The prince had the upper hand. Niccola had come all the way to the ball intending to guide a conversation with him in the direction she needed, and now he had the upper hand again. Nor could she simply pull away. The woman in the sketch wasn't here—Niccola had spent an eon scanning the hall for her—leaving Isaiah as her only lead, a situation as inescapable as it was infuriating. But he'd also stated his intention not to expose her, and she still held her own secret as leverage. Not that she came from Varna; that crow had flown. She'd not yet revealed what authority she held back home.

She decided to risk pushing back to gauge his response. "What did you notice?"

"Besides your dancing?" Oh, he was actually going to answer. "You mask your accent well, but not entirely. I daresay you also know a great deal more about crows than an average Calisian serving-woman."

He'd not just figured out that she wasn't a Calisian citizen. He knew where she was from, too. The loss of two secrets rolled into one stung harder than it had a right to.

"You also dance like nobility," said Isaiah, and Niccola's steps nearly stuttered again. Isaiah remained the picture of calm collectedness. Neither his face nor his easy posture betrayed his interrogation as he led their dance from the end of her hand. For a moment, Niccola was tempted to draw the dance back to Varna's steps simply to reassert control over the situation. It was such a simple thing—dance steps—yet she'd made the error of neglecting to think of it when she'd crossed the border. She had set herself up for exposure, and now only Isaiah shielded her from the increased scrutiny of the other ball-goers.

"Why are you here?" he asked again, and Niccola could not help but notice that he was not asking who she was. As if he didn't care.

He'd seen nothing but her blunders now, and called her out on each of them. If that was his perception of her, she had no reputation left to lose. So long as she didn't endanger Phoebe's, or sabotage her mission in this realm, she could speak as freely as she cared to.

"I'm looking for my sister." She lifted her chin defiantly. "I have reason to believe she fled to this realm."

'I have reason to believe she was kidnapped by someone in this realm' remained unsaid. That would be a step too far.

Isaiah nodded once, his face unreadable. "Do you mean Calis harm?"

The bluntness of his question struck Niccola beneath the breastbone. For a moment she was too stunned to be angry, as she had every right to be. Did she mean Calis harm? Surely he knew the history between their realms. Every Varnic child certainly did.

Yet he was also right to ask, for she was in his home as they spoke, in search of a member of what could only be his family. And when she found that woman...

"That depends," she answered, and for the first time, she saw Isaiah's expression flicker. "Does Calis mean my homeland harm? Because I have reason to believe it."

With that single mention, it was his turn to stop dead. Niccola tugged his hand the way he had caught hers when he told her to keep dancing. He spun back into step. Now the atmosphere between them had shifted. Isaiah's hands gripped hers harder, and Niccola returned it. Mixed triumph, anger, and uncertainty coursed through her veins and made her heart beat harder than the throb of the strings in the musicians' corner. It was the feeling of lockstep in more ways than one. The ground between them had leveled. Niccola would have to trust Isaiah to keep his word on not exposing her, but now it looked like she would be returning the favor.

It was a long time before Isaiah spoke again. "I would like to hear more, but that is a topic I would not broach in a crowded room."

"Then we are of like mind. Now, you said you had other questions for me. What were they?"

Isaiah went silent again. If he was too trapped to ask his own questions now, all the better... yet a subtle discord accompanied that thought. Niccola wanted to know what he wanted to ask her. It was reckless, perhaps, but now that there was no escaping this unspoken alliance, it would benefit her to know what preoccupied him.

"We spoke in the market about the disappearances in this realm," said Isaiah at last. "Has Varna seen those?"

"My sister has disappeared."

"Is she the only one?"

The question gave Niccola pause. Was she? Niccola technically sat on the Varnic throne, but in the frenzy of the last few moons, she had passed that power to her aunt in order to pursue her sister's disappearance. While she was sure her aunt would have told her of other disappearances, other memories of the moons before she'd left Varna were hazy.

"One might be enough, if it has the same cause," said Isaiah, saving her from uncertainty. Niccola remembered with a jolt that he did not know she was a ruler. He had identified her skill at dancing, but made no guesses about her status itself. He did not need to know that she ought to know this information.

"You suspected a Talak," continued Isaiah. "Did your wayfinders uncover any evidence one way or the other when they sought your sister?"

"Her trail simply ended."

Saying it out loud after three moons of fruitless work hurt terribly. The hollowness it carved into her chest was an echo of the helplessness that had consumed her when the wayfinders hit a dead end. Niccola had been there. The wayfinder in charge of the search had said she'd never seen anything like it.

"And no trace of her since?" said Isaiah.

"None."

Something deflated in him. "We have seen the same. I hoped Varnic trackers might have had greater success in their search."

"Varnic tracking came to nothing."

It escaped her bitterly, and Isaiah squeezed her hand. The gesture was comforting, somehow.

"I do have one lead," said Niccola. "But that is the thing we should not speak about where others may overhear it."

"I have an excuse to meet again. Several, in fact."

Niccola gave him a questioning look, remembered he could not see it, and said instead, "Enlighten me."

"I have a crow who has taken ill these last few days. When the palace crow-keep came to see her this morning, she fought back and would not let herself be seen to. You said in the market that you worked with crows back home."

"I grew up doing so. Would you want me to have a look?"

"That was my hope, if you are willing."

"Well, then that is our excuse to talk in private now, isn't it?"

"Would you be free to meet me at the west palace gate at nine tomorrow morning?"

She would need to be excused from work. That could be done. The return to reality, though, nearly dragged Niccola to the floor for a different reason entirely. In the thrill of the dance, she had forgotten that the whole Bel Ilan household was here. She had not seen them since arriving, but she had ceased paying attention to her surroundings since she'd found the prince. The gravity of the crowd's attention multiplied in an instant.

"I should be free at nine tomorrow," said Niccola, and waited for him to spin her so she could check the clock on the ballroom wall. Ten in the evening. She would need to change clothes before she took the two-hour walk down to the Talakova's edge yet tonight, and the Talaks only got hungrier as the night wore on. She was thankful, at least, for her certainty that Lady Selah and her daughters would be here until the bitter end of the festivities.

With that final thought, Niccola pulled the dance to a halt.

"Do you have to leave?" said Isaiah.

"I do. I have other things to attend to."

"Very well." He lifted his hand from her waist and kissed the back of hers. "The dance was my pleasure."

"And mine as well."

Eyes from all around the ballroom assaulted the back of Niccola's head as she made her exit. She smiled at the nearest door-guard. "Which way to the gardens? I am in need of a breath of fresh air."

It would be a common request this evening. The guard pointed her down the correct pattern of hallways, then returned to her post. Niccola thanked her. She navigated easily to the garden exit; she had come in this way, knowing that a nobly dressed woman arriving on foot through the front gate would arouse side-eyed stares. The walk to the palace was the true reason she had arrived late.

The quiet chill of the night breathed life back into Niccola's lungs. She paused on the step of the garden exit to check her hand in the moonlight, then to ground herself and collect her wits about her. The last hour was a blur of action, reaction, and sensory overwhelm that she could only now just start to process. Already, the ball felt like something that had happened to someone else.

She shouldn't dally here.

Niccola stepped down into the gardens. An early frost clung to everything, coating twigs, berries, grass, and fountain-shaped bushes in delicate white powder. The air nipped Niccola's arms and hands. Her gown had no pockets, and her coat lay hidden outside the palace walls. This alone provided enough motivation that she had to curb her pace down the garden paths, thankful that she was not the first one to walk this way tonight. Her footprints wouldn't betray her.

Alone in the darkness, Niccola shoved both hands beneath her mask and ran them down her face. The feel of the prince's fingers still lingered in them, soft, almost inquisitive. He danced exceptionally well. It made sense that he would memorize steps and stay more in tune with his partner than if he were distracted by the whirl of colour around them, but even that expectation had not prepared her for the actual sensitivity of it. She had danced before. Many times, at Crow Moon festivals and ancestors-day parties and balls just like this. But this... this had been different.

Or maybe that was just her impression of it, strung as she had been by the anxiety of his too-sharp probing. He was a threat to her mission. Yet she could not convince her mind of that entirely, no matter his standing in this enemy realm. No matter how far her stomach had dropped as he broke her secrets as easily as cracking chestnuts beside a winter fire. He was competent, she would give him that. Yet he also wasn't what she had expected of a Calisian royal.

Niccola's memory drifted back to the stress in his posture that had led her to rescue him from that noblewoman sooner than she'd planned to. Or the relief with which he'd spoken of his guide dragon's propensity to drive off suitors. Any suitors. That wasn't a common sentiment among the upper class. Certainly not common enough for him to speak of it so freely, albeit after a pause like he'd decided whether or not to trust her. Like he too had suspected they had more in common than anyone else in the hall that night guessed.

Niccola groaned into her hands. This was not the time to be developing sympathies for someone who ought to be her enemy, especially when she would need to betray his family before her job here was done. Yet she would be lying if she denied that it made her more inclined to work with him. He was a flirt, but a practiced one. It was hard for a person to conceal attraction while dancing. She suspected he hadn't even needed to try.

Unless he had a preference for men. But that would make no sense either: Verde would not have joked about her interest if that were the case, and the ball would not have invited women alone. Adoption was considered an acceptable alternative to biological children here, as in Varna, provided the biological option could not occur. Neither realm had qualms about same-gender pairings. The only difference was that Calis seemed to expect some pairing at all, while Varna—at least for barrowers who proved their worth to society—did not.

Isaiah was being expected to marry. Niccola couldn't tell how he felt about it. That alone threatened her with empathy, the last emotion she wanted to deal with right now.

It did not help that she could not banish his smile from her mind.

Niccola rounded up her other thoughts and banished them instead. She could think about Isaiah when the night was done. And besides, they would meet again tomorrow. Then, perhaps, she would finally get some more answers.