Under a full moon, the Grand Duke told his attendant that he had never once had regrets.
He had always prepared for his own mistakes in advance. He had always looked back at the past and found it foolish. Tonight, though, he felt strange, and he felt old, and for the first time in his life he found himself wishing he could turn time backwards.
Then he turned to the mess on the floor.
"Explain yourself, Sophia Herman."
She lifted her chin and gave him the simplest answer available.
"I stole them."
"Why? As a Herman, you have no need to steal anything."
She looked him straight in the eye. "I stole them because you hate me."
"What does that have to do with it?"
"Nothing. Just kick me out. You don't like me anyway."
Later, on the balcony, the grandfather confided to his attendant that they should have searched for Sophia first, before anything else, and his attendant reminded him that Sir Theodore had tried his best — that there had been swindlers by the dozen, and every one of them had to be run down.
"Where was she all this time?" the attendant wondered aloud. "Miss Sophia avoids the subject."
The grandfather's fist closed. "Prepare a model answer," he said. "For the council of elders."
He gripped the balcony railing and stood there in his own thoughts, and elsewhere in the palace Sophia stood alone in the soft light, in her own.
The teaching of the Herman family was very simple.
They were the strongest, and so they must never show weakness. Kill first, before you get killed. Generations of silver-haired Hermans had sat enthroned with that motto behind their eyes.
The grandfather looked out at the night sky and understood that a teaching like that could not heal a child's wounds. It had no vocabulary for it. Theodore's decision to leave the palace, he thought, had been the obvious result of a doctrine as cold as theirs.
The next day came up bright over the palace gardens.
Sophia stood on the balcony in a new dress and reflected that yesterday had been the worst day of a life that had contained several strong contenders. In the nightmare she'd had, Hercio threatened to eat her limbs one at a time as punishment for stealing. Her commoner habits were going to get her thrown out of here — she could feel it.
Then a spark of an idea came into her eyes.
The plan involved the grand golden lion fountain in the garden. She stood and focused on the glittering statue at its centre.
She reached for it, quickly, before anyone could see.
"Ahem."
She froze mid-stretch.
Three men now stood in front of her, and one of them was silver-haired and very tall. She adopted an expression of purest innocence, privately annoyed that the old man had evidently increased her surveillance.
The silver-haired man stared down at her without a word. She met his gaze. Neither of them blinked, and the question hung there in the sunlight between them.
"Do you want to steal the lion statue?"
"No," she said nervously.
"Stealing is bad."
"…Yes."
"I am Theodore."
She stammered a greeting at her biological father.
Later, Theodore sat opposite his own father, Hercio Herman.
"I'll have one made for her," Hercio said. "A gold lion. Ten times bigger."
Theodore and his men silently repeated the words to themselves. Ten times bigger.
"Rash rewards are bad for a child's education," Theodore objected.
"If we shower her with favour, she'll grow up moral."
Theodore sighed, thoroughly bewildered by his father's logic. Then he said that he intended to take the children away from this palace and away from its unhappy teachings.
"You've been gone five years," Hercio said. "And Sophie wants to stay."
Theodore said nothing. Behind him, his men were quietly shocked — the Grand Duke had used a nickname.
"I'll wait," Theodore said at last. "She'll decide for herself."
A memory came to him then, petals falling somewhere past a window, and a voice full of relief. A blonde woman holding a baby. His wife had laughed and said their daughter didn't look like a Herman at all.
She had believed the child would be different from the rest of them. She had hoped their daughter would live freely, the way a Herman never does.
Theodore stayed quiet, lost in it, and resolved again that Sophia would choose her own path.
With his return, Sophia's formal education began.
A smiling man arrived to attend her, and she identified him instantly as a shadow knight.
For a week she studied in Theodore's room, under constant watch, while her father sat nearby engrossed in a book.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. She wrote it out again and cringed, thinking about how comprehensively she had ruined her first impression with him, and with Hercio, and probably with the household staff as well. It had not sunk in yet, she admitted — that this unknown man was her father.
She observed him over the top of her page. They didn't resemble each other at all.
He surprised her. Theodore turned out to be a very studious person, always reading, always writing something down, more scholar than swordsman.
Then he surprised her again by being an amazing cook.
The blood lion, she marvelled, and he cooks like that. With one arm. His prosthetic hand had to be running on a small fortune in magic stones, when she thought about it — countless of them, packed into a hand.
"This is the power of money, Sophia," he told her.
She agreed with her whole heart.
She ate what he had made and was blissfully, entirely happy about it.
"You must like meat dishes," Theodore observed.
"Ahem. Everything is delicious," she said, a little nervous. "Especially the dessert." She swallowed. "Your cooking is the best in the world."
Theodore was silent.
Then a faint, gentle smile touched his lips.