death. All she had known was that Mama would not move. Maelyn had prodded and whined and stomped her small feet. But nothing had stirred Mama from her bed.

When the cottage darkened, she slept on the floor rushes, collecting bits of dried grass in her brown hair. At dawn she rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands and cried at the pain in her belly. She could speak the word "bread" but she could not find any.

Maelyn padded to the door and gripped the latch above her head. Without looking back at Mama, she ventured out in search of bread.

Everything felt warm. The drying mud that clutched her toes. The breeze against her cheeks. The puddle of rainwater in which she dunked her face, gulping until it dribbled a dark streak down the front of her dress.

She wandered across the scant village, in and out of the scattered huts. No bread. No animals. No people either, except a few who slept like Mama.

In the last cottage, she found half an apple and a wedge of cheese on a low sill. She devoured them on sight. The pain in her belly ebbed, but not enough.

Wandering out again, Maelyn watched the stillness around her. She didn't understand the quiet, only the feeling of wrongness it gave her. So her small feet turned away from the village and carried her across fields of flat emptiness. She found a road and instinctively followed it, walking until her legs ached and the pain in her belly sharpened again.

When evening burned the sky pink as her sun-baked cheeks, she sat on the parched grass by the road and cried into the backs of her hands again. The sound of approaching horses meant nothing to her. Horses were not bread.

"Is that a child?" someone asked.

Maelyn looked up at a very large man on a very large horse. He wore colors she'd never seen and things that sparkled like sunlight on water. She cried harder in fear of his strangeness.

"Yes, Sire. A girl, I think." A smaller man on a smaller horse rode by the shiny man. He too wore strange colors, but nothing that sparkled.

"Alone," said the shiny man, his eyes sweeping acres of nothingness behind her. "Must be from one of the stricken villages."

"None in the villages survived, my lord."

"None that caught the Fever survived. Clearly this girl did not catch it." He watched her for a long moment. "Fetch her, Dorian."

Maelyn squealed and thrashed as she was carried to the shiny man and placed on his horse. "There now, little pet." The shiny man held her firmly, one arm circled around her middle. He dug through a satchel at his side and withdrew a small golden loaf.

Maelyn stopped thrashing. "Bread!"

The horse beneath her moved onward. The shiny man carefully picked the rushes from her hair. But Maelyn noticed neither as she crammed her cheeks with milk-white softness, richer, sweeter, more satisfying than anything she knew.

"Next town is not far, Sire," said the one called Dorian. "Shall we leave the girl there?"

With her belly quiet, heavy sleepiness took over. Maelyn curled against the shiny man, cooling her face on his smooth tunic. She felt his hand rest atop her head, his fingers stroke her hair. Just before slipping under, she caught his soft reply.

"No. Not this one."