Hild paused before a row of plants in pots, their leaves thick and green and slightly prickly, and considered her options. The possibility that she was wrong, that there existed two men named Damen, one a soldier turned slave and one a prince turned slave, was slim. Were they in Akielos itself, perhaps that name was common. But not in Darrow.

She could play the fool and let the young man come to the realization in his own time, but she thought of Gwladus, how she would feel to be tricked so, not only by the omission of the fact but by her mistress lying to her. It was not her secret to tell, she thought. But Damen had not told her it was a secret at all. You couldn't scoop spilled milk back into the jug; it had to lay where it fell.

"Damen is Damianos. Damen is a prince." Her insistence was gentle, her gaze calm. "I do not know why he has not told you so, but it is the truth."