“You lost the dice?”

  Seven turned from the window where she’d been watching the storms rolling in to see Roy staring at her in shock. The weather had turned nasty, and she was impossibly grateful to Moore for letting her crash in his guest room until the trial. Still, as the hour crept closer, her gut had turned sour—even with the company. The meal Roy had brought her sat untouched on the table in the corner of the room.

  “I didn’t lose it,” she finally replied, turning back to the window. “It shattered.”

  “Dice shatter, but they don’t just disintegrate,” Roy argued from behind her. “You had to have done something to it—cursed it, or, I don’t know. Something.”

  Probably not a good time to remind him that I’ve done it before, Seven thought glumly. It was true that dice only really shattered when they’d reached the limit of their use. That could depend wildly on the dice; some dice would last for generations, though those were usually reserved for nobility or wealthy tycoons. But this dice hadn’t just shattered—it had turned into a fine mist, then disappeared.

  “I didn’t roll it, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said. “It wouldn’t have done anything anyway—it was the same dice from that night. The perfect replica. Just a game dice, not a magicked one.”

  Roy let out a little scoff from the couch behind her as raindrops trailed down the window. “If you’re practicing for the trial, you’ll need to come up with a better way of explaining it.”

  “I’m not going to explain it,” Seven replied, turning to watch her friend. “I’m not going to bring it up at all. They’d say I was insane.”

  Roy did a little back and forth with his head like he was considering the idea, and Seven tried not to find something to throw at him. “It’s not a bad defense, really,” he said. “Insanity. Explains a lot of the decisions you’ve made in the last—hey!” His voice went muffled as one of Moore’s pillows flew into his face. “I’m just saying it’s a good defense.”

  “Well, thank chance itself you’re not my representative,” she snapped. “It’s not funny.” Roy went quiet at that, and Seven turned back to the window. “Exile,” she said with a little laugh. “For something I didn’t even do. Maybe…maybe I should just leave.”

  There was silence for a moment, and then the couch springs creaked behind her. Roy joined her at the window, looking uncharacteristically solemn. “Leave the city?” he asked. “Without standing trial?”

  She shrugged. “What difference does it make if they’re going to toss me out anyway? If whoever set me up is still playing some kind of twisted game?”

  Yet, even as the words left her mouth, she knew she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave her family with the ultimate shame—even if honor, in this case, was facing the trial they had set up for their own daughter and sister.

  Roy went silent beside her, watching the storm. His mouth twisted in thought, and while Roy wasn’t usually one for deep thoughts, he kept glancing at the empty box, then at Seven’s scarred hand.

  “I just don’t get it,” he said. “Who would bother framing you? What did they have to gain? Why go after the youngest, the least powerful in the family, when every sibling above you has so much more to lose?”

  “Maybe because I’m an easy target,” she said quietly. Then, as a peal of lightning lit up the sky, she thought of something else.

  “Or because I have something they want.”

  The only problem was, she had nothing to offer at all.

  ***

  Seven picked up one of the common dice that plopped into her lute case. A green d12, it glowed faintly in her hands, easily visible on such a cloudy day. Plucking a few notes of the next song on her lute, she watched as the glow slowly faded to nothing, leaving the dice dull and dim. Another dud, then. Or rather, she was the dud.

  She couldn’t help but feel like it was a waste as she plopped it back into her case. The dice itself had obviously been of high quality. She hadn’t spotted the person who’d left it; they’d melted into the crowds of the large circular plaza, perhaps so wealthy that they’d barely miss the dice at all. And yet, with each dice she drained of their color and life, she felt a bit like she was cutting down something in its prime.

  She shifted on the tiny stool she’d brought with her, wincing at the way it wobbled on the cobblestone beneath her feet. The plaza itself was technically on the palace grounds, but it was open to the public most days of the year, and people were more inclined to leave dice here as tips instead of chips. But it was hard not to notice the palace’s imperious presence on the top of the hill that overlooked the palace, and harder still not to remember days spent here as a child, playing in the many fountains of the plaza.

  People milled by, obviously enjoying the slightly crisp breeze alongside the threat of rain with no actual storm yet. The day had dried up considerably from the night before, and with the storm’s ebbing presence, Seven had wasted no time in trying everything she knew to solve her problem.

  Besides the impending trial, her crowning day should have been soon, and Seven couldn’t shake the sense that she was running out of time. Even if she survived the trial, what then? She’d still be cursed. Still left to languish in obscurity, her prospects as dead as the dice she touched.

  Her little setup with the lute was one way she’d hoped to get ahead, and yet none of the dice had yielded anything spectacular. That wasn’t particularly surprising at this point; she’d been touching every dice in sight for most of her life, but her obsession with them hadn’t yielded any results besides panicked shopkeepers and long, frustrating scolding routines with her family.

  And yet, even if she could use dice, she wasn’t sure she’d be allowed to have one with the current scandal afoot. And her family, as she was constantly reminded, had a reputation to uphold.

  Still, Seven had other plans. Or so she hoped, anyway. She picked up a book by her side and began leafing through the pages, book in one hand, lute in the other, passively plucking through a few exercises as people passed in the plaza. Some knew who she was, their gazes surprised or leery. Others didn’t seem to recognize her at all. It would have surprised Seven had she not spent so much time outside of the public eye these days. She ignored them all anyway, scanning a line multiple times that had caught her eye earlier.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Seven, what are you doing?”

  The voice jolted her from her book, and she looked up to find her youngest brother, Juno, peering over her shoulder. Quiet and reserved, his dark auburn hair stuck out in unruly tufts on top of his head, and his glasses were slipping from their proper place on his nose. He clutched a series of charcoals and a sketching notebook at his side, watching her warily. She shrugged and returned to her book.

  “Reading,” she said, flipping another page. He raised an eyebrow.

  “While playing?”

  “I’m between sets.”

  “Fair enough, but what are you reading?” He settled down on the plaza stones in front of her, oblivious to the stares of the public as they walked by. Granted, Juno was nearly as forgettable as her. A backup child for a kingdom with more heirs than they knew what to do with. He wasn’t a pariah like Seven, but he wasn’t exactly important—not yet.

  “My ticket out of this mess,” she replied, and turned the book to thrust it at her brother. “Palming.”

  He scoffed, flipping open his own notebook to scribble something in the pages—the beginnings of a sketch. “That’s a fairytale.”

  “Have you tried it?”

  “Well, no—especially since the last people to try it died, Seven.” His pencil dug into the notebook, nearly breaking the lead. “We have at least a few of them in the palace infirmary every month.”

  She shrugged, not entirely convinced. Palming seemed like a silly risk to take if you could already use dice, but maybe someone else had dealt with her issue before and felt the risk was worth taking. Maybe that’s why she kept finding mentions of it in old historical texts.

  “Maybe the dice just need proof that I’m serious,” she ventured. “If I could figure out how to palm one, maybe I could—”

  “Maybe it’s just the way you are,” Juno said, his voice tight. His hand gripped the pencil just a bit too tightly as he sketched quickly on the page. “I mean, not everyone has to have a dice that changes the world. Some people don’t have any at all.”

  “Peasants,” Seven muttered, though she was practically living like one anyway. “Criminals. Of which, I might remind you, I’m—”

  “Only the latter—technically.”

  “They’ll come to a deal about it,” she said, waving her hand. “They’ll figure something out to clear my name. They always do.”

  Juno shifted uncomfortably on the cobblestones, avoiding her eyes. “Maybe,” he replied, twisting his mouth in thought. “But this feels different. Rook has always had it out for you.”

  “And he’ll keep having it out for me, because as soon as they clear my name from the gaming commission records, I’m going to be at every tournament his sorry ass chooses to attend,” she said, plucking a string a bit too hard. “I’ll stick to him so well he’ll be desperate to get rid of me.”

  Juno snorted. “You really know how to win people over.”

  “One of my many charms.”

  They sat in silence for several moments, and Seven shivered in the light fall breeze as she pored over her book, periodically breaking the silence with a plucked string or two. Juno scribbled in his notebook, and they fell into the sort of steady rhythm that they’d occupied for most of their childhood together.

  It was easier, somehow, being with Juno. Always had been easy, if Seven was being honest. Her other siblings always wanted something—a favor, her silence, her admiration, her good behavior. Juno might not have always approved of what she was doing, but he understood, at least on some small level, what made her tick. And while he tried to warn her away from her grand schemes and ideas, he never tried to change her.

  Seven’s fingers stilled on the strings, and she looked up at her brother, her throat tightening. If she was convicted at the trial, she would lose Juno too, she realized. She’d always figured that not being able to use a dice was the worst thing that could happen to her. And yet, sitting there in quiet harmony with her brother, she realized that this trial was different. One ruling against her would send her life spinning into chaos.

  She shook her head, forcing her nose back into her book. You’ll figure something out, she told herself. You always do. If she could use a dice in time, maybe her family would forgive her—would fight harder to keep her around, knowing she was healed of her ailment. She could—

  Juno’s pencil stopped, and Seven looked up, curious.

  “What?” she asked. His eyes had gone distant as they often did. Juno’s dice was weak—a dice that let him see just a few seconds ahead into the future. Not enough to matter, really, unless an assassin had been sent after him. Her parents had obviously given it to him as a protective measure, and he barely used whatever active trait had been assigned to the dice—nor would he share what it was—but sometimes when his eyes went distant like that, it was like he was glimpsing a tiny bit further than he should have. Or a lot further, if Seven had to guess.

  He shook his head and returned to his notebook, the breeze ruffling his hair, but his pencil just scribbled idly in the corner as he looked up and down from the notebook at the passing crowd.

  “Things feel different,” he said. “I went to the market this morning—several of the bakeries were sold out, and people were buying up extra stocks of dice.”

  “Why?” Seven asked, frowning. She’d seen the same thing, but it was impossible to get into the minds of the city-folk. One trend or piece of gossip could send all of Veilhome into some sort of trance, and few thought about what they were doing before acting on it.

  “More rumors,” Juno explained. “The rumor mill says our power is failing—that something’s wrong with the dice in House Veil.”

  “Probably sent from Rook’s house,” Seven said bitterly, though she felt her face go pink. It was impossible to keep her hands away from the dice she saw packed into stalls on the street, and far too easy to examine them with trembling fingers, hoping to find one that would tolerate her. It was almost a compulsion at this point, but surely there were far too many dice in the city for anyone to notice. That, apparently, wasn’t true. “You’d think they’d have something better to do than spread rumors,” she added. “Rook has tons of land out beyond the veil. And mines to boot.”

  “Maybe taking you to trial is just the beginning,” Juno mused. “Maybe he was just going for the weak link.” As soon as he said the words, he winced. “Sorry. You know what I mean.”

  Seven waved him off, hardly fazed by the words. “Weak or not, he’s not going to get anywhere with his rumors. Mother and father have the kingdom under an iron grip, and if I…if I control myself a little better, he won’t have anything to talk about anyway.”

  “Unlikely.”

  Seven gave her brother a tiny shove, but he had a point. “I’m not touching that many of them,” she argued.

  “Father disagrees.”

  His pencil stilled again, and Seven watched him, suddenly feeling sick. “Spill it, Juno.”

  The boy seemed to struggle with his words for a moment before he finally shut his notebook and got to his feet. “I didn’t come out here to chat,” he admitted. “Father sent me to get you. He wants to speak with you—privately.”

  “Privately,” Seven repeated, her mouth going dry. She could think of only a few handfuls of times in her life in which her father had spoken to her privately—and none had been a positive experience. “He didn’t say what for?”

  Juno shook his head. “Only that if you don’t come soon, he’ll send the crown guard after you—and not the ones that missed you the other day. The good ones.”

  Seven felt the blood drain from her face drain at that, then sighed, packing her lute away before strapping it across her back. “I’m already screwed,” she muttered as she followed her brother through the plaza. “How much worse could it get?”

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