Averifa was at home, deep in thought and going nowhere pleasant, when her mother's voice snapped her back into the room.
"You have been doing that constantly," her mother said, clearly annoyed. "Staring at nothing. For days."
Then she held out a letter marked confidential, from Prince Mendelt.
Averifa's face fell as she read.
The prince was moving forward with the war strategy exactly as he had described it. But his first request was a devastating blow to every plan she had made for her second life. She was ordered to stay at the Nozenleaf ducal castle, in the far north, for a short period.
She could only sit there, utterly shocked, and wonder what this terrible new development was supposed to mean.
Her mind worked through it as she read the page again. The strategy called for rumors of a poorly defended northern border — an open invitation to war, an unlocked door with a light left on. And he was placing her behind that door. She was the bait.
She was being sent directly to the front lines. What, she wondered, was Prince Mendelt truly planning?
The northern castle was frigid, and Ares was already outside to meet her when she arrived, flanked by his subordinates. His dragon put its head down and gave her a friendly nudge in passing. She was still smiling at that when she saw a familiar face in the lineup.
Lynn, in a soldier's uniform.
"Lynn," she said warmly.
"Rifa," he answered, softly.
The name drew an immediate sharp glare from Ares, who turned it, unfairly, on his colonel.
"Leonard. Is there no discipline in this company at all?"
"It was my doing," Averifa said, stepping in at once. "I asked him to use my name."
She did not add the rest of it, which was that she had endured a lifetime of stuffy titles in this castle, and that every one of them had been another inch of the distance that finally killed her.
Ares was clearly irritated by the ease between the two of them.
"And am I supposed to call you by your name as well?"
"What an awful thought," Averifa said, shutting the door on it. "No. I refuse to let you say my name. Lynn is the only one with that privilege."
The mood soured so quickly that Colonel Finareo cleared his throat and suggested, brightly, that perhaps they might show the lady to her room.
They walked. Partway across the grounds Ares said, without ceremony, "You'll be staying in the separate palace."
Averifa stopped dead.
She knew the building on sight. Of course she did. It was the residence of the Duchess of Nozenleaf — the place where she had lived as his wife in her first life, the rooms she had walked back and forth in for years waiting for a man to come home to them. It was the last place on this earth she ever wanted to see again.
"A normal guest room is fine," she said. "Truly."
Ares was unmovable. "The palace is sacred. To house an honored guest anywhere else would severely damage the dignity and honor of House Nozenleaf."
He was leaving her no choice at all, and doing it politely.
She tried reason. "If I stay in the Duchess's palace, people will get the wrong idea. Rumors will start about me becoming the next Duchess of Nozenleaf. Don't be careless about this."
He did not hesitate for so much as a breath.
"Whatever gossip goes around, you're staying."
A bitter smile touched her mouth. "As selfish as ever."
"Averifa—"
"Well, then. If the guest rooms are unavailable, put me in the underground prison." She let the smile widen. "It would be a fitting place for a villainess like me. It's where I met my end, after all."
The comment caught him completely off guard. He looked genuinely stunned.
"How do you know about the underground prison?"
She saw the confusion on him and played it off at once. "It was a joke. A dark one. Relax."
And, having no choice, she finally yielded.
Later, alone in that painfully familiar room, she stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself for a long time, and lamented, quietly and thoroughly, her return to this place.
Anxiety came at her in waves in the hauntingly familiar palace. She was afraid that simply being inside these walls would drag her back into nightmares of that horrible day — the hall, the boy in the doorway, the arrow on the floor.
She shook it off and made herself concentrate on the thing in front of her: the war with the Strald Empire.
It was all part of the fifth prince's elaborate plan. False rumors had been spread that Ares's army was losing a war in the south, and to make the story convincing, word had gone out that Ares himself had left the castle to join the fighting there. The whole construction was a trap, designed to lure the enemy into attacking this very fortress.
Time was short. She decided to begin planning the defensive strategy at once.
She got as far as the middle of the hall.
Guards moved to block her way, with a maid hovering anxiously behind them.
"Our apologies, my lady. Lord Ares has ordered that no one pass."
Averifa's suspicion flared instantly. No one pass. Was he hiding someone from her?
"I have work to do," she said, dismissing the excuses, and tried to go through.
"My lady — please — wait—"
She was still grappling with the problem when Colonel Finareo came around the corner at speed, looking completely flustered.
"What's wrong?" she asked calmly.
"The Strald Empire has mobilized, my lady. Their forces are moving."
The trap had been sprung.