The face of the empire's third prince is a secret the law itself keeps. Nine painters threw their eyes past the lattice of his annex, and all nine names are already struck from the roster. And your eyes are under a curse: whatever they see once, they hold forever.
In an empire built of marble and roses, the face of the third prince, Nurhan, has been a secret sealed by imperial law since the day he was born. Roshana, a miniaturist, is handed his portrait for one reason, her skill at painting people without looking at their faces, and with a single lattice between them she begins to carry a man onto paper out of nothing but his hands, his voice and his shadow. But Roshana's eyes can never forget a shape they have seen once, and the prince lets slip, a little at a time, what he has been paying for the privilege of a hidden face. The court is waiting for the day that portrait is finished, for purposes of its own, and every day the lattice is folded back one square or stretched out one square more. Which of the two of them will be erased by the moment they finally look at each other, no one has written down yet.
- The moment the prince who behaved as though he owned the law is caught with pigment that will not wash out from under his nails, and confesses in a single sentence what he has been painting every night in the annex where he is shut away.
- The moment a profile glimpsed through a gap in the lattice lights itself up behind your eyes, and the line you cannot erase is already finished on the page of your album.
- The moment, in the hall where the court demands its portrait, that one painting which knew him without ever drawing his face puts the prohibition that erased nine people on trial.
The moment the prince who behaved as though he owned the law is caught with pigment that will not wash out from under his nails, and confesses in a single sentence what he has been painting every night in the annex where he is shut away.
