Chapter 1

I am the only princess of Hawkridge.

The moment the Skyveil opened, every ruler in the known world started looking at me strangely.

"Mara, come back to Frostmoor with me." King Ronan Blackwood stood with a cold blade in hand, his eyes rimmed red.

"You swindled three shiploads of gold out of me. How exactly do you plan to repay it?" King Sebastian Redfield advanced on me, working the counters on his counting board.

"You even lied about dying..." Crown Prince Adrian Locke coughed blood as he clamped a hand around my wrist.

My skin crawled. I tightened my grip on the treasury sigil I'd just lifted out of a hidden drawer and got ready to run.

Then the door closed with maddening calm.

Regent Elias Crowell blocked me inside his study, his expression cool and his gaze sharp as a knife.

"Your Highness."

"Your romantic debts out there are nearly settled. Now let's settle the account for what you stole from me."

Chapter 1

As Hawkridge's only princess, I was stealing from the Regent's residence when the Skyveil first appeared.

More precisely, I was stealing Elias Crowell's treasury sigil.

The token was carved from dark greenstone with the hidden mark of Hawkridge's treasury, proof that the royal household and Regent shared authority over grain and funds.

Elias kept it inside the third concealed drawer of his writing desk.

While he attended council at the palace, I crouched in his study and worked at the lock.

The lock clicked open just as the Skyveil lit across the heavens.

Before I could hide the sigil properly, the study door opened from outside.

Elias stood in the doorway.

White coat, dark hair, cold eyes.

His gaze dropped first to the sigil in my hand, then lifted toward the sky.

The Skyveil had divided itself into four panels.

In the first, I wore a Frostmoor fur cloak and sat inside King Ronan Blackwood's war tent, obediently sharpening his sword.

In the second, white silk covered my eyes as I leaned beside a counting board in a Rivermark waterside pavilion and softly called King Sebastian Redfield "my husband."

In the third, dressed entirely in black, I knelt beside Crown Prince Adrian Locke's bed in Willowspire, coughing blood as I swore to protect him with my life.

And in the fourth panel, there I was, crouched in Regent Crowell's study with a treasury sigil in my left hand, a lockpick in my right, and guilt written all over my face.

Elias stared at me for a very long time.

Long enough that I expected guards to drag me away and execute me on the spot.

Then he laughed once.

"Your Highness went to Cedar Chapel to pray and somehow came back as Frostmoor's queen, Rivermark's royal merchant bride, Willowspire's covert guard, and an expert lockpicker in my own house?"

Silently, I pushed the sigil deeper into my sleeve.

The live comments racing across the Skyveil had already gone insane.

[Frostmoor viewer: Isn't that the Snowbound Queen our king searched for three years to find? She's alive?]

[Rivermark viewer: What queen? That's the blind wife who conned our king out of three treasure ships!]

[Willowspire viewer: Move aside! That's the Crown Prince's dead covert-guard wife! Her memorial stone is still standing in his own house!]

[Hawkridge viewer: Wait. So while our princess was supposedly away from court, she was out restocking?]

Elias tapped one knuckle against the doorframe.

"Mara Whitlock."

He almost never used my full name.

Whenever he did, it meant I was in serious trouble.

I forced the most harmless smile I could manage.

"Regent, I can explain."

Elias looked down at me.

"Good."

He closed the door with infuriating patience.

"You'd better explain faster than the Skyveil."

I had barely opened my mouth when the system's sweet, merciless voice sounded overhead.

"Realm Survival Review: commencing now.

"Act One: Frostmoor."

I was finished.

It was faster than me.

In the first year of the Dawn Reckoning, when I transmigrated into this novel, Hawkridge had achieved an almost artistic level of poverty.

The palace roof leaked, mice ran freely through the treasury storehouses, and government officials drew lots to see who would receive a salary.

Those who won got half a sack of stale grain.

Those who lost received an officially stamped IOU.

On my first day awake in that world, the system gave me my mission.

"Host bound to Realm Survival Mission. If Hawkridge falls within three years, Host dies with it. If Hawkridge prospers, Host may return to the original world with ten billion in assets."

I latched onto one part.

Ten billion.

I sat straight up in my sickbed.

"I'm in."

The system was delighted.

The next day, it sent me to Frostmoor.

Chapter 2

Frostmoor was bitterly cold, rich in soldiers and horses, and desperately short of both grain and medicine.

Under the identity of a mute Hawkridge servant presented to the Frostmoor king, I was thrown into Ronan Blackwood's war tent.

Ronan had only recently crushed an internal rebellion. Blood seemed to follow him everywhere, and even his smile felt like a knife against the throat.

The system gave me a simple assignment.

"Acquire Frostmoor's military-supply ledgers and open a grain-for-horses trade route with Hawkridge."

I immediately identified the important part.

"And how am I supposed to acquire them?"

The system answered with four words.

"Use your own judgment."

Using my own judgment resulted in six months of pretending I could not speak.

When Ronan met with his commanders, I knelt nearby tending the brazier.

When Ronan inspected troops, I stood in the snow holding a lantern.

His officers mocked me as useless tribute from Hawkridge, so I lowered my head and memorized every grain depot, guard rotation, and weakness in the horse camps they mentioned.

The noblewomen attached to Frostmoor's rear court despised me.

They had servants lock me inside an ice cellar and ordered me to copy three books of court conduct before I froze.

When my fingers went numb, the system screamed inside my head.

"Life value falling! Host, if you do not call for help, you will die!"

I wanted to call for help too.

But I couldn't break character.

With the last strength in my hand, I wrote a single word across the frost.

Grain.

When Ronan kicked open the ice-cellar door, that was what he saw.

He carried me out wrapped tightly in his cloak, his expression terrifyingly dark.

"You're freezing to death and you're still thinking about grain?"

I couldn't answer, so I only stared at him with frost-reddened eyes.

When the Skyveil reached this scene, Frostmoor's live comments fell silent for a moment.

Then they flooded the screen.

[Wasn't she trying to win the king's favor back then?]

[I remember that year. After the trade route opened, Frostmoor got the medicine that saved us.]

[But then she ran off with His Majesty's queen-consort sigil. How does that excuse anything?]

It didn't.

I really did run.

Six months later, once the trade corridor was operating, I returned to Hawkridge with Frostmoor's approved grain-and-horse routes, its military shortages, and one queen-consort treaty sigil.

Before leaving, I staged my death on the snowfields.

A carriage plunged through river ice.

Inside were my fur cloak, bloodstained clothing, and a broken hairpin.

There was no body.

Ronan searched the frozen river for seven days.

On the eighth, he personally cut down every tree along the bank that blocked his path.

The Skyveil slowed the scene cruelly.

Snow screamed across the river while the blood-covered king stood there, his voice too hoarse to sound human.

"Mara.

"If you're alive, turn around and look at me once."

Standing in Elias's study, I watched those iron-hard eyes slowly turn red, and something tightened painfully in my chest.

Elias glanced sideways at me.

"So that's where the Frostmoor trade road came from."

I nodded.

His gaze dropped to my sleeve.

"Where is the queen-consort sigil?"

I pressed my sleeve tighter.

"With me."

Elias's eyes went colder still.

"Excellent. Keep watching."

Act Two was Rivermark.

If Frostmoor could kill you with a blade, Rivermark could bury you beneath money.

King Sebastian Redfield had taken the throne young and controlled the richest river transport network and banking houses in the known world.

There were two things he hated more than anything.

First, people who owed him money and refused to repay it.

Second, people who cheated him out of money.

Unfortunately, I had done both.

When I entered Rivermark, my assigned identity was the blind daughter of a ruined merchant family.

The system covered my eyes with white silk and handed me a plotline so melodramatic I wanted to scream.

"Save the Rivermark king while he travels incognito, enter the royal merchant household as his bride, and obtain the River Transit Seal."

I nearly flipped the table.

"Can I do this without marrying him?"

The system was merciless.

"Insufficient plot points. Three Hawkridge cities will run out of grain tonight."

I shut my mouth immediately.

Sebastian first met me at Riverglass Wharf.

I stood among dockworkers with a battered counting board, working out the wages an overseer had skimmed from the older boatmen.

I couldn't see a thing, but my fingers flew over the counters.

He said I was interesting.

I said he looked rich.

Later, he brought me into the palace and had me audit accounts.

I uncovered three embezzlement schemes and recovered a fortune stolen by officials.

He was delighted and gave me a small townhouse.

I was delighted too.

Because the cellar beneath that townhouse happened to connect with Rivermark's River Treasury warehouse.

On the Skyveil, I looked unbearably gentle.

When Sebastian worked through government papers at night, I sat by the lamp making tea for him.

He touched the white ribbon over my eyes.

"Lily, if your sight could be restored, what would you want to see first?"

I held the teacup in both hands and answered softly enough to sound almost sincere.

"You, Your Majesty."

Chapter 3

The live comments erupted into screams.

Only Elias, standing beside me in the study, gave me a long, quiet look.

"You wanted to see him?"

I corrected myself immediately.

"I wanted to see his treasury."

Elias said nothing.

The Skyveil continued.

Rivermark's story ended with an assassination attempt.

Attackers poured into the waterside pavilion from every direction while Sebastian shielded me and retreated.

I wore plain white clothes, the blindfold snapping in the wind.

Sebastian pushed me onto a boat and turned back to fight.

He believed I was escaping for my life.

In reality, I circled to the rear warehouse and joined a Hawkridge merchant convoy already hidden there, taking three shiploads of grain, one chest of gold, and the River Transit Seal.

Before I left, I placed an IOU on the table.

My handwriting was beautiful.

"Borrowed for Hawkridge's emergency. Double repayment within three years."

Sebastian stared at the note for a long time.

Then he laughed.

He laughed until every attendant around him dropped to their knees.

"Fine.

"I will remember her."

By then, Rivermark's comments were exploding like fireworks.

[Double repayment? It has been three years! Where is the interest?]

[His Majesty smiled at that IOU every day. I thought it was a love letter!]

[Princess of Hawkridge, come out and pay your debt!]

I rubbed my nose.

I did intend to repay the money.

The method just might not be what they were expecting.

Elias tapped the tabletop.

"The three shiploads of grain?"

"One fed disaster victims, one was traded for weapons, and one became the founding reserve of Hawkridge's first national bank."

"The gold?"

"It built seven frontier granaries."

"The River Transit Seal?"

I pressed my sleeve again.

Elias's smile grew colder.

"Also with you."

I lowered my voice.

"It's more convenient to keep everything together."

Act Three belonged to Willowspire.

Crown Prince Adrian Locke of Willowspire was the most troublesome of my four creditors.

Ronan had a temper. Sebastian had too many schemes.

Adrian was different.

He was chronically ill, permanently pale, and sometimes coughed as though a strong breeze might carry him away.

The weaker his body became, the harder his heart seemed to grow.

The system assigned me the identity of a covert guard serving as another woman's substitute.

A substitute for whom?

For Cassia Vane, the first love he had lost years earlier.

When I heard that plotline, I nearly cursed the system into shutting down.

"I'm the princess of Hawkridge and you want me to stand in as somebody's replacement?"

The system flashed a notice.

"Willowspire possesses the medical formulas and frontier-defense maps Hawkridge needs most. Host, broaden your perspective."

Poverty broadened my perspective for me.

So I became Ash, the quietest and most loyal covert guard in the Crown Prince's residence, and the one who took the most blades for him.

Adrian was sickly, but the court around him was full of predators.

I took arrows meant for him, discovered poison attempts, and climbed walls at night to steal formulas from the Royal College of Medicine.

Once, when his fever would not break, he gripped my sleeve and refused to let go.

"Ash."

His voice was rough with fever.

"Are you going to leave me too?"

At that moment, I had three Willowspire frontier rotation maps sewn into the hem of my clothing.

I couldn't afford to go soft.

But a heart isn't a machine. You can't switch it off whenever it's convenient.

In the end, I only lowered my eyes.

"Stay alive, Your Highness, and I will stay."

By the time the Skyveil showed that scene, half of Willowspire seemed to be crying.

[Ash! My Ash!]

[The Crown Prince built a memorial for her with full honors!]

[My head hurts. Was she a con artist or the reason he's alive?]

Both.

I had saved Adrian.

And I had deceived him.

The final chapter of my Willowspire mission was another poisoning.

I pretended to have been struck by an incurable toxin and lay weakly in Adrian's bedchamber.

He fed me bottle after bottle of Willowspire's restricted medicines.

I swallowed while the system scanned each formula.

Once the formulas were complete and the defense maps had left the city, I "died" in his arms.

That day, Adrian held my body and coughed until blood covered his palm.

On the Skyveil, the young prince's eyes were red and his voice terrifyingly quiet.

"Issue the order.

"Bury Ash, covert guard of the Crown Prince, with the honors of my intended wife."

The study fell silent.

Elias didn't ask again where I'd put the things I stole.

Willowspire's medical formulas had stopped an epidemic in Hawkridge.

Its defense maps had also allowed Hawkridge to avoid three encirclement campaigns.

Watching Adrian on the Skyveil, I finally sighed.

"How is his health now?"

Elias glanced at me.

"Still worried about him?"

I sat up straight.

"Mostly worried he'll die on the way here trying to collect."

Elias looked perfectly calm.

"Relax. He has already reached the border."

I fell silent.

That didn't relax me at all.

Chapter 4

The Skyveil burned through the entire night.

So did the rest of the world.

Courier dispatches from Frostmoor, Willowspire, and Rivermark reached Hawkridge almost at the same time.

Ronan's letter was the shortest, only three words.

"Hand Mara over."

Sebastian's letter was the thickest, thirty-seven pages in all.

The first page discussed old affection.

The second discussed heartbreak.

The third began calculating interest.

By the final page, Treasury Minister Desmond Ashby glanced at the total and fainted on the spot.

Adrian did not bother writing a letter.

He simply brought Willowspire cavalry to Hawkridge's border.

The sky was overcast that day, and Hawkridge citizens packed the city walls.

Everyone looked upward.

The Skyveil was still broadcasting my "criminal record."

Some called me a swindler.

Others said I had humiliated Hawkridge before the entire world.

Then one voice rose through the insults.

"But without the princess, wouldn't we all have died in the famine two years ago?"

The sentence landed like a spark in dry grass.

Others answered almost immediately.

"After trade opened with Frostmoor, the border towns finally had horses and salt."

"The grain from Rivermark saved my whole family."

"Willowspire's medicine stopped the epidemic. My son is alive because of it."

The curses did not disappear.

But cheers slowly began to rise beside them.

At last, someone shouted first.

"Whatever the princess owes, Hawkridge pays it with her!"

I stood behind the battlements with my chest aching strangely.

Elias stood beside me, his cloak snapping in the wind.

He did not look at me. He watched the land beyond the walls.

"Did you hear them?"

I nodded.

Only then did he turn, his eyes bloodshot from a night without sleep.

"Then stop thinking about running."

I stared at him.

Elias lowered his voice.

"Mara, Hawkridge isn't going to keep sending you out alone to lie, kneel, bleed, and take blades meant for other people.

"Everything you stole back has turned into walls, granaries, pharmacies, and food in ordinary hands.

"From now on, Hawkridge stands in front of you."

My throat tightened.

I was about to say something embarrassingly heartfelt when the Skyveil spoke again.

"Four-party emotional values have exceeded threshold. Creditor Tribunal Mode activated.

"Host must provide a complete explanation under worldwide observation within twenty-four hours.

"Failure will reduce Hawkridge's realm-fate value to zero."

The tears gathering in my eyes vanished instantly.

Elias fell silent too.

After a long moment, he turned his head toward me.

"Has your system always been this vile?"

I nodded with bitter conviction.

"Always."

The Creditor Tribunal was staged atop Hawkridge's city wall.

The Skyveil projected four luminous seats.

King Ronan Blackwood of Frostmoor, King Sebastian Redfield of Rivermark, Crown Prince Adrian Locke of Willowspire, and Regent Elias Crowell of Hawkridge sat around me.

I sat in the center like a fish with four knives pointed at it.

The system thoughtfully displayed enormous letters overhead.

"Question One: Does Host admit to deliberately manipulating romantic feelings?"

I lifted my head.

"Half."

The live comments stopped for one heartbeat.

Ronan stared at me coldly.

"Which half?"

"My identity was false. My use of you was real."

I met his eyes.

"But the medicine and grain route I left during Frostmoor's ice disaster were real too."

Ronan's gaze darkened.

The system displayed the next question.

"Question Two: Does Host admit to unlawfully diverting Rivermark grain and treasury assets?"

Sebastian turned the signet ring on his finger, smiling without warmth.

"Think carefully before you answer, Mara."

I pulled a ledger from inside my coat and placed it on the table.

"I admit it."

Sebastian's smile froze.

I opened the ledger.

"Principal: three shiploads of grain, one chest of gold, one River Transit Seal. Hawkridge used that capital to build twelve granaries, thirty-six low-cost pharmacies, and seven trade roads.

"Triple repayment, funded by Hawkridge's share of commercial taxes over the next ten years."

Sebastian's expression changed.

It was no longer the look of a man facing an old lover.

It was the look of a financier studying an excellent balance sheet.

The system displayed the third question.

"Question Three: Does Host admit to deceiving the Crown Prince of Willowspire and staging her death to escape?"

Adrian watched me without speaking.

His face was pale and his fingers pressed into the chair arm as he fought down a cough.

I took out a small medicine bottle and pushed it toward him.

"I admit it.

"This is an improved version of the restricted medicine you gave me. Willowspire's physicians can use the revised regimen to support your heart and lungs."

I paused.

"Adrian, I lied to you.

"But I never once wanted you dead."

He finally turned his head and coughed once.

When he looked back, his eyes were frighteningly red.

"Was there ever one moment when what you felt for me was real?"

Silence spread across the wall.

The Skyveil enlarged the question while comments raced beneath it.

I knew one beautiful lie would put out half of Willowspire's anger.

Beautiful lies were my specialty.

But suddenly I didn't want to tell another one.

"Yes."

Adrian froze.

I looked directly at him.

"When you asked whether I'd leave, I thought about staying.

"But more than a hundred thousand people in Hawkridge were waiting on that medicine, and soldiers at the frontier were waiting on those maps. I couldn't stay.

"I'm not a good person, and I'm not your Ash.

"I am Mara Whitlock, Princess of Hawkridge."

The system fell silent for one beat.

Then a line of enormous letters appeared.

"Sincerity assessment: passed."

The comments exploded.

[She admits she lied, but she also admits she saved them.]

[This somehow hurts more than watching her deny everything.]

[I came here ready to curse her and now I can't do it.]

I had barely relaxed when the system displayed a fourth question.

"Question Four: Explain why Host attempted to steal the Hawkridge Regent's treasury sigil as the mission approached completion."

Elias finally looked up.

My heart dropped.

The first three were old debts.

This one could get me killed today.