Sarah stood outside the blue stone castle and rehearsed the words that would ruin her. In two hours she would kneel before the queen and king of Ridgefrost and ask them to make her their heir. She had no family, no title, no invitation. She had only a plan to ask strangers to become her parents. And she knew nothing about them. She did not know what pleased them, what shamed them, or what one wrong word might cost her. The castle gate stayed shut. Guards watched her from the wall. Sarah gripped the letter she meant to read aloud, then stopped. A begging speech to people she had never met could offend them in a single breath. She needed to learn who they were before she spoke a word to them. Under a pair of fruit trees near the wall, a bearded young man leaned against the apple trunk. He wore scuffed shoes and a black shirt, and he chewed an orange slice like he owned the orchard. He watched her pace. "You're going to ask them for something," he said. "I can tell. You've got the look." Sarah stiffened. "You know the queen and king?" "I pick their fruit." Cowboy Junior tossed her an apple. She caught it. "Been doing it three years. I know them better than half their court." Sarah's heart jumped. Here was the one thing she lacked. "Then tell me about them. Please. I have to speak to them today, and I don't know a single true thing about who they are." He studied her, then sat on a thick root. "The king hates flattery. Praise him and he stops listening. The queen lost a son years back. Don't mention children lightly, or you'll cut her deep." He nodded at the orange tree. "She plants a tree for every year he's been gone. That's why there are two." Sarah looked at the trees with new eyes. She had almost marched in and begged them to adopt her. To a grieving mother, that plea would have landed like a slap. "What do they respect?" she asked. "Honest work. Plain speech." He wiped his hands on his jeans. "Tell them what you can do for the kingdom, not what you want from them." Sarah folded her begging letter and pushed it into her pocket. It was worthless now. She would not read a stranger's flattery. She would speak plainly, and she would not touch the wound of the lost son. The gate groaned open. A steward called for the girl who had requested an audience. Sarah stood. Her hands were steady now. "One more thing," Cowboy Junior said. "The queen watches how you treat the servants before you ever reach the throne. She's testing you the moment you walk in." Sarah stepped through the gate. She no longer feared offending them with ignorance. Now she had to prove, under the queen's watching eyes, that she was worth a throne she had never earned.