Chapter 1

My husband had a six-year-old son.

For seven years, he had let me believe he didn't want children.

The boy's name was Tomas. His mother lived in a house outside the capital, where the Crown Prince of Aveland spent the nights he told me he was sleeping at the royal palace. She was pregnant again. The queen had sent her a nurse, two maids, and a physician who'd never once been too busy to attend her.

I learned those details in pieces. A household payment entered under the wrong name. A carriage journey a groom couldn't explain. Then a letter from the nurse, thanking the palace for supplies.

I'd read it three times before I sent for Adrian.

Now he stood by the drawing-room fire, waiting for me to finish being upset.

My parents had arrived an hour earlier. They sat on the other side of the room, dressed as carefully as if we'd invited them for dinner.

“He's the heir to the throne, Elinor,” my mother said. “What did you think would happen? The royal line has to continue.”

“He told the king he didn't need a child.”

“He was young.”

My father looked at Adrian and then at the carpet. He was one of the king's most trusted ministers. I'd spent my whole life hearing how much his opinion mattered.

Tonight, he seemed to have none.

“Seven years,” my mother continued. “You have been the only lady of this house for seven years. Many wives would consider themselves fortunate.”

I looked at the man I'd married.

Adrian was thirty. I'd known his face when it was all elbows, freckles, and badly concealed schemes to get out of lessons. At twenty-three, he'd come home from war and married me. I'd thought I would get to know every version of him.

This one wouldn't look at me.

“The boy can live here,” I said at last. “He can be educated here and provided for. But she doesn't move into my home.”

It was a bargain I didn't want. I offered it because some frightened part of me still thought there must be a version of this in which I didn't lose everything at once.

Adrian turned from the fire.

“You'd take a child from his mother?”

I stared at him.

“I'm asking you not to bring your mistress into my house.”

“Mira has spent years making no demands.”

“While I didn't know she existed.”

“She is the mother of my son. I won't have her treated as something shameful.”

He walked toward the door. As he passed me, he unfastened the little greenstone clasp at his collar and set it on the table.

Two swallows, carved facing each other. He'd made the first rough cuts himself before taking it to a jeweler. I'd worn its matching piece under my gowns for ten years.

It made almost no sound when he put it down.

“If you can't accept her here, I'll spend the first half of each month at the other house,” he said. “The second half, I'll come home. That ought to satisfy everyone.”

He looked at me as though he'd solved something difficult.

I looked at the clasp.

“No,” I said. “It won't.”