Diana heard the whisper in the west corridor, just outside the solar where the kitchen staff gathered between shifts. She did not slow her steps or turn her head, but her fingers tightened against the letter she carried. The words had been too quiet to make out, but she knew the rhythm of gossip when it moved through stone walls. She found Vladimir in his study two hours later, the red envelope open on his desk. The gold wax seal lay in two perfect halves beside it. He did not look up when she entered, which told her everything. His silence was different from his shouting — colder, more deliberate. She stood in the doorway and watched him read whatever had been written about Astra, about the courier, about the things Diana had tried so carefully to bury. The letter trembled slightly in his hands. When he finally raised his eyes to hers, Diana felt the balance she had spent years maintaining crack like ice beneath her feet. Her hand went to the ruby at her throat, the one she wore when she needed to feel something solid against her skin. Vladimir set the letter down and spoke her daughter's name like an accusation. Diana stepped forward, putting herself between him and the doorway, between him and the hall that led to Astra's chambers. She had done this a thousand times before, but this time the script had changed. He knew something she had not given him, something that had reached him through channels she could not control. The envelope sat on his desk like proof that her careful walls had failed, and when Vladimir stood, Diana understood that appeasing him would no longer be enough to keep her children safe. He walked past her without a word, his boots heavy against the stone floor. Diana turned and followed, her heart loud in her ears. Vladimir did not go toward Astra's rooms. Instead he moved toward the throne room, where he held court over matters that required witnesses and judgment. Diana quickened her pace, trying to place herself ahead of him, but he reached the doors first. When he pushed them open, she saw the throne waiting in the center of the room, red stone gleaming in the afternoon light. Vladimir crossed to it and sat, his hands gripping the armrests. He looked at her from that seat of power and told her to bring Astra to him. Diana's careful balance was gone. Now there was only the choice of what she would break to save her daughter.

Diana walked the corridor to the throne room with her hands folded against her waist to keep them from shaking. Vladimir had sent a page an hour before with the order plainly worded: she was to stand at his right when Astra was brought in. Refusal would tell him what he already suspected. She had spent the morning choosing what to break, and she had chosen this — to stand beside him, and buy Astra one more hour to answer for herself. The guards opened the doors. Vladimir sat on the red stone throne, crown low on his brow, hands flat on the armrests. He did not look up when she entered. Diana crossed the long floor and took the place he had marked for her, one step below the dais, close enough that anyone watching would count her his. "You came," he said. "You asked." "I ordered." He turned his eyes on her, green and unhurried. "There is a difference. I wanted to know which you would answer to." Diana said nothing. She looked at the door. She had told herself she would keep looking at the door until Astra came through it, so that her face would be the first her daughter saw. They waited. A clock somewhere in the hall struck the quarter hour, then the half. Vladimir did not shift. Diana felt her pulse climb into her throat and stay there. A guard entered through the side passage, helmet under his arm. He crossed to the dais and spoke close to Vladimir's ear. Diana caught only fragments — stablehand, gate, before dawn. The guard finished. Vladimir did not move for a long moment. Then he stood. "My daughter is not in her rooms," he said. He said it to the room, though only Diana and the guards were in it. "She left the palace last night. She bribed a sentry. She drugged her watch." Diana's hand went to the ruby at her throat before she could stop it. Relief and terror arrived together and she could not tell them apart. Vladimir watched her hand. "You did not know," he said. It was not a question, but he studied her face as if it might become one. "No." "Good." He came down the two steps until he stood level with her. "Then we agree on what she is." "What is she." "A traitor." He said it the way he might name a color. "By morning the criers will have it. By evening the border posts. You will sit at supper tonight and you will not weep." He walked past her toward the doors. The guards fell in behind him. Diana stood alone in front of the empty throne. She had come here to shield a daughter who was already gone. The buffer she had built for twenty years had nothing left to stand between. Whatever Vladimir did next, he would do to the children still inside the walls.