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    Note: The events in this story take place approximately one year before the beginning of
The False Princess.
Because her true identity has not yet been revealed, the main character of that novel, Sinda, is referred to as Nalia throughout
.

    “
I’m not giving
that to her.”
    Shaking his blond head emphatically, Kiernan Dulchessy edged away from the small statue standing on the table in his family’s palace quarters.
    “Yes, you are,” his mother said, her tone stern.
    He leaned back farther, though he knew that no amount of distance would render the statue acceptable. “No,” he repeated. “I’m not.”
    It wasn’t that the statue was hideous. Far from it, in fact. Nearly a foot high, made of the purest white marble and carved by the best stoneworkers in Thorvaldor, it was a lovely statue of a young girl in a long gown, standing as if in a slight wind, her skirts blowing about her most fetchingly. Her hands were closed and pressed to her chest, her head tilted slightly, as if watching the horizon for some handsome young man on a white horse. Her long, straight hair looked as though a real wind had tousled it becomingly about her face, a face made up of wide eyes, high cheekbones, a small chin, and slightly parted lips that looked as if they were getting ready to accept a kiss. No, there was nothing to fault about the entire statue, from the slender slippers peeking out from under her skirt to the delicately placed crown on top of her head.
    Nothing, unless you knew that the girl supposedly depicted would only stand with her hands curled into her chest like that if she were trying to hide the ink spots on them and would probably manage to step on her own skirt and trip if a wind blew it around her legs that way. Nothing, unless you knew being given a statue of such an idealized—and, in Kiernan’s opinion, simpering—girl would merely make the recipient feel small and mousy.
    “And not as the gift from the family, either,” his mother went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “You’ll give this to the princess as your personal gift.”
    “As my what?” he yelped. “Mother, there is no way—”
    “There is every way,” said a voice from behind him.
    Kiernan did his best not to snarl at the iron sound in his father’s voice. Turning, he watched as Kerrill Dulchessy entered their family’s palace quarters and closed the door firmly behind him. The Earl of Rithia was looking at his son with the same expression he had worn the time he discovered Kiernan’s plans to sing a particularly ribald song for the palace’s Midwinter’s Day singing competition. Kiernan ground his teeth as he recalled that he had given in and ended up singing the acceptable and boring “Glass Green Sea” instead.
    “You will give this to Princess Nalia at her birthday feast tonight,” his father went on. “And you will do it with a smile on your face.”
    “But she’ll hate it,” Kiernan protested, though he could hear the weakness creeping into his voice. His lip curled as he stared at the statue. With the dreamy, longing expression on its face, it was a gift that a suitor might give to a girl he was courting, not the kind that you gave to your best friend.
    But that, of course, was precisely the reason his parents had commissioned it, he grimly supposed. With Nalia’s fifteenth birthday here, a season of princess-hunting was about to commence. It wouldn’t be long before every Thorvaldian family with a son of marriageable—and not so marriageable—age started parading their progeny around the palace, and shortly thereafter the neighboring countries of Wenth and Farvasee would begin sending their highborn sons as well.
    And since Nalia, the Princess of Thorvaldor, was his best friend, his parents must think they could make an early strike. Never mind that it was nigh on impossible that Nalia would be allowed to marry a mere earl’s son, and never mind that she didn’t think of him as anything but her oldest