Seven’s mentor was also her lawyer. It seemed fitting then, that he was doubly disappointed in her afternoon antics.

  “You did what?”

  Seven winced, sprawled on one of his fine couches. Even after enduring nearly two decades of Moore’s disappointment in her decisions, the panic in his voice made this one sting just a bit more.

  “I thought he wouldn’t notice! I didn’t know it was Albon of all people.”

  “It shouldn’t matter whether it was Albon or not,” Moore snapped. “That it was him practically dooms you in this case. Albion’s family might as well be House Veil.”

  “Little good it’s done me to be part of that family.”

  “Little good it’s done me to be serving it,” he said, scribbling something incoherent at his desk. “Serve the youngest, they said. She’ll be easy, they said. No responsibilities, no duties, no leadership. Marry her off to a good house, they said. She’ll be no problem at all, they said.”

  “I haven’t been that hard to deal with,” Seven muttered, crossing her arms. Even as the words left her mouth, she knew Moore would argue against them.

  “Grand larceny at a tender twelve years of age,” Moore snapped, thrusting a finger into the air. “Fraud at fourteen—”

  “That was a steady job,” Seven argued. “I was doing it for a client, not for myself—”

  “Tampering with dice—”

  “How else was I supposed to see what happened if I split one in half? It didn’t harm anyone.”

  “It’s illegal, Seven!”

  “Lots of things are illegal that don’t make sense.”

  Moore whirled on her, his face turning pink. “In what world should tampering with the laws of the universe not be illegal?”

  “No one would discover anything if they couldn’t break stuff first,” Seven argued. “And besides, even the courts disagreed with you on that one.”

  “Only because I had my best lawyers on that case,” Moore snapped, “and because you were barely old enough to be tried as a woman.”

  Seven rolled her eyes, staring at the ceiling. Luck above, if it weren’t for Moore’s nonsense, she could fall asleep right then and there. She was exhausted from her flight through the city, and the stress of losing her apartment—not to mention the trial ahead.

  “Embezzlement,” Moore went on, now running out of fingers.

  “Creative wealth extraction.”

  “What wealth extraction would a princess have need of?”

  “It wasn’t for the money—it was just a project.”

  “Can’t you find more constructive activities?” Moore asked, his voice now pleading. “Most girls your age are fencing, or dancing, or, or—”

  “Playing Beggar’s Chance?” Seven asked, eyebrows raised. That seemed to shut Moore up. She had had a perfectly acceptable hobby. Had been brilliant at it, even. But then, well, everything had gone wrong.

  Her statement seemed to bring Moore back to the present, and he stared at his papers, lost. “I don’t know how I’m going to defend you, Seven. I really don’t. Especially with today. We needed to make you look innocent, not worse. At this rate, I don’t know if you…if you…”

  He trailed off, and Seven sat up, watching him. The emotions were easy to read on his face. Even Moore doubted her now. “You don’t believe I’m innocent anymore either, do you?” she asked quietly.

  Moore avoided her eyes. “No,” he lied. “It’s not that, Seven, it’s just that, well, it doesn’t look good, you see?”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Perception isn’t reality,” she argued.

  Moore sighed, then replied, “It might as well be.” He shuffled a few papers around, then leaned back in his chair, studying her. “I’ve got my best lawyers on the case, but that’s not saying much—few want to go against House Veil itself.”

  Seven closed her eyes, trying to brace herself against the blow. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that horrible, acrid truth. The idea that it wasn’t Rook or the Chance commission taking her to trial, but her own family. Of course, there was little they could do. Seven was a liability to them. Without taking her to court, she would be a stain on their name. This way, they could wash their hands of her and keep the scandal—and, more importantly, Seven—as far from House Veil as possible. It was, as far as her parents were concerned, the dream scenario. No more hiding her behavior. No more explaining away her lies. She could be the expendable daughter they’d always wanted.

  When she opened her eyes, the flash of pity in Moore’s eyes hit her like a blow, and she turned away, folding herself into a ball at the corner of the couch. “Don’t look at me like that, Moore.”

  Moore sighed, then turned away from her. “You’ve got to have more for me to work with,” he said. “Something you’ve forgotten, or some detail you’ve missed.”

  Seven racked her mind, but she found nothing. Hadn’t found anything, in fact, since that horrible night two years ago. “It just…it felt wrong, Moore. I don’t know how else to describe it. I was winning the game—I’d routed his defenses entirely—and then before I knew it, the dice was burning a hole through my hand. It was…” She hesitated, trying to find the words. It sounded silly, really. “It was like the dice was choosing something. Like it had another master. And it couldn’t—wouldn’t choose me. It rejected me, wholesale.”

  Moore ran a hand through his wiry hair, looking at her with far too much sadness in his eyes. When he spoke, his words were gentle. “Seven, it’s hard not to assign meaning to things that hurt us, and nothing is more hurtful than not being believed about something but…I’m not sure dice can choose anything.”

  “There’s something we don’t understand about them,” she insisted. “I know it. Otherwise why would I not be able to use them? There’s got to be an answer somewhere. Something that explains what’s wrong with me.”

  Silence fell in the room, and for several moments, neither spoke. That was the ultimate crux of the matter. She was on trial for the use of magicked dice in a Beggar’s Chance tournament, but the irony of it was, Seven couldn’t use dice at all. Couldn’t even touch them without the energy so much as evaporating out of the dice entirely. The easiest defense was simply to admit to the entire kingdom that she was cursed. But while most suspected that something was wrong with her given the constant delays in her crowning ceremony, few knew the extent of her issues, and her family was very much keen to keep it that way.

  Moore shifted, digging through his desk, then emerged with a small box the size of her hand. It rattled faintly, and Seven swore her ears pricked back. “That reminds me,” he said. “I got these for you to try.” He tossed the box her direction with a rattle, and Seven turned it in her hands, already feeling defeated. She’d practically tried every dice in the kingdom at this point. How would any of these be any different? Still, as she spoke, she picked her way through the box, her touch sending the light of the dice scattering away.

  “I didn’t even need to cheat,” she said, watching the light fade from a beautiful, rare d20. Something in her stomach twisted at watching the dice die. Maybe that was why they wanted nothing to do with her. She was functionally a dice murderer. “There was no motivation to do it. Why would I cheat if I’d already won?”

  “That’s exactly what I’d like to know,” Moore agreed, watching the dice fade at her touch. “Ordinarily I’d point to your opponent as a possible suspect, but Rook is clean as can be. I’ve never seen a man with a cleaner record—too clean of one, perhaps.”

  “There has to be something,” Seven argued, leaning forward, box in hand. “No one has that clean of a record.”

  “Well, not everyone behaves the way you do,” Moore said, brandishing his pen at her. Then he seemed to deflate. “But I do find his record troubling. Rook’s family has opened several new enterprises in the last ten years—chiefly in the dice shard mining business.”

  “Not exactly an honorable trade,” she said, sighing as the last dice faded and the box went dark. Unsurprising, but frustrating nonetheless.

  “Exactly. Everything is far too buttoned up. Given my trade, I know that families like yours and his operate through thousands of loopholes, but I can’t find those loopholes in the public records of Rook’s business. They should be there, but just…aren’t.”

  “Then we find the discrepancies,” Seven said, her voice rising, her words tumbling from her mouth. “We ask for a stay in the trial, say we have more evidence, and go digging until we find something we can work with. I can even—”

  “No,” Moore cut in, his voice so harsh that it momentarily stunned her. He stared at her with eyes that seemed to cut through her, and shook his head for emphasis. “We can’t go digging around. That’s the other part of this—everyone I’ve had looking for information on Rook’s trade has just disappeared. Crafters above, I don’t think my heart could take it if it was you.”

  Seven scowled at this. “If that’s the case, then that means you’re on the right track. He obviously has something to hide. And we can’t produce a proper defense without admitting to all of Veilhome that I’m cursed.”

  “I said no.”

  “But the trial!” Seven insisted. “How am I supposed to prove my innocence if you won’t let me—”

  Moore slammed his hand onto the table, catapulting his pen into the air. “This isn’t just about your innocence anymore, Seven—it’s about your life.”

  Hey there, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter, please head back to the and hit follow and favorite, or leave me a rating! Your reviews and feedback mean the world to me and help spread the word—especially for a small author. Thanks for your support!

  Also, if you'd like to read ahead, or sign up for free for news and updates, you can find my .

  NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s and publisher’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.