Tala Bronachell and Lawri Le Graven stole through the silence that shrouded the forgotten corridor of Amadon Castle. The passage was hung with tapestries, decorative shields, and crossed swords. Empty sconces hung high on the walls. Glowing light warped through a stained-glass window far above, and from it, a web of color danced on the floor. Swathed in soft leather boots, their feet made scarcely a sound as they ran, hair rippling behind. Tala, sixteen, had long straight locks of midnight. Lawri, seventeen, was tawny-haired with sharp bangs that grazed her brows. Both wore tunics over black silken shirts and brown woolen leggings.

They slid to a stop at the end of the hall under the last velvet tapestry. Tala brushed strands of hair from her face and pulled a small dagger from her leather belt. Its jeweled hilt was bone-thin and fit snug in her fingers. "No danger here. I've this to keep me safe." She flipped the dagger up. It spun. She snatched it out of the air by the hilt and slipped it smoothly back into her belt—a trick the dwarf, Roguemoore, had taught her.

"You'll cut your fingers with that," Lawri said. When she and her cousin were little girls, Lawri had always been overly protective. But now that they were older, Tala was taking more of a leadership role in the friendship. She wondered if it was because she was sister to the king that Lawri allowed it. Growing up, Lawri had organized their childish games and wanderings into the castle's "secret ways." Now it was Tala's turn, and she had a mind to turn their wanderings into actual adventures—like her older sister, Jondralyn, might do.

Many hallways now separated them from Dame Mairgrid and the king's chamberlain, Ser Landon Galloway. Tala had dismissed her tutor, Mairgrid, then merely walked out her chamber door, informing Galloway and the two Silver Guards that she and Lawri were off to visit her older sister, Jondralyn, whose chamber was just down the hall. But instead of entering Jondralyn's room, the two girls had continued on down the corridor. And the sleepy guards, ever apathetic at their stations, hadn't noticed a thing. Tala felt a pang of guilt knowing that Galloway and the guards would come under harsh discipline when the captain of the Silver Guard, Ser Lars Castlegrail, discovered they had lost sight of both the princess and her royal cousin.

Tala drew aside the corner of the heavy gilt-worked tapestry that stretched from ceiling to floor. "A new passage Lindholf told me about."

Behind the tapestry was solid block and mortar but for one missing stone roughly a foot and a half high and two wide, a floor-level opening just big enough for a person to crawl into. Tala lay on her stomach and wiggled her head and shoulders into the hole until her upper body was beyond the wall, then pulled her way through. Lawri squirmed into the hole too, and the corner of the tapestry fell back into place behind her, hiding all trace of their passage. The small chamber they'd entered was scarcely big enough for two. "A dead end," Lawri said, "an empty room leading no place."

Lawri had dark eyes that held an innocence Tala found charming. Her cousin was stunningly beautiful, with straw-colored hair that almost appeared to glow in the narrow beam of sunlight raining down from a crack up high. Dust sparkled in that tiny ray. There were many cracks in the stone walls around them, cracks where ivy crept in. Tala imagined the vines coming alive to strangle her and burrow into her skin. She shuddered, then grinned. The thoughts that sometimes come a-creeping into my head.