“My lady, will you please, please, please come down?” Wadinnie craned her neck to glimpse Nyssa’s face through the branches. “Please, my lady?”

“I like it here,” Nyssa said.

The maid fidgeted with the strings of her apron. “Dame Heidd will be displeased—”

“Dame Heidd is always displeased, the bitter old hag. It’s her natural state.”

Panic in her eyes, Wadinnie looked around.

Nyssa’s tone softened. “Don’t worry. The witch is in the kitchens this time of day, cooking her poisons.”

“They are salves for the Healers’ Order.” Wadinnie shifted from one foot to the other. “Dame Heidd might be bitter but she’s charitable. And fair.”

Nyssa rolled her eyes. “You’re saying that because you’re scared of her.”

“I am a little… but I mean it!”

They stared at each other for a moment before the maid said, “You’re distraught. You haven’t eaten or drunk since the news two days ago. What if you faint and fall out of that tree and break your neck?”

“Wouldn’t that suit everyone?”

Wadinnie shook her head, reproach in her big eyes. “You’re among friends here, my lady.”

The statement was so outrageously ridiculous that Nyssa cracked up despite her grief.

Wadinnie scrunched her face. “The Heidds are good people.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Nyssa said, her laughter fading away, “if it helps you stomach the dishonor of working for them.”

Wadinnie’s expression hardened. “I’m going to fetch the gardener with his ladder, my lady. And then you’ll come down, or we’ll drag you down.”

She spun on her heel and stomped away.

Nyssa shifted to sit more comfortably. A half-dozen ripe mulberries dangled right in front of her eyes, begging to be plucked and eaten. She loved mulberries, and she was famished, but she turned away.

Areg was dead. Her adored older brother, whose stoicism she used to mock even as she secretly admired it—her rock, the only family she’d had left—was gone. He’d traded without hesitation the last thing he had left—his good name—in the hopes of saving her.

He hadn’t deserved to die. He hadn’t deserved any of what Boggond and his henchmen had done to him.

Tears welled in Nyssa’s eyes. Funny, that. She’d been certain she’d cried herself dry over the past two days. Before the news of Areg’s murder, her three weeks in the Heidd residence hadn’t been so bad.

In fact, they’d been almost good after a year locked away in Caretaker Governor Boggond’s palace, bored out of her mind, and increasingly suicidal. Boggond had kept her fed and unharmed but barred her from talking to anyone and clueless about what was going on in the world.

Then one day she was taken to the Iltaqa Prison where Police Chief Ultek interrogated her.

Nyssa shuddered remembering his reeking breath as he spoke to her. Combined with his crumb-studded mustache, ugly eyes and long strands of thinning hair that slithered down his sweaty scalp, the man was more revolting than anyone she’d ever seen. And his interrogation was an uninterrupted string of lewd threats.

Ultek was in the middle of counting the ways in which he’d ride Nyssa when his commlet beeped. After answering it, he cut his fantasy short and asked her if she’d like to see her brother.

She expected they’d show her his dead body.

But Areg was alive, in chains, body brutalized, and surrounded by his enemies—Governor Boggond, Chief Ultek, Judge Mahabmet, and Commander Heidd.

Yes, Heidd. His brother in arms and commanding officer during the war. His hero. Nyssa’s idol.

She cringed recalling the scene.

Areg’s enemies used her to extract a confession from him, and then she was transferred to Heidd’s fortress-like house. A couple of days later, he set out to inspect the troops in the Frontier Zone, leaving her in the hands of his stern mother and the house staff.

The terms of her internment here were very different than in Boggond’s palace.

Her space wasn’t reduced to a single room. It included the entire residence and the walled gardens. She was allowed to interact with anyone on the premises, read books and newspapers, and even amble around the property while chaperoned by Wadinnie.

But Nyssa made no mistake. She was still a powerless captive and a pawn in other people’s games. Even with this illusion of freedom, she was a hostage, officially dead and buried with her parents. Easy to dispose of the day she was no longer needed.

And now she was also all alone in the world.

“How did she take it?” a familiar voice came from down the gravel path. A deep, sexy male voice—Heidd’s.

“What do you think?” his mother said. “She wailed and screamed her head off for hours on end. Between the bawling, she smashed, ripped and destroyed everything in her room.”

The voices grew nearer. A few seconds later, Nyssa saw them walking toward her. Luckily, neither looked up. They passed the mulberry tree and sat down on a bench just a few feet away.

“Her reaction is understandable,” Heidd said.

Dame Heidd humphed, “When your father passed, the only grief I allowed myself was to whimper at night into my pillow, so I wouldn’t wake you up.”

He gave her hand a little squeeze. “You were much older.”

“True.”

Nyssa had heard from her late mother how Heidd was a “miracle baby,” born when Dame Heidd had reached her late forties and lost all hope of having a child.

“But she’s no longer a teenager, Jancel,” the old hag said. “She’s twenty-eight. You were younger than her when—”

“Mother. Let’s stay focused on our guest.”

Nyssa almost snorted at being called a “guest.”

Goddess, the hypocrisy of him!

“Very well. Your guest hasn’t touched her food or drink in two days. However, she found the energy to zoom about the house with poor Wadinnie in tow, spouting new litanies of cusses about you and the ‘evil gang.’ ”

“I’d heard an assortment before I left for the Frontier Zone,” Heidd said.

“Oh, those were nothing compared to the latest series. These were truly foul, graphic, and very loud.”

Was that a smile quirking Heidd’s lips? No—it couldn’t be.

Dame Heidd’s mouth thinned. “I believe every servant in the house heard her.”

Nyssa peered at Heidd’s twitching mouth. There could be no doubt—he was struggling to stifle a smile.

Dame Heidd shifted toward her son. “How can a noble-born, genteel lady even know such words?”

“She isn’t any noble-born lady, Mother. She’s Nyssa Sebi.”

The hag rolled her eyes. “I do remember her late parents complaining at a dinner party that she was a difficult girl. But now she’s out of control.”

The sound of footsteps and Wadinnie’s voice drew their attention to the gravel path.

Hedgehog’s balls! Nyssa stilled.

A few seconds later, the maid and the gardener—with his retractable ladder—halted in front of their masters, bowing.

“This one?” the gardener asked Wadinnie tilting his head toward the mulberry tree.

She nodded.

Heidd squinted at her, his lips curving into a lopsided smile. “Hoping to tempt Lady Sebi with her favorite mulberries?”

Ah, that smile.

Nyssa saw it for the first time when Areg brought a group of Academy classmates to the estate for a house party. She was fourteen. From the moment Heidd walked in and until the moment he left, she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him, gobbling up his ruggedly handsome face and his sculpted body. She drank in his every word. Her legs grew cottony in a way they’d never been before.

In the following years, Nyssa saw Jancel a few more times at Areg’s events. With her either in a private boarding school in Damoont or at the League of Realms Space Station with her parents, the occasions to see him were not as frequent as she would’ve liked. After graduation, Areg and Jancel’s paths diverged—up until the war—and she hardly ever saw her brother’s ex-classmate.

But she never forgot him. Even when she dated other men. Even when she slept with them.

Wadinnie shook her head in response to Heidd’s question, too intimidated by her formidable employer to explain what was going on.

The gardener pointed at Nyssa. “We’re hoping to persuade Lady Sebi to come down.”

Jumping to their feet at that, Heidd and his mother looked up.

Nyssa tightened her grip on the branch she was holding on to.

“Open the ladder,” Heidd said to the gardener.

He executed immediately.

“Now leave us.”

The servants scurried away. The crone didn’t budge.

Heidd gave her a soft smile. “Mother, please?”

Muttering something under her breath, she glared at Nyssa.

“I’ll ask the cook to delay dinner.” Dame Heidd walked toward the house, her proud gait affected by age, but her back broomstick straight.

“Nyssa, will you please come down?” Heidd said mildly when his mother was out of earshot.

“It’s Lady Sebi to you.”

“I’ve known you since you were fourteen,” he said. “It would be strange to start calling you Lady Sebi now.”

She pulled a face. “Do try. It can’t possibly be stranger than letting your new buddies kill your old friend.”

A vein pulsed on his neck.

For a brief moment, Nyssa feared he’d climb the ladder and drag her down. She locked her knees, preparing to put her last shred of energy into resisting him.

But he didn’t move.

Gradually, his face relaxed and an emotion a lot like sympathy tinted his dark eyes. “I’m sorry for your loss, I truly am. But starving yourself won’t help your brother.”

“How dare you say you’re sorry! You didn’t move a finger to help him.”

He held her gaze, saying nothing. For a long moment, they glared at each other. Then he crouched on the grass right under her.

Thank Aheya I always wear pants!

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Bracing.”

“For what?”

“To catch you when you fall down.”

She rewarded him with one of her choice curses.

Thirty minutes later, her body ached everywhere, and her concentration began to slip. She swayed precariously. Jancel sprang to his feet, ready to intercept her. But she hugged the biggest branch and steadied herself.

“Nyssa, please, come down,” he tried again.

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you more about your brother’s last day.”

She swallowed, considered his proposition for a moment, and placed a foot on the top step.

He held her as she descended.

Once on the ground, she drew back. “Talk.”

“He was killed fighting. Etana Tidryn, the woman who tried to save him through marriage, was killed at the same time. Their deaths were quick.”

“How do you know?”

“The blasters used in the operation were the deadliest weapons Eia received from LOR during the Teteum invasion. The plasma consumed Areg and Etana almost instantaneously.”

“What else? Can I bury him? Or were his remains buried already? Will he even be given a grave, even an unmarked one, where I could go to say goodbye?”

Heidd hung his head. “I don’t know.”

“You told me nothing that wasn’t already printed in the Orogate Daily, do you realize that?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “What game are you playing, Commander Heidd?”

His nostrils flared. “No games. I’m just trying to keep you from hurting yourself.”

“Then tell me more.”

“There’s nothing more to tell, Nyssa. I honestly don’t know where your brother’s grave is or if he was buried at all.”

She eyed him up and down. “Jerk.”

His hard-angled face contorted as if in sudden pain.

“Truth hurts, huh?” she spat.

He smirked. “It’s the headache again. Been getting it a lot lately.”

“A brain tumor, I hope?”

“I’m afraid not. Just a nasty headache.” He rubbed his temples. “Debilitating but not life threatening.”

“Can’t your mother brew a potion to relieve your suffering?” She grimaced on the last word to show she didn’t give a damn.

“Oh, she has. But the only concoctions that work make me drowsy and impair my judgment. I can’t afford either side effect.”

“Father used to get headaches like that when he was stressed,” Nyssa said, immediately regretting her admission of sympathy.

“I remember that.” Heidd took a step toward her. “And I recall that you massaged his neck and shoulders, and he felt much better.”

She nodded, her eyes watering at the memory. “He did. There aren’t many things I’m good at, but massage is one of them. It really helped him.”

“Will you…” He hesitated before continuing, “will you give me a massage?”

She stuck her fist up in an obscene gesture even she had never dared to perform before. “Go massage yourself, you bootlicking hamster!”

With that, she whirled around and marched toward the house.