Chasey lifted the thing out of the box and held it up to the lamp. It was a strand of hair, long and fine and pink.
"Emily, what is this? My memory is still hazy — I don't remember why I would keep something like this."
Emily hesitated. She looked at the strand, and then at the floor.
"It belonged to a young lady, my lady. Someone you used to despise. Intensely."
Chasey turned the strand slowly between her fingers. That was strange. This detail had never once appeared in the novel she had read, not in any chapter, not in any aside. A woman important enough to keep a lock of hair from, and the book had not spared her a line.
"Why did I hate her?"
"Because she once tried to seduce His Highness," Emily said.
Ah. That, at least, fitted. Given everything she now knew about the character whose body she was walking around in, that fitted perfectly. And it explained something else, too — why Raven had been so violently shocked to see her suddenly behaving like a different person. In his mind she was still the girl who would keep a rival's hair in a box under the bed.
"I should find a chance to apologise to her," Chasey muttered.
Emily's mouth fell open. She looked as though she could not trust her own ears.
"My lady — she passed away. A long time ago."
Chasey went very still.
Who was I, she thought, in this life? What exactly was I?
"It wasn't an ordinary matter," Emily said carefully. "The whole kingdom knew that woman to be an extraordinarily disturbed person. She slipped an aphrodisiac into His Highness's food in secret. Then she was caught red-handed sneaking into his bedroom."
In the original novel, Chasey thought, dizzily, that was me. That was supposed to be me.
"You were furious when it happened," Emily went on. "You said you would kill her with your own hands. You called it an unforgivable crime."
"And then?"
"And then, rejected and humiliated, she drank poison in front of His Highness and took her own life."
Chasey had to admit it was madness on an entirely different level from anything the novel had put on the page. The original Chasey had a reputation for obsessive stalking, yes — but she had never gone that far. Not that far.
And more importantly, the plot had already changed. Whatever book she thought she had read, she was not living inside it any more.
Word travelled through the barracks in the ordinary way, which is to say by way of second helpings. The meals that Lady Chasey prepared suited the soldiers' taste perfectly, and everybody had begun to notice.
"From now on," the deputy commander reported, "the young lady will continue overseeing meal preparation for the army."
"Tell her she can do whatever she wants," Raven said coldly. "I no longer care."
The deputy commander bowed, but did not leave. There was something else weighing on his mind, something he still needed to bring up with the prince.
In the kitchen, Chasey went on working, quietly, thinking about how far the direction of this novel seemed to have shifted. If she wanted to change the tragic ending waiting for her at eighteen, she would have to pour everything she had into what she was doing right now. There was nothing else in her hands.
Emily came in with a bright smile, sleeves already pushed up, ready to lend a hand.
"Here — try this," Chasey said happily, holding out a spoon. "I've just finished it."
Emily tasted, and her eyes lit up. "My lady, it's wonderful. Everyone will love it. Truly, everyone."
Which gave Chasey hope that a certain person might feel the same. She resolved that no matter what happened, she would get the prince to try her cooking today.
The deputy commander arrived with the message. His Highness had officially permitted her to manage the army's meals.
Chasey felt a surge of hope go through her — and then the deputy commander hesitated, and added the word however.
"However," he said, unhappily, "His Highness has declared that he will not touch a single bite of food for as long as you remain in the kitchen."
Her whole face fell. Was he planning a hunger strike, purely out of spite for her?
She stood there a moment and made herself think it through properly. Their relationship was not merely strained; it was a disaster, built up over years of stalking she had never done but had inherited whole. An apology would not touch it. If she wanted to prove she was sincere — that she was serious — she would have to do something different, and something decisive.
The deputy commander watched the young lady's expression change and turn unusually resolute, and was astonished by it.
"Then from this moment on," Chasey declared, "I won't eat anything either."
He stared at her. "My lady, why would you—"
"I can't stand here and watch His Highness suffer from starvation," she said, with fierce determination burning in her eyes.
Her hands, hidden in her sleeves, were trembling. Privately she was certain she would starve to death long before the prince agreed to swallow a single bite.
She spent the next day watching him train in the yard, driving himself through form after form with the same vigour as always, and wondered how on earth a man kept that much energy on an empty stomach. Her own head had begun to spin. She told herself she only needed somewhere quiet to sit for a moment.
A wave of dizziness blurred her vision. Her violet eyes were showing every sign of exhaustion, and she could not keep her balance any longer; she staggered, and the floor came up at her —
A firm hand caught her shoulder and gripped it tight.
"Thank you—" she began, and then she saw who it was, and froze.
It was the prince. His sharp gaze was fixed on her face. She could not understand it: he had been all the way across the yard a moment ago, and now he was here, close enough to touch, as though the distance had never existed.
"What do you want?" he asked coldly. "This area is strictly off limits."
Faced with that tone, she could only stand there, caught completely off guard. "I'm sorry — I only lost my balance, I had a dizzy spell, I didn't mean to come this far—"
He looked at her with obvious disdain. "You truly are nothing but trouble."
He did not let go of her shoulder, and he did not soften.
"Don't misunderstand what I just did," he said. "Whatever trick you're playing at, understand this: I will never open my heart to someone like you." And then, cruelly, without any change in his voice at all, "Murderer."
The word landed and stayed.
Chasey stood stunned, the yard noise carrying on somewhere behind her. Murderer. There was something in this body's past that she knew nothing about, something worse than the stalking and the ruined dresses and the box under the bed, and this man knew what it was.
She looked up at him — at his cold, hostile face, at everything about him that did not fit the person she had read about — and wondered what in the world that title was supposed to mean.