Dassia Temperton had a secret, well, not a secret so much as an enthusiastic reinterpretation of facts. Facts that, under scrutiny (and a thorough background check), might be considered “fraudulent to the kingdom.” If anyone found out Dassia’s secret, she would be a dead man. Well, to be more precise, she’d be a dead woman disguised as a man, playing the part with counterfeit stubble and borrowed boldness.

Dassia’s secret was approximately forty-five pounds of metal cinched to within an inch of her ability to breathe. It wasn’t Dassia’s fault, really, if people insisted on seeing a beard on her face where there was only strategically positioned contouring and shadow. It wasn’t her fault that people wholeheartedly accepted the forged birth certificate she had presented them without so much as holding it up to a candle. Honestly, who was she to shatter their comfortable delusions that she was a man worthy of knighthood? After all, correcting people was exhausting, and she had a strict personal policy against unnecessary exertion.

For years now, she’d been a knight in the Queen’s army under the title Sir Dassian “the Bold.” Though “the Bold” was a generous interpretation of “One Who Nodded Enthusiastically At Orders Then Found Creative Excuses To Avoid Them.” Her greatest act of courage probably involved once telling Captain Corbin Montoyo his new mustache looked “quite distinguished” rather than “like a deceased squirrel seeking refuge on his upper lip.”