On the one hand, it was a Sixthday like any other. Start with my schedule! I woke up early, and started running. I took a bath, and for once I really took my time, let myself relax and soak in the hot water. I tempered the water up, and up, until my muscles were forced to relax. Then I got out, dried off, and let myself cool down slowly. I was settled in a fluffy cotton bathrobe when Gedes walked in, pushing his tray with breakfast.

  On the other hand, it was rather a special day for me. "Good morning, Lady Natalie, and happy birthday. Poached eggs with ground ginger, seared ham with honey-mustard glaze, pan-fried cauliflower florets, buttered toast and some grapefruit."

  I smiled at him, and tucked my hands out of the way while he set up the station. "Always grapefruit around here. Why is that?"

  "My understanding is that the royal family possesses a great number of grapefruit orchards and tries to encourage the people to consume rather a lot of them."

  I bonked my forehead with a palm "Right. I should have known that."

  "Why is that, my lady?"

  I stilled, staring down at the plate. "It, uh.. it will become somewhat obvious later, I'm afraid."

  Gedes stepped back, and I could feel his eyes on me. For once they felt judgy. "You rarely make statements like that, m'lady, and rarely over anything trivial. But when something like that does come up, I sometimes feel compelled to ask what it may mean."

  I felt miserable again. I should not have brought this up. "It just... it helps explain why certain things happen in the way that they do, after the fact."

  There was a long thoughtful pause. He sat down on the chair opposite me, which was enough to make me jump just a little. The act itself wasn't scary. Walking on two legs and holding an umbrella isn't scary until you see a dog do it. Gedes never sat down in my presence. He never made himself visibly comfortable or held himself at my eye level. I was a little nervous to see something new from him now.

  "I'm not sure if you've ever considered this, Lady Natalie," he said, again choosing words carefully. "But the present tense of 'explains why things happened as they did', is 'causes'. Right now, the orchards are not explaining anything. Right now, the orchards are going to cause something to happen. Only from the viewpoint of the future does that shift to had caused. And only from the point of view of one who learns about this in the future, is this matter explained by this information. Right now this is not a mystery being solved or a book being read. These are current events that are happening or that shall happen."

  "From this point of view," I repeated, staring down at the plate. There were other points of view, after all. A half a grapefruit sat in the middle of the plate with a mound of salt glistening on top. It wasn't causing or explaining anything, not yet.

  For a second I thought he was going to lean forward and pat my knee or something. The moment felt weirdly avuncular like that. And maybe I'm really craving some kind of familial response, even if it's something as stupid as wanting a pat from a friend. Instead he stood up, slowly now. "When should my lady be ready to receive company?" the butler asked me using his butler voice again. Of course there would be company to receive today. I was a year older today. These days I don't even ask, it won't make a difference. I dress up to perform when someone comes around, and I train myself to exhaustion at all other times.

  I stared at the plate still, miserable. "A half-hour, I should think," I said after a second. "Sorry, maybe I'm just not myself today." I made myself reach for the fork, and tried the eggs.

  Of course they were unreasonably delicious. Once I started eating I could not stop myself, I almost ate too fast and gave myself a stomachache. I think the kitchen staff in this tower must have a crush on Gedes because there is no way they're giving food this good to everyone in this wing of the prison. I know most of my neighbors are also nobility, but there is just no way.

  After breakfast was cleared I got dressed, and decided to do it up a little fancier than usual. I went with the scarlet satin that I hardly ever bring out, with a silver-white bodice and some similar accent pieces. The old family House colors, deep reds and white. The House may be far from me, but I remember where I came from.

  Father did not ever write, but the messages through Sisa did sometimes give me insight. Reading between the lines. He was heartbroken and he had initially been driven to throw every resource into saving me. He'd been in a rage, demanding my release, ordering his vote and voice on the Council to offer every favor if it would release his daughter. It had taken a concerted effort from his advisers to bring him around. Distancing from me was not only a political necessity, but a humanitarian moral imperative. The sort of capital he would need to commit to see me freed would certainly sink his trade war and he would lose control of the pricing for necessary foods throughout the kingdom.

  He could either bully the other Houses into setting me free, or he could save tens of thousands of strangers from unnecessary starvation. He could not do both. He chose, and he chose correctly. Thousands of people dying slowly was not worth even a single daughter's skin, and I say this as the person who is wearing that skin!

  Honestly I was proud of his choice. Principles. Doing the necessary thing even if it's hard. I respected that. It left me high and dry, but I had learned to be strong enough for this.

  And it's not like the conditions were all that bad. I styled my hair up, then let it back down. It looked better down these days. I could not tell if that was because my face was a little more mature, if I had grown somewhat, or if that was just my white-washed coloring now. For being the family black sheep locked up in the prison tower I was doing all right. I picked a minimum of jewelry, brushed some subtle eyeshadow on, and headed out to the sitting room. It was nearly time for me to receive visitors, after all.

  Gedes opened the door, and just like every other Sixthday, Yheta walked in. But this time he had a broader smile on his face than usual. And he had Taeril and Geland with him. And Gedes followed after, this time with another rolling tray-cart. I was absolutely speechless, gobsmacked. And instantly in tears, they fell down either side of my face, falling over cheeks that were tight from smiling so hard. I was expecting visitors, but not friends! Taeril skipped over to me with her hands out as if she would give me a hug, but she pulled up short at the glass barrier. "Natalie!" she called, waving at me like I might not have seen her. "Oh my gods it took ages for us to get on the visitor's list! And when we did get on Yheta said we should wait a little because it would be better to wait a few more weeks so we could surprise you on your birthday!"

  Geland pressed his hand to the window. "Surprise," he said. Gedes had taken the cover off of his tray, and was lighting the candles. I was at the glass, pressing a hand towards each of them, my palms splayed in front of each of these unexpected vis- friends. My friends.

  Yheta gave the cake a funny look. "Two candles? Not thirteen?"

  "Around here," Gedes said with an overly-affected stiffness, "we count down, not up." He was barely suppressing his own smile, that rogue!

  Two more years until I'm free again. Two more birthdays.

  We gabbled back and forth, chatting, laughing, catching up. The butler cut the cake and began serving, small saucer-plates for all three of the older kids, and then a plate for me. He walked it over to the door at the far end, and reached into his pocket for the keys. They jingled, and we all looked at each other for a weird, expectant moment. He unlocked the door, opened it, and walked the plate over to me.

  Yheta, Taeril and Geland and I all looked at each other like something happened, like there was something different now that he had unlocked the only door that divided their part of the room from mine. Right this moment someone could just walk from here to there.

  The plate was extended out towards me, and I took it in both hands. Gedes looked at my eyes, and turned towards them through the window. Their faces staring towards me. He looked back into my eyes and I could see remorse and apology in his eyes as bright as if there had been a sign over his neutral, unflappable face. He handed me a small fork, and walked back.

  Thunk. Click. Cla-ack. The door shut, sealed, and locked again. The moment was past.

  We were more somber as we ate cake, but with time we relaxed and regaled. The mood thawed, and warmed. Of all things, Yheta was surprised at how many of his experiences at the Academy the other two had gone through. He was so convinced that his experiences were singular and unique, but the more we chatted the more he found he was going through the same wacky hijinks as everyone else.

  "Oh, come on, there's no way that you had to spend three days on the road for a project for your math class! That's unreal! It's bizarre enough that we're being assigned project work, more bizarre still that it should be for a class in mathematics of all things! But that it should require travel and itineraries?! How is it that the classes at the Academy are so very strange but nobody ever seems to remark on it?"

  Every week he told me about his studies and his classes, and sometimes I felt like I already knew these professors myself. And surprisingly Taeril and Geland knew them just as well, and all had their own stories to share.

  "Oh, right yes! Professor Thowned! What a card they were, always making jokes. And then bam they getcha with one dead-serious statement and you're there laughing along, caught up in the moment.. and they're staring at you like you're insane for laughing at such a deeply serious subject!"

  I was laughing along, and somehow among the four of us, nobody was shut out. We had the moment, we bonded. We had known each other for a dozen years, and we had laughed and gamed and eaten and gossiped together. We had learned bow and curtsey together, we had written letters back and forth as we learned to write. Even Yheta, damned annoying brat Yheta, was part of our group this time. For my sake everyone was accepted.

  "And not one minute later!" Taeril was almost howling with laughter as she told her story. "So of course as soon as he said that, Geland is looking at me-"

  Yheta looked horrified. "No, you absolutely-"

  "We did," Geland said, his big moon-shaped face splitting in a mischievous grin, almost rubbing his hands together in glee as the story got to the good part.

  "His lordship, Nathan Harigold," Gedes announced, swinging open the door.

  My face fell so hard that it should have bounced. I recoiled from the glass, but the others still had the shared laughter reverberating between them as they turned and saw the last member of the party. My brother stood there, with a smile falling out of his eyes faster but sticking to his face as if paralyzed there. He was holding a plate of steamed asparagus, an old and familiar joke between him and I. He walked into my birthday party, his birthday, and saw the others. Everyone else invited but him. He was staring at my face and I saw devastation break him inside.

  "Not like this," I choked out, my words muffled, I couldn't pull my hands away from my mouth. "Not like this." The family colors I wore so proudly felt like they would sear my flesh. How dare I.

  That moment lasted only a second. Mirth and brightness snapped back into his eyes like a candle activated. "Surprise!" he called out. And just once he was no better at hiding insincerity than I was. I could see how fake his cheer and gladness was. "Oh my gods, I did not expect to see anyone else here! I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who thought to throw her a surprise party! I heard how hard it was to get a visitor pass here and I just assumed ... well, this is a much better outcome than I expected! Geland! Yheta, chum! Taeril, is there someplace I can set this down? I fear I owe you a hug, you've left it in my safekeeping for a year now and I've just gotten the chance to return it."

  Thirteen years now since the day I died. Thirteen years since my soul was scraped free of my old world and captured by a goddess that held me between worlds in a blinding white void of infinite potential. She explained to me that the game I had been playing, more than casually but less than obsessively, was a nascent world and that I would be sent to it. To live within it as the protagonist.

  Thirteen years ago I had fought and protested. I would not do it. I would not destroy a life to save my own. My life would not be stolen- created or destroyed but never taken. So on the day that I died, I was offered a new life, and I refused it. Not on those terms. My death was mine, not his. I was prepared to die again, if necessary.

  Thirteen years since the goddess's power had reached into this world and tried to sort out the muddle of souls and lives, and the only answer left was for me to join the game as a sister, as a rival. I would have to make sure he won his game, and I would be numbered among the antagonists when I did. I would become the enemy he needed.

  The price I paid to not destroy him, was that I would serve where I was needed and do so without being recognized. I would be the bad guy, reviled, despised. The criminal imprisoned, the murderess feared. Because no matter what, I was not going to kill a decent man in his crib.

  Nathan moved through the small party, he was instantly charming and fun. How easily he smiled and joked, how easily the right words came to him. The easy touches, the sincerely glad warmth in his gaze. That light went out every time he looked in my direction. The smile stuck but the eyes showed hurt. Every time he saw me I was stabbing him again. Gods how I wished I could stop hurting him.

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  I could not even speak. I could not make myself walk towards the window, could not approach him. The last time I had seen him he was on the grass with the housemaids in the dark, helping them to sit up and cough out the smoke from their lungs while I ran back inside to save our parents. For a year, my last memory of him was lit by firelight.

  And now my new memory of him is standing in my prison, seeing me locked in a gilded cage that showed my shame of guilt and the shame of luxury, that I was acknowledged to be vile and despicable but I was coddled anyway. I'd have been less ashamed to have him see me clapped in rough irons eating gruel in the dingiest basement.

  "I had been assigned to a survey mission," Nathan was telling Yheta. "I was telling Natalie about it in my last letter, that I had to travel to the uplands for a planting project. I was two days away from the nearest postal relay, but only four days away from Hearstcliff! So I worked through the night, finished my job early, and rode in a manner unforgivably cruel to my horse all the way here! I was nearly as surprised as anyone that I would be able to visit during our birthday, and here we all are! Miracles and birthday wishes, sometimes they will both come true!"

  Gedes handed Nathan a slice of cake, the other one with a candle on it. Just like my slice. Nathan was chatting still, but the others were looking more strained and awkward by the minute. My silence was a poison in the water, everyone was picking up my shame and horror, my guilt and self-hatred. I could not put them away. I could not act like everything was all right.

  Cl-ack. Click. Thunk.

  I could hear the older man's footsteps advancing towards my right side. And then, gently, he put a hand on my back between my shoulders, and nudged me forward. My feet stuttered, then relented, and I let myself be walked forward until I was arm's length from the glass.

  Only one of my hands covered my face now, clasped over my mouth. It was numb, it would not respond to me. The other hand reached out, and my palm flattened on the glass. Nobody was speaking anymore. His hand reached up and mirrored mine. The window between our hands warmed.

  His eyes and mine. Gold left, gold right. Blue right, blue left. Why were mine the only ones crying?