The housekeeper—Mrs. Maxwell was her name, I’d gathered—and maids clucked over me, while four guards watched.

“What are we going to do?” one of the maids asked. “We don’t have a lot of clothes for ladies just sitting around!”

“Don’t I know it. Well, there is no help for it. No time for dressmakers. She’s a prisoner. She doesn’t need to bedazzle anyone, but we just can’t have her sitting there in her lacy bits. Get your good blue dress and we’ll tuck and pin it if we need to.”

“I don’t mean to be in my lacy bits,” I said, feeling self-conscious. “I was in the middle of a sacred ritual.”

“We know what you are, but it’s best to put that aside now,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “I’ll give you a tip, from what I’ve heard. Leonidas is quite a soft touch to women who present themselves with grace. Don’t try and defy him, just be your sweetest self with your best manners.”

“And then what?” I couldn’t help but sound confrontational. The last thing I wanted to offer Mr. Execution-Happy Emperor was my sweetest self and my best manners.

“Well, perhaps you can stay a while,” she said, unpinning my hair from the last braid Gilbert had plaited for me. “It might do the master good to have a woman around.”

One of the maids, the blonde, frowned. “You know he won’t even notice.”

“Is he ever cruel to you?” I asked, trying to get a sense of the place.

“Not here. Not to us. He is rarely home and when he is, he’s still working. But work—is another story. I’m sure you know that Commander Abel is the fiercest man in the whole army. If you don’t want to be hurt, you should make a good impression to the emperor. Not like that Gaermon princess—”

“I can’t believe she said that to our emperor, in front of everyone!”

“She was very beautiful. What a shame. She’s going to be in prison until she’s old and no one will ever see that face of hers again,” Mrs. Maxwell said. I couldn’t tell, from her tone, if she actually thought it was a shame, or if a part of her relished the idea of a beautiful princess falling off her pedestal.

My stomach twisted. At first I assumed the maids were nice, and now I thought maybe they weren’t. Maybe if I wasn’t my sweetest self, I would be locked up forever too. Right now that still sounded better than execution, but maybe I would eventually go crazy.

I was still holding Niko’s dice. No one had taken them from me. I guess dice didn’t look dangerous. I clenched them until their edges hurt my palm.

The maids brushed out my hair and one of them produced the blue dress, a plain frock with a single frill of lace around the scooped neck and elbow-length sleeves. It had a sash at the waist, and fell in an uninspired way down to my ankles. My sigils were still burning. I think they forgot about the balm and I decided not to bother reminding them. I’m not sure it would have helped, and I didn’t want them to touch me. They did offer me a cup of tea, just as Abel walked in the door. He had changed out of his armor and was now wearing an elegant black suit with a frock coat and red cravat. Old-fashioned, but that was how the upper echelons of society were. The ones at the tip top didn’t even bother with the ever-changing whims of fashion. He barely looked at me. “Emperor Leonidas is at the gate. We must go downstairs. Tie her hands up again, please. Has she given you any trouble?”

“No, I haven’t,” I said, annoyed at being talked over.

“Mm.” I don’t think he believed me, although it was true! I had barely said a word. I stuck the dice in my pocket and then let the guard tie my hands.

“Come on,” Abel said. “You’re a silly little thing, for supposedly being the most dangerous woman in the world.”

“Am I?”

“Of course…the danger you pose is only symbolic. Still, you should bear in mind that in the eyes of our emperor, you are a threat to the realm. You are dangerous. This is not the time to be defiant or cavalier. If you want to live out your days, you want him to think you are barely even aware of your role. You were a pawn of the elders, that’s all.”

“Hmph.”

“None of that either.” We were walking down a carpeted stairway to a hall, but before he opened the door, he paused and gripped my shoulder. “Priestess, do you want the last thing you see to be me drawing my sword to have your head?”

“N—no.”

“You are a pawn,” he said.

“Why don’t you want to work with the priestess anyway?” I asked. “Why doesn’t the emperor want to close the gate? I know people are easier to control when they’re scared, but this is pretty extreme, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be good for the economy or something to close the gate? And monsters kill your men, too.”

“Outpost accent,” he said. “Outpost propaganda…outpost stupidity. Perhaps we can enlighten you. Just keep your mouth shut.” He opened the door.

“Ah, good afternoon, Commander.” Emperor Leonidas looked like he had just been seated and given a drink by the footman standing off to one side. It was strange to see him looking more informal and having a drink. In my mind, he was The Emperor. Not human. Barely real. A symbol of hope or fear, depending on my shifting perspective. “She is a pretty one. What is your name, child?”

“Phoebe,” I said, unable—or maybe unwilling—to completely hide my reluctance.

“Well, Phoebe. I understand you’ve been chosen as the priestess of the gate. You’ve probably been told you have the ability to ‘save the world from monsters’…” He flourished a hand.

“It appeared they were performing the confirmation ceremony when I arrived,” Commander Abel said.

“But it was not completed?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I said. It seemed so hopeless now. We would never be able to return to the Temple a second time, would we?

“Good timing, then. You narrowly missed their clutches,” Leonidas said.

“Whose clutches?” I demanded.

“The Elders.” He sighed. “I’m sure you know that in previous centuries, the Elders had a great deal of influence on people’s lives all over the world. Finding the priestess and her guardians and helping to instill them at the gate was only a small part of what they did. They had a great deal of power. There is magic in the stones they take from the earth, and they carried them everywhere, using that magic in some cases to help and heal, but in other cases, to exert control. They had more power than the kings. More power than anyone. Tell her about your ancestor, Commander.”

“One of my ancestor was banned from the religion,” he said. “All services and rituals. It effectively cut him out of society. Just because he dared to question the Elders.”

“Wait, so you’re trying to tell me the Elders have been the bad guys all along?” Sure, it doesn’t sound at all suspicious for the guy who’s conquering everyone to complain about other people having too much power…

“Simple terms…but, to some extent,” Abel said.

“Bad guys.” Leonidas laughed. “I like her. You remind me of my little niece,” he told me, which insulted me vaguely because I was pretty sure his niece was like, five. Did he not notice that I was a grown woman? “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“So you’ve been saying.”

“And I’m sure you’re not convinced.”

“If the Elders and the priestess kept out the monsters, I don’t see how this could possibly be better,” I said. “Our whole country is stuck in place. People are scared even to gather berries in the fields. The land is full of abandoned farms. It’s just plain sad. If the Elders are corrupt, okay, but why can’t there still be a priestess?”

“They created the priestess. And they control the priestess. That’s why you must be confirmed at their temple first. You are not a natural phenomenon.”

“Then ask them to let you control the priestess, in exchange for—something—and you can close the gate!”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t work. They can’t just let someone else control the priestess. We have to accept that the monsters exist. We’re working on better weapons to stop them, ways to block the ‘gate’, which by the way, is actually an extensive series of caverns. Many people don’t realize that. You don’t really want to live in a cave, do you? Do you really want to be a priestess anyway? It’s not a very respectable job for a young women, when you get down to it.”

“I—I don’t know.”

“You’re tired and confused,” he said. “I’ll take you back to the palace—”

“I’m keeping her here,” Abel said.

Leonidas looked up at the interruption. “In your home? You’ll be gone on your next endeavor before long.”

“For now, I’m keeping her,” Abel said. “The others died in the imperial palace. People think I killed them.”

“They committed suicide. Phoebe’s fate is in her own hands. But they certainly won’t change their opinion if this one dies in your house.”

Hmm. Did this mean Abel thought the other priestesses had been murdered by Leonidas? But if he did, surely Leonidas would be offended. Instead, he just shrugged. “Would you rather stay here, or come back with me to the palace?”

These were not good choices. Obviously Abel did the Emperor’s bidding. But as much as I didn’t like Abel, I kept thinking of Himika telling Leonidas she would never bow to him. I wondered what he said into her ear. He gave the order to kill Elder Dion. If he wanted to convince me he was working for good, he was going to have to try harder than this.

“I’ll stay here,” I said.

“Until the commander gets back on his ship, then, you may stay here,” Leonidas said. “I’d better go. I still have that dinner with the ambassador from Tacho. Excellent work, Commander.” He stood up. Someone brought him a hat and cloak. Commander Abel bowed stiffly as Leonidas put the plumed hat atop his wild dark golden mane and the servant pinned his cape to his shoulders.

Abel didn’t move an inch until a door shut in the far distance.

“You could have behaved with more deference,” he said.

I pressed my lips together stubbornly. I knew I shouldn’t open my mouth, so I didn’t. I imagined myself home again, where the Emperor was so far away, no one ever thought of behaving with deference. I was so excited to see him when I was Strawberry Girl. I definitely knew better now.

“Well,” Abel said. “You are by no means safe. I want to keep you under supervision by men I trust. I have letters to write. I’ll tie your hands loosely if you want to keep yourself busy with some needlework or teacup painting.”

“Teacup painting?”

“It’s a pastime of noble ladies. Painting on teacups.”

:Oh, well then,” I said. “What happens to the teacups afterward?”

“You drink out of them, for gods’ sakes, it’s a teacup.”

“It sounds silly.”

“I’m a solider, I don’t know what girls do. It doesn’t matter. Just…follow me.”

“My sigils are still hurting…”

“Your sigils, eh?” He paused. “What if…” He started walking down the hall. I guess I was supposed to follow.

“What if what?”

“The other priestesses looked like they committed suicide. We have a suspicion that the Elders use the sigils as a means for controlling the priestesses. When one priestess is killed, the power passes to another girl. Suppose that when a priestess is captured, they have some way of quietly taking her out through the magic she carries on her own body…”

“They wouldn’t do that!” I scratched the burning sigil on my forehead.

“It’s just a theory,” he said. “But one worth considering. If you didn’t have the sigils, you wouldn’t be a priestess anymore, and maybe you could go home.” He paused. “I’d like to take a look at them. Your modesty will be preserved. I’ll have Mrs. Maxwell in the room for a chaperone.”

“Oh, you already carried me around in my underwear, and I’m also your prisoner, so I don’t think we really need a chaperone. If you’re going to be a jerk, I don’t think anyone’s stopping you.”

“I am not going to be…a jerk. But, suit yourself. Don’t say I didn’t try to preserve decorum,” he said coolly.

We adjourned to a library where a reading couch sat in a big bay window that offered plenty of light. “Sit,” he said. “I see the one on your forehead. It keeps pulsing. A symbol of some kind…” He put on a pair of spectacles and looked close. The spectacles were the only hint of his age, although I knew he had been commanding the Black Army for like twenty years. He hardly looked a day over thirty, if that. “Do you know what it means?”

“No.”

“Mm. There are four of them, right? Explain this to me.”

“Yes. On my breastbone, my pelvis, and my tailbone. The glow when my guardians touch them, and…” Hmm. How to explain this.

“During congress?” he said, his tone faintly withering. “It’s a very primitive sort of magic. Drawing power from a woman. It’s like that legend…”

“Some harvest goddess or something?” I have to admit, I had never been a good listener. Not in school. Not even when someone was trying to tell me a story. I was always the kid that fidgeted and interrupted.

He took a blanket off the back of the sofa and handed it to me. “If you don’t mind, perhaps you could cover up your legs with this and let me see the pelvis sigil?”

“Sure, fine,” I said, a little amused that he was going to some pains to make sure he didn’t see my underwear after he held my almost-naked body for like five minutes. When I took the blanket, he looked out the window with his back to me, his hands crossed below the buttons on the back of his coat.

“A goddess of peace,” he said. “She saw that humans and monsters were always killing each other, and so she married both the human king and the monster king, and shared her bed with each, and had a child born of the two. And the child ruled over both kingdoms with wisdom. They were born of human, monster, and god.”

“Well, that sounds handy,” I said, standing up and wrapping the blanket around me from panties to ankles. I kept it really low on my hips so he could see the sigil fully. I don’t know if there was any point. But it kept my mind more occupied than needlework.

“Of course, priestesses don’t have to sleep with monsters,” he said.

“Ri—ight,” I said, hesitating over the thought of Niko. “I’m covered up now.”

“Hmm.” He didn’t look as closely at the sigil on my pelvis. “It’s still burning, isn’t it? How bad is the pain?”

“It’s—almost more urgent than painful, really. Like really needing to pee. But at the same time, very different. Like, kind of painful and kind of itchy, and—oh, I think it’s much worse when I try to think about it. What if it never goes away?” I leaned forward, clutching Forrest’s sigil with my hand.

“What if I—” Abel put his fingers to the sigil on my tailbone, below the skirts I had pulled up and bunched up on front of me.

I convulsed. His touch sent something through me that eased the pain.

I gasped.

His hand yanked back.

“Wait—that helps,” I said.

A feeling rose up within me. A sudden awareness.

The sensation I had been trying to find, all along. I clutched the stone pendant and yanked it off my head. “Abel…you’re my guardian.”