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clandestine contact with your family?"
    Oops.
I realized I shouldn't give away that I knew things I shouldn't know yet.
    "No," I said.
    "Then where have you heard her name?"
    "I can't remember," I said.
    Deming snorted.
    I still didn't like him, and he still didn't like me.
    As we approached the castle, I once again tried for the ring. "I can't help but notice the interesting design on your ring," I told him. "What do you call that?"
    "I call it," he said, "the letter D."
    D
was his initial—not mine; not King Cynric's. Maybe this was the wrong ring after all.
    When we got to the castle, I traded in Sir Deming for Counselor Rawdon, who was not wearing a ring. OK, so it had to be one of the royal family. That made more sense, anyway.
    Queen Andreanna and her three sons, Wulfgar, Abas, and Kenric, were just as charming as last time, lounging about the thrones in the Great Hall, looking down their noses at me.
    "Hello," I said. Last time I had approached timidly and hesitantly, wanting to make friends. I was determined not to make that mistake twice. Going for brisk, confident, and assertive this time, I said, "May I offer my condolences—"
    "This
girl,
" the queen said to Abas, "smells like a goat."
    Back to that again. I wouldn't let myself get caught up in that argument.
    "Excuse me," I said in a tone that would have gotten me a lecture from my grandmother, "I believe the king died and named me his heir. That makes you my subjects. Obviously, you're so overcome by grief at the death of your old king that you're forgetting yourself. I will forgive you this once, but from now on you are to show me proper respect."
    "
'Proper respect'?
" the queen snapped. "Abas, show her the respect she's due."
    Luckily for me, sarcasm was a bit beyond Abas's mental grasp. He began to bow. This gave me time to take a quick step back.
    "Kill her," Queen Andreanna clarified for her son.
    I remembered Kenric's reasoning from last time. "Too many people have seen me already," I said.
    Abas had unsheathed his sword and wasn't even slowing down.
    I ducked behind a pillar.
    "Everyone would know who killed me," I called back to the queen. No use trying to reason with Abas. If the queen didn't call him off, my attempts at logic certainly wouldn't.
    For such a big guy, Abas was incredibly quick and agile. He jabbed with the sword, left and right of the protective column, and sooner or later I was going to move too slowly, or he Was going to correctly anticipate my next dodge.
    I said, "You'll be in trouble for killing the appointed heir." That sounded feeble, even to me.
    Abas's sword caught on the trailing edge of my dress that swirled a second slower than I did. With his free hand, he caught hold of my hair and dragged me from behind the column.
    "She's probably right," Wulfgar drawled.
    "Probably," the queen agreed equably.
    Her voice was the last thing I heard.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Shuffle and Deal Again
    Janine!" my foster mother's voice called. "Janine, come back to the house."
    I couldn't believe it. I'd wasted another half day. "What was the matter with me? Surely, the programmers at Rasmussem didn't intend for their game to be so complicated that a reasonably intelligent fourteen-year-old couldn't get beyond the first hours of a three-day game.
    Was my brain overloading already? Was the damage the CPOC saboteurs had inflicted making me stupid?
    All in all, I preferred to believe that I just wasn't playing this game as well as Rasmussem's average teenage gamer.
    "OK, OK," I told Dusty as she once more licked my face. "Sit. Stay. Guard."
    At the foot of the hill, I again rushed my mother and Sir Deming through the introductions. Did Rasmussem
have
to start me at the very beginning every single time?
    Deming told me the king had named me his heir. I acted surprised. My foster mother wept that I had to leave. I told her to give my love to my foster father. I spared a thought for my real-life father, who'd given me the Rasmussem gift certificate.
Gee,