‘Fucking Arcadius!’ snarled Alex, stalking up and down the bedchamber, which was a fair trek in each direction.

Sunny lay on the bed. Something she’d been doing a lot. How often did she get to lie on the bed where the heirs to an Empire were birthed, after all? Or any bed, for that matter. ‘I watched him go in,’ she said to the ceiling. ‘Didn’t seem that bad—’

‘He’s the worst of the fucking four!’

Sunny had run into some really terrible people over the years, but Marcian, Constans, and Sabbas had each, in their way, been right up there. She propped herself on her elbows. ‘What did he do?’

‘Asked me to marry him!’ screamed Alex, fists clenched.

‘Oh.’ Sunny really couldn’t think of anything else to say. It didn’t seem to make Alex feel much better. She dropped down on the edge of the bed with her face in her hands.

People are so weird. If Sunny had been one herself, she might have known the right words, but she wasn’t, so she didn’t. She was very tempted to take a deep breath, disappear, tiptoe out, and pretend this conversation never happened. She was great at pretending things never happened.

Lots of practice.

But Jakob always said, Life’s not about doing the easy thing, and he should know, he’d been alive for ages and did the hard thing every time. So Sunny took a breath but didn’t disappear, and instead slithered over to sit beside Alex.

‘I’ve got something to show you,’ she said. Alex didn’t reply, so Sunny nudged her with her shoulder. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

Alex spread her fingers to peer sideways through the gap. ‘Is it Arcadius’s corpse?’

‘Not that much better.’ She took Alex by the wrist, led her across the chamber and into the chapel. Dust motes floated in the coloured light through the stained glass, the Saviour being broken on the wheel by the ever-hungry enemies of God, as usual.

‘You’re going to lead me in prayer?’ asked Alex.

‘I am not.’ Sunny pressed herself against the wall, sliding her fingers down the mouldings till she found the little catches, so very well hidden in the hardest-to-reach spots, and pressed them together.

With a click, a section of panelling swung inwards to reveal a square of inky darkness.

‘A secret door?’ Alex’s voice had gone a little squeaky with excitement, which was what Sunny had been hoping for. ‘Don’t you only get those in bad stories?’

‘And some good ones.’ There was a lamp inside the door. A clever design, which struck a spark when you lowered the glass hood. Sunny lit it now, and the wick flared up, revealing a passage just high enough for them to stand, and you couldn’t have called either of them tall.

‘How did you find it?’

‘I really have nothing to do with my days.’ Sunny stepped through, drawing Alex after. ‘So when I felt a draught, I followed it.’ The passage curved to the left, following the shape of the tower, so narrow even Alex, who hadn’t got a lot of shoulders, had to squeeze hers inwards to slip through, ducking cobwebs. ‘But a place like this? Be disappointing if there wasn’t a secret passage or two.’

A glimmer of daylight kissed the edges of the stones and they slipped into a little vaulted chamber, a dusty bench sitting under a slot of a window.

‘Hidey-hole,’ said Sunny. ‘In case the Empress has to make a quick escape.’

‘Exactly what I need.’ Alex peered into a cramped spiral stairway. ‘Where does it go?’

‘Down to the guest quarters, the kitchens, and storerooms. Up as high as the throne room. Quite the view from up there.’

Alex slumped on the bench. ‘Not sure I can face a climb.’ And she turned to wedge her back against the wall, slipped her bare feet up onto the bench so her knees were against her chest.

‘Never been proposed to myself,’ said Sunny, slowly, ‘but surely the thing about it, compared to, say, being rammed by a galley … is you can say no?’

‘In this case, no one seems to think so.’

Yet again, Sunny was stuck without the words. ‘Oh.’

Alex peered miserably out of the window into the distance, the faint breeze stirring her hair. ‘Duke Michael says I can turn my worst enemy into my best ally at a stroke.’

‘Allies are good,’ said Sunny.

‘Lady Severa says the promise of heirs would bring stability.’

‘Everyone likes … stability.’

‘Jakob says it makes good military sense, and Arcadius has the fleet, and could starve us out in weeks.’

‘Jakob’s forgotten more about military stuff than I’ll ever know. But I have tried starving, and I’d recommend against it.’

‘Then Brother Diaz says it would solve a lot of problems.’

‘Right.’

‘He sounded sorry about it. He always does. But it never changes anything.’

‘That’s a lot of reasons.’ Sunny got a sense Alex was waiting for her to list some on the not-marrying-Arcadius side of the case, but that hardly seemed her place. After a moment Alex spoke instead.

‘You may have noticed … I’m not really the marrying kind.’

‘Not sure an Empress gets that choice.’

‘Starting to think an Empress gets fewer choices than a thief.’

‘Better clothes, though.’

Alex turned back to the window, jaw working. ‘Not sure this is the moment to be funny.’

‘Be serious, then.’

‘What?’

‘It’s high time.’ Sunny shrugged. ‘You’re the Empress Alexia Pyrogennetos, born under the flame!’

Alex sat, curled up in that little embrasure, more like a prisoner desperate to catch a free breeze on her cheek than the destined heir to an Empire.

‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m not.’

‘Not yet, maybe, but you will be. You’re Princess Alexia—’

‘No!’ Alex shut her eyes, and hugged her knees tight. ‘I’m fucking not!’

Sunny blinked. ‘What do you—’

‘My mother sold cheese!’ Alex blurted, looking so angry Sunny took a step back. ‘She wasn’t heir to any fucking throne at all unless you count the stool she did the milking on!’

Sunny blinked again.

‘My mother sold cheese, then she died, ’cause that’s what people do.’ Now the anger all bled out of Alex and she sagged again, and turned back to the window, light splashed down one side of her face. ‘My father dug ditches, and when I was seven years old, he took me to the Holy City on a special trip, and when we got there, he said he couldn’t afford to keep me, and he sold me to Gal the Purse to be a thief, and that’s … that’s where I met her.’

‘Met …’ Sunny wasn’t sure she wanted to ask the question. Wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. ‘Who?’

‘Alexia,’ said Alex.

Sunny blinked yet again. ‘Oh.’

‘And one day she showed me the coin.’ Alex pulled it out, now, on its chain. That half-moon of bright copper, roughly clipped. ‘And she showed me the birthmark, and she told me who she was. I didn’t believe it. Who’d believe that? Serpent Throne, what a crock of shit!’ She frowned, and picked at a toenail. ‘But I could see she believed it, and I was so jealous. Because she thought she was something. And I knew I was nothing.’

Sunny blinked again. Said, ‘Oh,’ again. It was getting to be a habit, and not a useful one.

‘Then the Long Pox came through, and she was one of the unlucky ones, and … she died, ’cause that’s what people do.’ Alex, or whoever the hell she was, had started to cry. ‘So I stole the coin, because I’m a thief, and I bent a piece of wire to the shape of her birthmark and burned myself behind the ear and stole that, too, because I’m a piece of shit, and I stole her name, even, because … I just wanted to be … not nothing.’

Sunny stood a moment, staring. ‘But … didn’t the Oracles—’

‘All they did was hold my hand and talk fucking nonsense! About towers and elves and fire. Bock decided what it meant. Bock and my uncle, who isn’t even my uncle! I suppose … they wanted it to be true. What was I meant to do? Tell a duke and a cardinal they got it all wrong?’

Sunny couldn’t even manage an ‘oh’ this time, and in that secret room, buried deep in the thick walls of the lighthouse, the silence was like a tomb.

‘We could go.’ Alex sat forwards and caught Sunny’s hand. ‘I don’t belong here. We’ve run this far, why not go further? Find somewhere we do belong.’ And she looked needy, and desperate, and wild.

Sunny would’ve liked to hold her, and tell her it would be all right. But she knew it wouldn’t be. She saw what had to be done. For everyone’s sake.

Everyone’s but hers.

She made herself stand still. Made her face betray no feelings. Wasn’t difficult. She’d been betraying no feelings for years. ‘Where d’you think I’d belong?’ she asked.

Alex flinched like she’d been slapped. Sunny wondered which of them it hurt worse when she said it. But she said it. So Alex wouldn’t have to. ‘You’ve a chance to do some good. You shouldn’t waste it. It’s not like there’s too much good around. You wanted to be not nothing?’ She would’ve liked to hold on to Alex’s hand. To grip it tight. Instead, she gave it a pat. A limp little friendly pat, then let it go. ‘Well, you’re something now.’

Alex stared up at her. ‘We could still—’

‘I don’t think so. We always knew … this wasn’t for ever.’ Though the truth was Sunny hadn’t let herself think about it till now and was seeing it for the first time. ‘Once you’re crowned, the Pope’s binding will send me back to the Holy City. It’ll be time to get another.’

Alex started to reach for her again. ‘But you’re the only thing—’

Sunny stepped back. ‘You’ll find something else. You’re a princess. I’m an elf. Sounds like a bad joke. It is one.’

Silence, then. In the darkness. The pair of them, so close together but so impossibly far apart.

Then Alex stood. She held herself very straight, the way Baron Rikard had taught her. ‘You’re right.’ She smoothed the front of her dress. ‘I can’t afford … to be silly, any more.’ And she walked past Sunny, back towards the Empress’s chamber.

‘Alex!’

She turned back, a glimmer of hope at the corners of her eyes.

‘Take the lamp.’ Sunny handed it to her. ‘I can see without it.’

Jakob knelt in the shaft of light before the window, head bowed and hands clasped, like some old saint in a painting, preparing for martyrdom.

Sunny eased the door a little wider and slipped through sideways, then, so as not to be rude, she picked a bit of warped floorboard she could tell would squeak and set all her weight on it.

Jakob winced as he glanced over his shoulder and his neck gave a noisy click. ‘Sunny? That you?’

She let out her breath and sat down on the bed with her head hanging. ‘How many invisible elves do you know?’

‘It could’ve been the Holy Spirit,’ he grunted, as he slowly stood.

‘Why would that visit you?’

Jakob narrowed his eyes at the open panel on the wall, and the slit of darkness showing around its edge. ‘I’ve got a secret passage?’

‘Place like this, they’re everywhere. What are you doing?’

Jakob sighed, as though considering a lie, then gave up. ‘Praying.’

‘Thought you didn’t believe in God any more.’

‘Maybe I was hoping … that he still believed in me.’ He grimaced as he lowered himself towards the bed beside her, then dropped the last distance, he and the frame both giving their own complaining groan.

‘Alex has a better bed than you.’

‘Well, she’s a princess and I’m a murderer.’

The silence stretched. Jakob wasn’t much of a talker, but at silence he was a master.

Sunny took a slow breath. ‘I think she’s going to marry Arcadius.’

Jakob took a slow breath, too. ‘I think, in the end, that’ll turn out best.’

‘Best for who?’ whispered Sunny. She would’ve liked to cry, but didn’t really know how. Instead, she leaned sideways, and kept leaning, until she fell over into Jakob’s lap with her hands clasped against her chest. After a moment, he put his arms around her.

Gentle was the last thing she’d ever have expected from the old knight, but for a man who’d spent a lifetime killing elves, he was surprisingly good at hugging one.

‘I just wanted … something,’ she said. ‘For myself.’

‘No one deserves it more.’

‘But I can’t have it.’

Another silence. Far off, birds wheeled and cried beyond the window.

‘When I was young,’ said Jakob, ‘I thought I was working towards something. Building to last. Some perfect state of things. Of the world. Of myself.’ He gently shifted one leg under her, then the other. ‘You get to my age, you realise nothing lasts for ever. No love, no hate, no war, no peace. If a thing hasn’t ended … you haven’t waited long enough.’

Sunny sniffed. ‘Is that meant to be comforting?’

‘It’s meant to be true. You had something. Be thankful for that.’ Jakob gave a long, pained sigh. ‘Now you have to let it go.’