The Abbot, in this one thing, was wrong: I have never thought myself a slave. But I was born to a crown. I was born to a fate defined by my bloodline and by the forces of history. I was born to a duty that I did not choose, and cannot set aside. I was born to be a hostage. I was very young when the king my grandfather died and the queen my mother ascended to the throne. Like many other royals, my mother had made a dynastic marriage young—just out of the Precepture. She had been sure to have a child—me—while young. She had known she would not be eligible to hold a throne until she had a hostage child to turn over to Talis. So she had me. She took our throne. And she turned me over. On the day of my mother’s coronation, I was made Her Royal Highness Greta Gustafsen Stuart, Duchess of Halifax and Crown Princess of the Pan Polar Confederacy. The next day, I became one of Talis’s hostages. I was five years old. Of my time before the Precepture I mostly have bits and pieces. But I remember the day of my mother’s coronation—the sea of little flags in the fists of the crowd, the sway of the formal carriage, the diamond pins in my mother’s hair—and I remember the day after.
