Straz thanked the Chamberlain for me and prepared to usher us from the room, but the question that was burning in my mind could wait no longer. I experienced a brief shock of mental strength – this was my life and I would not be ushered about and paraded around just yet. Not without knowing why, although I had presented myself for introduction, my bridegroom had failed to return the courtesy.

"Wait a moment, Baron Straz. Herr Chamberlain." I turned to face the little bald Foreign Minister. I hesitated a moment, unsure how to phrase my question with some greater decorum than simply blurting out 'But where's Prince Illiya?'

"Prince Kazimir," I said finally, more timidly than I would have liked. "I should like to meet him."

The Foreign Minister's attentive expression froze on his face. I saw it happen. Then he smiled and blithely sidestepped my request.

"His Royal Highness will join you at the ceremonies, of course." He made a feeble attempt to be lighthearted, even forced a chuckle. "We couldn't have a wedding without the bridegroom, now could we?"

This was too much. Not meet my future husband until the very moment we took our vows? My mind whirled, searching for an explanation. Why all the mystery? If he was ill, or had gone abroad for some reason, why not simply tell me? Unless it was a serious illness? Another woman? Was he at his hunting lodge spending a lusty week bidding farewell to his bachelorhood? Were the Blenki intentionally trying to conceal his whereabouts? To what end?

I glanced at Baron Straz. No, I was sure he didn't know. Surely he knew more than I about the goings-on at court – everyone knew more than I, it seemed – but if something truly underhanded were going on and he was aware of it, he would have informed me. Of this I was certain. His first loyalty was to Austria; of that there was no possible doubt whatever.

No, I would not be put off. I returned the Foreign Minister's smile with what I hoped was one of polite innocence. "I should like to meet him now," I said evenly, and with as little petulance as possible. "I am here. Prince Damian and Princess Kira are here. So where is Prince Illiya?"

The smile stayed fixed and false on the Foreign Minister's smooth face. His eyes were large and light and betrayed a deadly lack of emotion. He would not be bullied by my feeble attempt at regality.

"His Royal Highness is indisposed at the moment, but he greatly regrets that he could not be here to welcome you himself. I will convey to him your eagerness, which I'm sure will please him greatly." He extended an ushering hand and stepped around me with a little bow. "Now if you will please come this way –"

But a voice from above us cut him off and froze us all where we stood.

"Come now, Henryk. Don't be a dissembling ass, though you're so good at it."

As one we all looked up, up for the owner of the voice. I saw, as I had not noticed before, an open gallery framing the second storey of the room. A man stood in the eastern bay. Or the figure of a man, I should say, because his back was to the blinding sun coming in through the window behind him, throwing him into silhouette. I couldn't see his face, but I didn't need to. I felt a jolt like missing a step on the staircase, and the bottom fell out of my stomach. It was him. It had to be! Who else? But I couldn't see him, couldn't make him out. I brought my hand up to shade my eyes, almost desperately finally to look upon him now that he was so close. But he stayed there, hidden, I thought with irony, by the sun.

My imagination ran wild. I saw his shape, a featureless figure ablaze with fierce white light, and I thought, perhaps he is a sun god. Like his brother, but truly radiant…

"The girl would like to see me, Zarovsky. A natural enough request. Anyone would want to see the product before they buy. Naturally she wants to get a glimpse of the future before she signs her life away. Although I'm afraid we're just a few minutes too late in that regard."

The ecstatic hopefulness in me quailed and began to writhe in its death throes. This man was nothing like his brother. His words were sarcastic and had the bite of relished cruelty. What had he said? Signed her life away… And his voice, unmelodious and harsh, seeking to wound as it sounded wounded.

"Of course," the voice continued, and I was shocked. Where before his tone had been grating, now it was as smooth as oil, but still sarcastic for all its unctuousness. So different it could have belonged to another man. "The niceties must be observed. Let our future bride be presented to us. And we to her."

In an instant the figure was gone from above and we were all blinded with sunlight.

I held my breath. Waited. In a few moments he appeared in a doorway directly below. He paused there for a moment, framed with one hand on the doorjamb, half-hidden in shadows. And then he stepped forward.

I don't think I gasped. I hope I did not. He was not his brother, that much was clear. Tall and thin, he strode into the room with the grace of a cat. A majestic tiger circling its cornered victim. A leopard stalking its prey.

But this was not the true shock. The truly remarkable thing was his face, which was entirely covered, except for his eyes and mouth, in a mask. But no comical face from the Venetian carnival, nor one of the gorgeously decorated confections I had observed in the great hall. It was plain black, formed to his face around angular cheekbones and severe brows, smooth and unadorned. The mask was in deadly earnest, and presented a visage as stern and merciless as the black eyes that flashed from behind it.

I felt rather than saw the crowd draw back, but I stayed where I was. I understood by instinct that this confrontation was meant for me alone to face. And I doubt I could have moved if I'd tried. My limbs felt frozen, locked in the terrified stillness of an animal caught in the sights of its predator. As if he could read my thoughts he began to walk around me, circling me, examining. He cut a path wherever he stepped until he and I were alone in the center of the room. An island, cut off from all aid.

I couldn't think what to do. What to say. Where to look. So I said nothing and did nothing, not even curtsey. But if anyone noticed this breach in the etiquette, no one said a word. Not even him. I kept my eyes fixed on a point on the floor about ten feet away, locked on the fringed corner of the Persian rug. All the while I felt his eyes sweeping over me. More cold examination. More detached judgment.

"Well Straz," he said at last, when he'd come all the way round to face me again. "You've done alright, my man. The girl's pretty, even if you did dress her up like an old woman."

"Your highness," I heard Straz say weakly from somewhere behind me.

"Now!" called out the prince, suddenly energetic. "Let's have some privacy, can't we? So I may greet my blushing bride… properly." His voice was all menace and insinuation, and I felt panic flutter in my heart. What? Do me harm? Rape me? Don't go! I wanted to cry. To the Foreign Minister, to my dear Baron Straz. Don't leave me alone with him!

Bu one by one, the ladies and diplomats and servants filed out of the room. Straz turned at the last minute and threw me a helpless glance. My eyes were wide. I don't know what he could have read in them.

Finally the room was empty save for he and I. The atmosphere of buzzing bustling efficiency replaced by a tension taut and palpable as a wire.

Only Prince Damian remained behind, an unobtrusive presence watching from near the door. If Prince Illiya minded this he didn't show it. Evidently whatever he had to do or say to me couldn't be so awful, if his kind and noble brother would be allowed to watch.

"Better," he said shortly. "Now, my lady, let us be perfectly plain with one another – Oh don't' look at the floor like some terrified poppet; look me in the eye."

Terrified poppet as I truly was, my eyes snapped obediently to his, which beheld me in a stare of utter coldness. "Better," he said again. "I know a great deal about you, my little Fraulein." His words were respectful, but everything about his tone conveyed derision. "I know you were sixteen this past April. I know that you were born in Vienna but have spent most of your life on your father's estate outside Salzburg. That your mother lost her life in travail at your birth and that your father lost the use of his legs when he tried to end his lie by throwing himself from a window in his grief."
I felt my breath catch at this. It was true, of course, but was not commonly known. It had been well covered up, or so my father had thought. He went on.

"You play the flute and the pianoforte but your true passion is for singing. You are advanced in your studies, well-versed in all the usual subjects and in several not so usual ones. You are an accomplished rider of horses – indeed accomplished in almost all the ways young ladies are called upon to be in this enlightened age…" Again this strange dissonance between his words, which were complimentary, and his meaning, which seemed to imply a blasé sort of boredom concerning all the areas in which I took pride. Suddenly his voice took a darker tone.

"I know that counts are a dime a dozen in the Austrian Empire and that the actual dignity commanded by the title is middling at best. But your grandfather, by all accounts a shrewd and tirelessly grasping successor to his beleaguered title – though he died five years before your birth and so you could not have had the pleasure of knowing him personally – that a nose for opportunity mixed with a healthy dose of ruthlessness enabled him to more than treble the size of your ancestral holdings. So the question I am trying to ask is this: What is it that you want, precisely?"

The question and his sudden look of inquiring curiosity caught me so off guard I could do nothing for several moments but stand and gape. Finally I found my voice. "I-I don't understand…" I didn't even realize at first that in my fearful bewilderment I had spoken in German.

"Ah! She speaks!" But his tone turned cold. "Don't you, girl? Understand, that is. Because I believe I do. As we both know, until this summer you stood to inherit an estate of massive size and value. You have no shortage of income. With a dowry like that you could have had your pick of the Austrian nobility, but you declined their offers, dozens of them, didn't you? You could have settled down in the foothills of the Alps with you vast fortune and a comfortable, German-speaking family. But instead, what do you choose? An international arrangement that practically disinherits you – though of course your dowry would still satisfy an emperor. What I want to know is why? What are you doing here, little Fraulein? What do you want from this match with the royal and ancient house of Kazimir?"

I felt like I was being led. If this line of questioning was ingenuous, he didn't make it sound so. Many of his arguments were false or flawed, and all were supremely ungenerous, but to my extreme frustration I couldn't begin to defend myself, not in the heat of that awful first moment. What are you doing here? What do you want from this match?

"Happiness." My voice was hollow and small. Little more than a whisper. "Love."

His eyes bored into mine, just a moment, with an unmatched intensity. Anger? Surprise? I couldn't tell, because the next moment he had turned sharply away and faced the window.

His voice was low and even, condemning me with dispassionate conviction. "You are a title-hunter, nothing more. No – do not try to protest; I see it quite clearly. And as for happiness and love… I could almost laugh, if I didn't pity you so greatly. How could you think of happiness, of love –" He spat the word like an obscenity. "When you know nothing of me? Had never received a single correspondence from my hand. Never," his voice dropped dangerously. "Even seen my portrait."

"I thought," I began, but my voice shook so I began again. "I had report that you are a good man. I thought it shouldn't matter."

He gave a short bark of laughter. "Shouldn't matter? We are very upright and idealistic, aren't we?" He turned back to face me, but his eyes were in shadow. But I am afraid," he continued in a low voice. "That they were wrong on both counts. Fo I am neither a good man, nor a handsome one. Come here."

The last thing I wanted was to approach this volatile and frightening man, but his tone was commanding. As though to draw me forward, he unfurled a hand in a gesture that was both graceful and threatening. Entirely in his power, I drew near.

His eyes bored into mine, looking slightly mad for all his demeanor was calm. I was near enough to see the part in his dark hair – like his brother, he wore no wig, but a simple queue – and a muscle clenching in his jaw below the bottom of the mask.

"You haven't asked me why I wear a mask."

I am neither a good man, nor a handsome one…

"I-I saw others," I said. "In the great hall. I thought it a fashion."

"Oh it is indeed a fashion. But I am not one for following fashions." I saw it was true; he was dressed plainly, not at all what one would expect of a prince.

"So come now, see why I wear a mask." He gestured at it, inviting me to remove it. But such a thing was entirely beyond me. To reach out, to touch him – for the thousandth time that day, I was frozen. And a suspicion was growing inside me – I was quite certain I did not want to know why Prince Illiya wore that black mask. I wanted no knowledge, did not want to see what lay beneath it.

He waited, no sound but his breathing and the pounding of my heart in my head. Slowly, with great effort, I shook my head.

This seemed to enrage him. He laughed, a terrible thing with more hysteria than humor. "What? Not frightened, are you? Afraid? Of me? Am I some bogey-man to give nightmares to little girls? Or perhaps you don't want to know? Come, come, don't you know you must taste the dish before it's served? I say, remove my mask! No? Silly, scared child, then I'll have to do it for you." He drew near to me, so that his face was mere inches from mine. "Pay close attention now," he rasped. "You're going to want to remember this. So whatever you do, don't shut your eyes!"

And with that, he ripped the black mask away from his face.

It was terrible. It was hideous. Freakish. Monstrous. He had the face of a demon. Twisted and lined and scarred with deformity made by no human design, but cut upon his face by God's knife. And above the horror of his hollow, ravaged cheeks burned his eyes. I say burned, truly, for in them was such evil hatred, such madness that I felt scorched by it, crucified before him.

I am glad I cannot remember my reaction, for I am sure that now, looking back, I would find myself more ashamed than I already am for the myriad mistakes I made in those early days, results of my foolishness and naïveté. I am blessed in my ignorance. But I am quite sure he remembers, can play it out in his mind like a piece of music committed indelibly to memory. I hope for his sake that he seldom thinks of it.

I remember nothing. Only that a few moments, or perhaps many minutes, later, I returned to find myself kneeling on the floor. Someone was helping me up… Prince Damian, his own face a mask of concern as he gave me his arm. He glanced regretfully at his brother, who faced mercifully away from us and leaned on his hands upon the table. He was silent, but I saw his shoulders rise and fall in great gasping breaths.

"Come now," said Prince Damian, leading me away toward the doorway that, a hundred years ago, the rest of the diplomatic entourage had exited. He paused, took a moment to straighten my rumpled cuff, tucked a stray hair back into my wig. Miraculously, my eyes were dry.

"You should go," he said. His brilliant blue eyes gazed into mine with concern. And pity. I looked into his rose and ivory face, his angels face framed with golden hair. I said nothing, could not speak. But my eyes begged of him. Why?

"Go," he said finally, and opened the door himself and guided me through into the room beyond, where the others waited with grim, expectant looks that they did not even bother to disguise with uninterest. Prince Damian closed the door, remining behind with Prince Illiya, and I entered the room alone.

The next minutes, the walk to my apartments, the concerned but pathetic questioning of Baron Straz – all sailed past as if I traveled through a thick fog, moving ghostlike through a world I could not take in. I witnessed their courtesies, but did not see them. Heard their words, but did not listen. When finally I reached my apartments I sailed past appointments and furnishings I did not see, straight into the inner sanctum of my boudoir.

"Leave me," I said in a voice that was neither commanding nor conciliatory.

The door clicked softly, and I was alone at last. I cast my eyes around the room, seeing but not seeing. What was I looking for? A way of escape? A source of solace? I can't know, but my eye caught on a familiar box lying atop the dressing table. It drew me toward it, a deep green leather case with twin ravens embossed in silver, and the Kazimir family crest, "Idz odwazne, I niech nie sie schowaj." Live bravely and hide not.

My trembling fingers flicked open the silver clasp, and I lifted the lid to look upon my diamonds. There, resting in their nest of black velvet, they glittered just as brightly as they had that morning in April when the world was green and all my hopes seemed to be coming true.

I threaded a finger through the loop of the necklace and drew it from the box. I twisted it around my hand until my fingers tangled with the string of white stones. The gems dripped like frosty icicles down to my wrist. If I unfocused my eyes they winked and glittered even more brightly, like I was clutching a handful of stars.

The room was filled with complete silence, so heavy and pulsating I felt it closing in around me, drawing me down, suffocating me until my breath caught in my throat. A sob. And my eyes were blurred with tears. I fell to my knees, one hand catching at the dressing table while the other clutched the diamonds to my chest. There was a pain, a terrible pain emanating from my heart, and it grew with every pulse until it had crescendoed to a great cry that clamored for release inside of me. It must out, I must make some noise or I would die of the pain, must release it somehow.

My mouth opened, but no sound emerged. That was my release, a long, silent scream as my fingers clawed gashes in the painted wood and the silver fittings cut into the flesh of my hand. A silent scream and soundless sobs as real tears fell finally and freely from my eyes, dropping to mingle with the diamonds in my fist.

There was a silence between the two men. One hunched over a desk breathing hard, his eyes clenched as tightly shut as his fists upon the polished wood. The other hoverd near the doorway with a placid, almost bored look, adjusting the lace of his cuffs as if waiting for something to occur.

Finally Illiya took a single long, deep breath that shook only slightly, and released it in a slow hiss. Then he straightened with a forced calm, deliberately unclenched his fists, tugged on his waistcoat and on the mask covering his face, and turned to face his brother.

"God, I hated that."

Damian did not look up. "You were rather hard on her. I'm not sure she's up to it, frankly. You don't think that was a bit much?"

Illiya's brief laugh was forced. "The world is no rose garden, Kregów least of all. She'll need a thicker skin than that her. Without it, well… she wouldn't have made it anyway."

Damian's only response was a sigh, though whether for the plight of the new princess or out of continued frustration over his wardrobe it was impossible to tell. His brother took no notice. Illiya had noticed a document lying on the table where the Foreign Minister had abandoned it in his hasty retreat. He traced his finger lightly over one of the signatures.

"What's done is done and cannot be undone," he quipped, and then added in a whisper. "God forgive me my cruelty." After a silent moment during which he stared at the swirling script of her autograph, he seemed suddenly to shake himself from his reverie. He pushed the paper away from him and spun on his heel to face Damian.

"I have something else I need to discuss with you, something of great importance. But," he glanced upward at the gallery. "Not here. Not now." He exhaled sharply through his nose, and his hand clenched and unclenched at his side. "I need to think. Can you come to me this evening, before dinner."

"Before I go off and drink my weight in claret, you mean?" Damian chuckled, before realizing that Illiya was too preoccupied to respond to his humor. He cleared his throat and stepped forward. "Of course. I am at your service, brother." He made a brief, gallant bow and swept his hand before him.

But before they had quite left the room, Damian stopped short. "You really did behave abominably to her, Illiya," he said. "With a reception like that… forgive me, but the poor girl could be well on her way to despising you."

"But that's exactly the point," said Illiya quietly, turning over his shoulder but not quite looking at his brother. "It will save time, and a great deal of pain. Making her hate me simply spares her the misfortune of trying to love me."