Maud’s steps down the lamplit hallway was a collage of memories. Adrian’s watchful glances, the way he had defended her, the way he lifted her up, the way he stood by her side, the way he would smile at her…the book she never had a chance to open with everything that had happened since he gave it to her. She hesitated with a deep breath. The gift that was the beginning of a courtship.

  “Oh, good,” Fleurie rounded the corner, her chainmail armor rattling and her helmet in her hand. “I was hoping to find you before you went anywhere.”

  She didn’t want to end their courtship, if that was what they had, her and Adrian. She liked him. He was kindhearted, smarter than any man she had met apart from Father Hagen and Pierre, clever on top that, and made her feel…stronger. And he was handsome. His smile...she never realized as much as now how it made her melt. She should have danced with him, she should have been nicer to him, she should have…

  “What?” Maud blinked at her Cleric guard. “What do you need? Have you seen Adrian pass by here?” Perhaps Alice could help her with fixing this. Or Jasmine. No, not Jasmine. Maud would rather die than talk to her again though she knew she would have to, regardless of whether she could salvage their relationship or not.

  “No, your Majesty,” Fleurie shook. “I’m to escort you to your chambers and keep you there until further orders. Now.”

  “Not until I speak with…” Maud winced. “Alice and Adrian.”

  “Now,” Fleurie sounded rushed. “King’s orders.” There was no hesitation. Fleurie grabbed Maud’s arm and turned her.

  “Hey!” Maud growled, yanking her arm to release it, but Fleurie wasn’t letting it loose. She had no choice but to follow as Fleurie pulled her back down the hallway. “What is going on? What’s happening?”

  “Trust me,” Fleurie was gritting her teeth, “You want nothing to do with this. Just, come on. Stop…fighting…me…please, Princess, this is for your own sanity!”

  Maud shoved her into the wall, “Get off! I want to see Alice first! Where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” Fleurie crossed to block her path. “You can see her after.” She grabbed Maud again.

  “I want to see her now,” Maud pulled back with a glare. “Bring me to her.”

  Fleurie huffed, gritting her teeth. “No,” She said flatly. “Now, either you go consciously or unconsciously, but you will go to your chambers now.”

  Maud took a step back from her, gaping with wide eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

  Fleurie’s hand went to her mace slung on her belt. “Only if you don’t make me. This isn’t one of those times that your title outranks my orders, Princess.” She pointed toward Maud’s door. “Now, go.”

  Chills running down her spine, Maud turned and reluctantly obeyed, her brows pressed together as her thoughts raced. What could possibly be happening that Draka would make such a command? And what if this was her only chance to explain everything to Adrian, to stop her from losing him forever? From losing yet another person she cared about in her life? And where was Alice? She hadn’t seen Alice since the night she became Queen Regent.

  As she neared her door, she stiffened and gaped even more. Two fully armored Paladins of Draka’s Order with their swords and shields held at ready were standing at the door, their helmets covering their faces, waiting. She hesitated but Fleurie put a hand to her back with a light but firmness in the pressure for her to go forward. A friar stood between them in his wool robe, gripping a crooked wooden staff that had a stick twined to form a cross near the top. There was a solemness in the frown she could barely see within that disheveled, bushy beard of his.

  “Your Majesty,” the friar greeted her as he opened the door for her, bowing his bald head as she tremblingly stepped past him.

  “You sealed all the cracks?” Maud heard Fleurie say to the friar behind her. “Floors, windows, roof?”

  “All that I could find,” the friar sounded confident. “I brought plenty of ointments and oils. There’s more on the shelf inside. Help yourself, Cleric.”

  Maud tried to swallow against the dryness in her throat at the sight within her room. Radhya was sitting on the cushioned chair in the far corner with Prince Paul on her lap, also in her armor, but bouncing him and smiling playfully. The look in her eyes when she glanced up to Maud were similar to what they had been when they were listening to Adrian’s story on the walls that night that felt like a lifetime ago. Princess Theresa was on the fur rug that was spread at the foot of her bed, fidgeting with a doll’s dress while Esme bounced another doll in front of it, trying to draw her attention. Leo was sitting cross-legged on the bed with another friar who was trying to explain to him something in a book that was open between them. The children’s mattress was on the floor on the other side of her bed, the sheets and quilt spilling out toward the pyre rack that was left unlit between it and Radhya.

  Maud could feel the tension in the room even before she took another step. The other three chairs were filled with other Clerics in their armor as well. A Paladin was kneeling beside the bed, beside Leo with his helmet on the nightstand, smiling and moving a finger across the page of the book while he helped the friar. Another was at the shelf where Maud kept her books, though those had been removed from it to be stacked in front of her closed wardrobe and replaced with corked vials of different sizes. He was looking through them thoughtfully. He took one of the vials, held it up to the lamp hanging from the hook nearest him and nodded at it before sliding it into a pouch on his belt.

  As the door closed behind her, Maud drew in a knowing breath. They were ready for battle. The lock was turned. Maud’s heart beat against her chest. She was shaking in a way that was far too familiar.

  Esme was the first to jump to her feet. “Maud!” She ran to her and threw her arms around her, tightly pressing her cheek into Maud’s belly.

  Theresa stood and bowed her head respectfully, “Your Highness.” She kept from looking up, like she had since she had first been brought to Maud’s room, with that sad look on her pretty little face.

  Paul leapt from Radhya’s lap with his arms high in the air with excitement, brimming with a wide smile, “Princess!” Maud brushed her worry away to smile as widely back as she caught his leap into her arms. “Cleric Radhya was telling me about a king and his pet monkey.”

  “Is that so?” Maud pulled him up with his legs wrapping her hips so that he was balanced over where her petticoats puffed out from under her bodice. She carried him to the corner of her bed. She sat, further forcing her smile to widen.

  At the door, the Paladins from outside had moved a little out of the way so the friar could pray in front of it while sprinkling oil. She tried not to show her concern, tried not to let the young boy now sitting on her lap to know that she was terrified of what she was only beginning to understand was happening around them, as she listened to his haphazard retelling.

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  “…and-and then the monkey couldn’t stop the fly from bothering the king and grabbed his sword,” the little boy started to laugh. “He was so stupid that he used a sword to swat the fly! Isn’t that stupid, Aunty Maud!”

  “It is very stupid,” Maud nodded with a raised brow toward Radhya. “And dangerous. You should never use a sword that way.”

  “Swords are very dangerous,” Paul’s nod was overexaggerated enough that it made Maud giggle. “Cleric Radhya said the same thing. She didn’t tell me what happened after that because you came in. Did you bring a present?”

  Maud tapped a finger to his nose, half paying attention to the friar giving a motion to the Paladins beside him that his work was done. It was met with sheathing swords.

  She answered the young prince, “You can’t always get a present, you know.”

  “But I like presents,” Paul turned himself so his legs were draped over her lap, his bottom lip poking out sadly.

  “She doesn’t want to give us presents,” Theresa said before sitting back on the rug with a loud sigh. “And you should stop calling her Aunty. She’s not our family.”

  “That’s not true,” Paul tipped his head, “Is it?”

  Maud drew in a breath at him. Fleurie and Radhya gave her wincing, saddened glances. The other Clerics were raising their glances to her.

  Maud’s smile became a stretched, closed mouthed grin, “Well, she’s partially right. I’m not your family. But I do like giving you presents and you can call me whatever you like.”

  “See!” Paul shouted at his sister as he bounced off Maud’s lap and kicked at Theresa on his way back to Radhya.

  Theresa glared up to Maud with a fist around her doll, “You shouldn’t lie to him. I know the truth. You don’t love us. You hate us! You hate our family and we hate you!” She threw the doll at the shelf, knocking some of the vials over at the bottom.

  All eyes turned on Maud, except Paul, who Radhya lifted back onto her lap. Maud met them with a momentary flood of shame before sliding from the edge of her bed onto the rug beside Theresa, flattening the hoops of her skirt as she went.

  Theresa turned away from her, sulking and crossing her arms stubbornly, while Esme silently continued to bounce her doll in an attempt to continue playing.

  “I don’t hate you,” Maud put a comforting hand on the girl’s knee. “Look at me,” Maud leaned to draw the girl’s eyes.

  Theresa turned away from her.

  Maud straightened with a sinking sigh. “I would never let any harm come to either of you. I promise with all my heart that I will keep you safe.”

  “Then why can’t we see mommy?” Theresa turned a teary eyed glare on her. “Why can’t we see our sister? Our brother? Why are we stuck in here? I want to go outside!”

  “Because,” Maud hesitated, brushing her fingers through Theresa’s long thin brown hair, “Because I had no other choice for my family. But I would never—and I mean this, Theresa. Look in my eyes and you will see that I am telling the truth with all my heart—I would never allow anything bad to happen to you or your brother. You both are very special to me. Not just because you’re a princess, either. But because I actually like you.”

  “You do?” Theresa crinkled her brow wearily in disbelief. “Why?”

  Maud shrugged, grinning. “Maybe because I don’t see a little princess and prince staying in my room, but a big sister who wants to protect her little brother, just like me when I was your age.”

  “You have a little brother?” Theresa rubbed at her tears with her palms and sniveled.

  Maud mimicked Paul’s exaggerated nod, “M-hmm, and just like you, I didn’t let anyone try to trick him either.” She let her hands rest in the folds of her petticoats, “I know you want to be strong for him. You need to be. I want you to be strong for your little brother, just like I was. In fact, I admire that about you.”

  “But you’re the one I have to be strong against,” Theresa blinked at her, rubbing at her nose.

  “Maybe,” Maud pulled her sleeve down over her own palm and rubbed it over Theresa’s cheek to wipe away some of the wetness, “But maybe once we get to know each other, you’ll see that you don’t need to. Not against me. You’re a smart girl. Why would I keep you in my room if I thought you were my enemy?”

  Theresa blinked at her, shrugged, then shook her head.

  Maud chuckled, “Because you’re not and never will be. You’re my wards and I am sworn to protect you. And, right now, this is where you are safest. Isn’t that right, Cleric?” She looked to Radhya.

  “That’s right,” Radhya raised a brow beyond the playful smile aimed at Paul, a suspicious eye aimed in Maud’s direction. She lifted Paul to adjust him on her lap. “Right now, we are all as safe as we can be right here, in this room. It is important that we all stay in here.”

  “But, why isn’t mommy and Jasmi here, too?”

  Maud crinkled her brow at that with a long sigh. She tried to word it the best way she could, “Because they’re safer in a different place, where they can’t harm anyone else.”

  “The purge will begin soon, friar,” one of the Paladins that had been outside the door whispered to the friar on the bed with Leo.

  That friar ruffled Leo’s hair and climbed off the bed as the Paladin that had been kneeling beside there also stood. Radhya set Paul on the floor and pointed for him to go to where Maud and the girls were. Leo used his legs to edge his way across the bed and slid down so that he was plopped down between Maud and Theresa on the floor.

  “Keep the children close to you,” Radhya said as she stepped around them. She ushered Paul and Esme to get closer to Maud while pulling her chainmail hood over her head before putting on her steel helmet. “Hold onto them and don’t let go.”

  Maud motioned for the children to crowd around her. Paul, who was the youngest, she pulled onto her lap. Esme and Leo sat on the edges of her legs on either side of him. She stretched her arms around them, waving her hands for Theresa, who regarded her for a moment.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you,” Maud pleaded to her. “Come here, Theresa.”

  Theresa slowly slid to her on her knees and leaned into them in a wide hug that scrunched everyone together. Maud drew in their warmth to steady her racing heart. She closed her eyes at first. Then she heard the boots moving to surround them and opened her eyes to see that the friars were behind and in front of her, with the Paladins encircling them, all facing outward. The Clerics formed another circle around the Paladins.

  Maud tugged one of the friar’s robes without loosening her embrace of the children. “What is happening?”

  “Purge, your Majesty,” the friar whispered in her ear once his mouth was close enough that it nearly touched it.

  Maud shook her head questioningly at him.

  The friar frowned thoughtfully. Finally, he whispered into her ear, “Best not to think too deeply about it. Just know that we’re here for your safety and whatever we tell you to do must be done precisely when we tell you.”

  “What is that?” Maud narrowed her eyes. “What is a purge?”

  His face stiffened, “Hold them tightly and don’t let go no matter what you hear or see.”

  “And be vigilant in your faith in the Lord,” one of the Paladins said to a chorus of weapons being drawn.