The next morning, in the dormitory, I slip on one of the warmer—and more luxurious—dresses Caro has given me, boots, and a gray cloak. Though my ugly mood from the conversation with Liam still lingers, I can’t help but marvel at the softness of the fabric, the weight of the cloak. Through all of Crofton’s bitter winters, I’ve never had anything so warm.
To my shock, Roan is in the servants’ hallway, leaning against the wall, a puncture in the rectangle of light streaming in through a high window. I take in a sharp breath. Was he—waiting for me? Had Ina told him about her request?
But he looks just as startled to see me. “Jules,” he says, in lieu of good morning. Then he regains his composure. “Ina mentioned you were accompanying her on an errand. Where are you off to?”
Before I can answer, Bea emerges from the dormitories, with her light, slippered step. She sees Roan first, and a smile spreads over her face—then she sees me, and her eyes widen, the smile slipping. By the time I think to say good morning, she has changed course and disappeared down the corridor, like she suddenly remembered something important.
Roan looks after her for a moment before turning back to me. In the harsh, angled light, his dimples become dark spots on his face. I realize that he’s waiting for an answer.
“Just a ride,” I say lightly. Even Roan doesn’t know where Ina and I are going, apparently. Already, I’m sweating from the warmth of the castle, the weight of the dress, and Roan’s gaze. “I know the grounds well, after all.”
This satisfies him. He breathes in, then lets the breath out, running one hand through his already messy hair. “Of course. I worry that she’s getting restless. Thank you for keeping her company, Jules,” he says seriously. “Take care of her, and yourself.”
Then, Roan waves, and he’s off in the same direction as Bea, covering the corridor quickly with his long stride. Without thinking, I start to reach out a hand toward him, like a plant that always reaches to the sun. The word wait melts on my tongue.
When he’s gone, I walk in the direction of the stables, wondering why, why, why, Ina Gold would not have told her fiancé what this errand was. With every step down the corridor, I feel my body become a toy, a puppet; the pull of the Gerlings, Ina, the Queen, and their secrets weave through me, pierce my skin, pull at my limbs. All I wanted was to learn the truth about Papa—how did it land me in the middle of this chessboard?
It’s a relief to get outside, into the fresh cold air of the courtyard. Snow has fallen during the night, covering the great lawn with a thin, sparkling dusting of white. I wish I could walk, observe the palisades and turrets of Everless from a distance, look out over the lake. But the sun is a hand’s width above the horizon by now, so instead I hurry to the stables to meet Ina.
She’s already there, also dressed in a traveling dress and gray cloak, a leather bag slung over her shoulder. Catching sight of my bare hands, she takes a pair of gloves out of her cloak and offers them to me. I’m immediately surprised, not just by her generosity but also by the fact that she’s dressed like me—like a high-ranking servant.
She is standing by two horses, one dun and one chestnut. The dun one is already saddled; behind her, Tam is strapping the gear to the chestnut’s back. My stomach drops like a stone into water, and I feel sweat prickling at my palms. I had expected we would be taking a cart or carriage.
While I can ride—in Crofton, I occasionally found odd jobs carrying messages or making deliveries on horseback—I’m not a natural at it, and the Gerlings’ huge, well-fed, spirited horses make me nervous. After a moment I realize I’ve stopped and am staring rudely, so I hurriedly lower my head and curtsy to Ina.
“No need for that,” she says. Despite her plain dress, she looks as beautiful and regal as always. But something about her is hesitant, almost somber. Her short hair is stuck under a plain wool cap, the ends a dark, blunt fringe on her ears. “It’s good to have you here, Jules.”
Cautiously, I approach the horses, greeting Tam with a nod and a smile. He’s looking curiously between me and Lady Gold, asking me with his eyes why I’m standing here, next to the Queen’s daughter. I shake my head slightly, mouthing: I’ll explain later. I see his mouth twist, how stiffly he bows. I add him to the list of people—Lora and Bea and Hinton already—to whom I owe explanations for my rudeness.
“Which horse would you like?” Ina asks politely, as if she’s asking if I prefer sugar or milk in my tea. “This is Honey”—she pets the dun horse’s nose—“and this is Mava.”
“Honey,” I say, so quickly that Ina laughs. “I’ll have Honey.”
“All right, then.” She presses the dun horse’s reins into my hands, and I blink away nervousness as the creature turns to regard me, its big eyes seeming to measure me up. I remember what Papa told me about horses: don’t act nervous, even if you are.
The same thing could be said of royalty.
Somehow, I expect that there will be more preparation, but Ina is ready, and so Tam comes around to my side to boost me up into Honey’s saddle. I clamber awkwardly into place, gripping the saddle horn nervously.
Ina sees my tense shoulders, and surprise flashes across her face, followed by embarrassment. I can tell it hasn’t occurred to her that I might not know how to ride, and now she’s ashamed, wondering how to backpedal. Everything Ina Gold feels is transparent, clear as day on her beautiful face. That she never has to hide her emotions is a luxury—but I can’t resent her for it. She’s known me for all of two days, but she truly cares whether I’m comfortable.
“I’m fine riding,” I say before she can speak—wanting to get out of Everless, to breathe free, if only for a day. I straighten in the saddle and move my hands to the reins, trying not to think about how far off the ground I am. Ina swings up onto her horse all on her own—she’s as graceful as a dancer—and pulls her hood up over her head. She leads us out of the stables. Luckily for me, Honey follows Mava out of instinct.
“I want to go to an orphanage between Crofton and Laista,” Ina says quietly, once we’re out of earshot of Tam. “About an hour’s ride away. I haven’t exactly told anyone about this little outing. Not Roan or Caro or the Queen. They all think I’m going to be hunted and slaughtered like spotted hare,” she says, so cavalierly that I have to laugh. “So I would be grateful if—you know . . .”
Ina turns to me, biting her lip. Lady Ina Gold doesn’t seem the sort to keep secrets, much less from her betrothed or the Queen, her surrogate mother, but then, I remember, neither do I.
I nod, and smile.
Ina catches sight of something over my shoulder and closes her mouth. She motions at me to fall in behind her as we come up on the south gate, a smaller set of doors than the great gates she and the Queen came through a week ago, this one meant for servants and deliveries. It’s guarded by two freezing-looking guards, who watch us coming without interest but snap to attention when they see Ina’s face. They both bow deeply.
“Lady Gold,” one stammers, after they straighten up. “Ought—ought you be going outside the walls without an escort?”
Ina doesn’t miss a beat, and there’s an easy cheerfulness in her voice that wasn’t there when we were alone. “I am escorted, in case you think this girl is a ghost,” she says, sweeping her hand in my direction. “I’m only going to surprise Roan on his hunt.”
Again, I’m surprised by how easily the lie falls from her lips. Her eyes, clear and pure as drops of water, give away nothing. Instinct kicks at me to tell Ina about Roan’s visit to the servants’ quarters this morning—instead, I tuck the knowledge away, next to my other secrets to keep for later.
Regardless, it works—the guards stand back and let us through. We ride out into the plain beyond Everless’s walls; the doors stand open a moment longer, then swing heavily shut. It’s amazing how rapidly I feel lighter, as if I hadn’t noticed the iron weight sitting on my chest until it was lifted away.
Ina leads us to the main road. It’s early enough that travelers are few and far between—we pass a handful of carts ambling toward Everless, loaded up with hay or wood or piles of grain, but no one else seems to be heading away. Ina keeps her hood up, but outside the walls of Everless, nobody looks her way twice. Or rather, people look, but only in the way anyone would upon seeing a girl as beautiful as Ina. None of the farmers and merchants we pass seem to know she’s the Queen’s daughter, the future ruler of Sempera.
When she pulls Mava to a smaller road that cuts through the forest, I follow, though my fingers grip the reins, making them slick with sweat. I wonder if my father walked through these woods on his last trip to Everless.
“You don’t think there would be . . . bleeders in these woods?” Ina glances around fearfully, less dismissive now that we’re surrounded by twisting black trunks and shadows. I wonder if she was badly frightened in the raid that killed their servants. To my confused look, she replies, “Have you heard? A hedge witch was murdered yesterday in Ayleston.”
A chill runs down my spine. Papa always told me that hedge witches and other so-called lesser sorcerers were charlatans, but not everyone believes that—and someone said to have a special relationship with time might make a pretty target for thieves. I shake my head, clear my throat as well as my mind. “We’re safe this close to Everless.” Since I am expected to die for her if we’re attacked, I hope that it’s the truth. “But I don’t know this part of the forest well.”
“That’s all right,” Ina says, pulling a folded map out of her dress pocket.
The light grows thicker as the tree branches give way to the sky. I’m uneasy on Honey’s back—every time she turns slightly to follow Mava or avoid debris in the path, I grip the saddle with my thighs, afraid of falling. At least the cold has eased some as the sun has risen. And the landscape around us is strangely beautiful; it all sparkles now with snow and melting ice.
As grateful as I am for the change of scenery, I can’t push aside the suspicion the Queen’s daughter may be hiding something.
“Ina . . .” I trail off. Questioning the Queen’s charge still feels more than unnatural—Ina’s power hovers in the air like a creature waiting to strike. But I push on. “Why are we going to an orphanage? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Oh.” Ina laughs a little, though it sounds hollow to me. “You know, I’ve been so engrossed in this map that I forgot I didn’t tell you.”
She half turns in her saddle, just as at ease as if she is on a chaise longue at the palace on the shores. Still, she takes a long time to respond, and when she does, her voice is slow and soft. “I want to know who my birth parents are,” she says matter-of-factly. “I love the Queen, and am grateful to her, but I want to know who . . . who came before.”
She faces forward again, so I no longer see her face. “I thought about asking Roan along, but he’s so—so lighthearted. I didn’t want him to think about something sad, or to think that I was unhappy.” This I understand perfectly, wanting to keep all the darkness and grief of the world from touching Roan. “And if the Queen finds out . . .”
I finish her sentence in my head: she’ll be disappointed.
She’ll accuse me of treason.
She’ll have my head.
I wonder which is true, though I don’t yet dare to ask. The memory of the Queen’s knife flying toward Ina flashes through my mind.
“And Caro?” I ask.
Ina sighs, sounding disappointed. “She knows I go out on rides by myself, but not where I go. She wouldn’t approve either. Anyway, she’s off on one of her mysterious errands for the Queen.”
“What are the errands?” I ask, curious, then blush for my nosiness.
“Nothing important,” Ina says dismissively. “You know the Queen is obsessed with the Sorceress. She likes to go to the old places, battle sites and graves and so on, and she always takes Caro with her.”
A thought occurs to me. “How did Caro come into the Queen’s favor? Was she . . .” I let my words trail off, though by the way her hand grips the reins, I know Ina understands what I mean to say.
“Was she abandoned, like the others?” Ina finishes softly.
My silence is a nod.
Ina turns her head again and flashes a smile—though the sadness still hangs delicately in her features, like smoke. “She says she’s never been curious about her parents, and neither should I. She thinks it was fate that brought her to the palace, to the Queen, so she doesn’t care about what came before. She’s very loyal, as good as family. If she hadn’t come to the Queen at an older age, I wonder . . .”
There’s an emotion tangled in Ina’s voice—whether its doubt, guilt, or envy, I can’t quite tell. Perhaps it’s all three.
She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. “I’m grateful to you for being discreet. It’s good to talk to another or—” She pulls Mava to a sudden halt. “I’m so foolish. I didn’t mean to bring up family just after your father passed.”
“It’s fine,” I say automatically, though my heart twists a little. It’s a good kind of pain, if there is such a thing. To have these words—parents, orphan—out in the air is strange, but it’s better than having them boiling under my skin. Part of me wonders that Ina Gold should be so trusting. But why shouldn’t she be? Maybe it’s me, with my hidden landscapes of secrets and fears, who’s the abnormal one.
Ina blinks, as if she feels it too. “It’s such a relief to trust you, Jules—I feel like I can talk to you. Like you understand.” She smiles, a little bashfully. “Do tell me to stop if I’m not making sense. I know it’s forward of me—”
I shake my head—I do understand, at least in regards to how she feels about her parentage. My whole being wants to cling to the idea of Papa. His letter in my breast pocket, now almost falling apart from being folded and refolded so many times, is a testament to that. And I want Ina to know that. I want her to trust me.
Ina kicks Mava forward. Honey follows. Ina and I make a strange pair—a princess and a servant, one long-time orphaned and one freshly so, one with the favor of the Queen and one with the love of a father. It occurs to me that I wouldn’t trade places with her if I was given the chance, wouldn’t trade Papa for the Queen.
The thought sends a fresh bolt of grief through me, and I cast around for another topic of conversation quickly, before it overcomes me. “I thought the Queen’s orphanage was on the eastern shore, near the palace,” I say. Of course, that would be a journey of weeks. Ina and I are packed for hours.
“That was the first orphanage,” Ina says. “I’ve almost been to them all, by now. There are so many, Jules, all over the kingdom—families still abandon their children on the palace shores. We could form a whole city by ourselves.”
I shake my head, imagining a city of orphans, running wild with no knowledge of their past.
“I’ve visited every one I could find, to look through their records,” Ina continues. The outpouring of words makes it clear she’s thought about this, turned it over in her head many times. “The truth is that I have no idea which one I came from. I cannot ask Her Majesty.”
“Of course not,” I murmur. Something makes me shiver, and I pull the wool cloak closer to me.
“All I know is that Ina is the name my birth mother gave me.” She pauses. “And still, I don’t know that for sure.” Without being told, I know what Ina is feeling: the ache of longing for a parent’s kind touch, a reassuring word, has carved out a hole in my chest. “So I’ve gone to nearly every orphanage in the kingdom. And I’ve found nothing.”
Now a morbid curiosity has taken hold of me. Are my birth parents alive or dead? Did they leave me on the shores of the palace, to be chosen by the Queen, picked up by an orphanage, or else die breathing the sea-salt air? How did Papa come to claim me as his own?
Does it have anything to do with why he died for me?
We pass through a clearing; though the sun is high now, I shiver again, then let the letter tucked near my heart warm me. Papa must have found me at one of these orphanages, and given me what even Ina Gold, princess of Sempera, lacks: love.
After the gloomy turn in the conversation, we ride the rest of the way in relative quiet. Ina’s map takes us down narrower and narrower roads, through plains and woods, until finally in a forest of birch we encounter a huge and ornate but rusted wrought-iron gate. The words carved at the top have been crusted over with snow and ice, but I can still make them out: Here is a refuge for Sempera’s children, so that all may have a home. The inscription twists at something deeply buried in my heart.
We pause at the gate for a few minutes, unsure whether to call out—all we can see beyond it is more snow and more trees. But before either of us get down from our horses, a child appears at the bars—a little girl with shorn black hair and wide, wide eyes, no older than six or seven. She regards us solemnly, wrapping bare hands around the carved iron. She’s wearing a threadbare coat and trousers too big for her, not remotely enough for this cold.
“Are you a fairy?” the child asks.
Ina opens her mouth and falters, then glances at me. Her usual composure seems to have deserted her; she looks anxious and uncertain, her lips chapped where she’s bitten them. Except for the brief moment outside the Queen’s chambers, I’ve never seen her nervous—not even when she was parading into Everless for the first time at the Queen’s side. But she’s nervous now. So I swing down from the saddle, landing heavily in the snow.
The little girl doesn’t move as I draw near. At the gate, I crouch down so I’m at her eye level and try to channel the way Lora speaks to me, or the way Papa did when I was little.
“Fairies aren’t real, love,” I say trying to sound bright and open, though I can’t shake the thought of how cold she must be, her fingers entwined in the metal of the gate.
The girl nods and stares past me. Then I realize she’s not gazing at me or Ina, but at the horses. I glance over my shoulder and see them through her eyes, Mava’s shiny coat and silky mane, the proud arch of Honey’s neck. “You can pet them,” I tell the girl. “Go on.”
She blinks at me, then the barest hint of a smile brightens her face. She grips the metal bars and backs up, hauling the gate along with her. I beckon to Ina—she blinks uncertainly, then dismounts and takes the reins of both horses in hand, leading them through the gate. The girl lifts her hand to brush Mava’s side as Ina leads them past, captivated.
Between the trees ahead of us, a building starts to take form—a large, ramshackle building that looks as if someone tried to imitate Everless without possessing either the blood-iron or foresight of the Gerlings. Two wings of black stone wrap around a large, bare courtyard, where dozens of young boys and girls are scattered, racing about and playing in the snow. None of them seem to be older than ten. Their shrieks and yells echo off the trees.
Ina puts a hand on my arm. She’s hanging back, looking up at the building with trepidation.
“Will you . . . will you go inside for me?” she asks. “I need to walk.”
I blink. “Don’t you want to see for yourself?”
“We’re nearly the same age . . .” Ina avoids my gaze, staring instead at the children who are now gawking at the horses. “Ask if we can look through the records from the month before the day the Queen found me. That should be enough, I think. But say it’s for you—that you’re wondering about you.” Talking faster and faster with nervousness, she gives me the day of her birth as the Queen remembers it—March sixth—and I register with surprise that she is only a few days older than me, born on the eleventh.
With a flash of clarity, I also understand why she means me to pose as the one seeking information, because it can’t be known that she’s out here in the country, trying to learn about her life before the Queen. My gut twists in a combination of disappointment and hurt. I’m still a tool, or a glove to be slipped on and used as needed by those more powerful—even to Ina Gold, the girl who only an hour before said she could trust me, that we understood each other. But I say, “Of course.”
Ina leaves to find a stable for the horses, and I continue inside. Up close, I can see that the orphanage building is ill-maintained. Some bricks in the wall look loose, and I find myself standing on a floor of ancient, warped boards. A little fire burns in a hearth. A small, balding older man is seated at a desk across the room, writing in a ledger. When the door closes, he looks up, startled, and takes me in.
“Good afternoon,” he says, his voice creaky. “How can I help you, miss?”
“Good afternoon.” I clear my throat and recite the words Ina gave me to say—I am a curious orphan working in Laista, hoping to examine the institution’s records for any hint of my birth during one winter, seventeen years ago.
The clerk listens attentively, then rises from his seat—I can hear his bones creak—and walks to a bookshelf along the wall, lined with huge, aged ledgers in various states of decrepitude. He floats his finger around them, using no logic that I can follow, and finally pulls one off the top shelf. He places it on a desk with a heavy thud, and I cough on the ensuing cloud of dust.
As he opens the book, I draw closer to read over his shoulder. Each large, yellowed page is filled with rows of names and numbers. The name of the child and his or her birthday, if known; the day and state in which they entered the orphanage; the name of their adopter, if there was one. The last column was only a third as full as the first two. But then I reach a section where all the information is scattered. There are numbers instead of names, and many blanks.
The man sees the confusion on my face. “The woman who ran this orphanage before my husband and I was terrible at record keeping,” he explains. “Then a few decades ago, there were some nasty cases, people who would adopt children just to steal their time. The Queen hanged them all and dismissed the orphanage workers who had let it happen. To keep order, you know.” He laughs, but there is no humor in it. “To be safe, our records have gotten quite good over the years. But still—” He frowns, looking closer. “This was the year of those tremors.”
“The tremors?” I echo. “In the earth?” We hadn’t felt them in Crofton, but the stories kept me awake—in one town near the palace, the ground ripped in two, swallowing buildings and people whole.
The attendant raises his eyebrows. “No—tremors in time.” Dimly, I call up a memory of my father dismissing stories about time shattering. “The winter you asked about, we saw all sorts of disturbances. Frozen moments, days that seemed too long. Once, we all lost an hour together. People were frantic. There was panic up and down the coast, looting, and then there was the whole business with Briarsmoor.” The man chews on his cheek, staring at some point over my shoulder.
I’m beginning to feel like Papa didn’t tell me anything about the world. “What’s Briarsmoor?”
“Nothing like education these days.” The attendant’s voice is mildly chiding, though not aimed at me. “It’s a town, Briarsmoor, some miles north of here. It’s twelve hours behind the rest of us—if you and I were sitting there now, it’d be the dark of night. Time froze in that town for half a day that winter. And people started saying that all the children who came from there were cursed.”
He leans his chin on his hand and tilts his head at me, waiting for a reaction, but my mind is still grappling with what he’s said. It’s not unusual for time to trip over itself in places, to slow down or speed up or pause entirely for a moment, the wind and sun hold still while we move about our lives, oblivious that we’re out of time’s current. But everything always irons itself out. It’s unbelievable that anywhere time could drag to half a day behind—and even more so that the lag could last so long.
“The Queen ordered everyone to evacuate,” he continues, “but the damage was done.”
A half hour later, I’ve paged through the ledger three times, front to back and back to front to back again. But I’ve seen no sign of baby Ina, or of me. And indeed, one entire week is absent from the ledger. Is it possible that we were abandoned in the week out of time?
Briarsmoor. The name sparks something like recognition in me—although how could it, if Papa had never mentioned it?
“Jules?” Ina’s voice calls from outside, making me start. I thank the man for his help, and return the useless ledger to its shelf. Then I hurry out to find the Queen’s daughter.
It’s started to snow outside, just a faint dust of white crowning Ina’s hood. She sees me and her face falls. “Nothing? No record?”
“No names,” I say. “But—”
Before I can tell her about Briarsmoor, Ina’s huffed a sigh and turned away from me. “These places and their shoddy record keeping,” she says, muffled. The bluster is visible in her frame. Though I don’t know her well enough to say for sure, I’d swear she’s on the verge of tears. “I’ve scoured practically every orphanage in the kingdom.”
I want to say something to comfort her, but she’s already off, walking fast toward the orphanage’s half-tipped-over stables. The crowd of wide-eyed children admiring our horses scatter when we come in, disappearing out a back exit before either of us can say a word.
As we saddle up, an idea forms in my head. “The clerk did mention something . . .” I start, making Ina look up sharply. “He said there’s a town north of here—”
“I know,” Ina interrupts. “Briarsmoor.” Her mouth twists like she’s just eaten a rotten fruit.
“You’ve been?”
“No, but I know it,” Ina says with finality. “And there’s nothing there. It’s a ruin.”
My heart sinks, but— “There couldn’t have been nothing,” I press. “Maybe no people, but what about books? Papers?”
“I cannot go to Briarsmoor. The Queen forbids it.” Her voice is hard as stone, and I wonder if there isn’t an old conflict buried there, one still too raw to reveal to me. “She says it’s cursed.”
“Maybe . . .” I start, but Ina has already made it into her saddle. She glances toward me and then up the road to the north, stiffening. But then something goes out of her. Her shoulders slump, making her look less like a princess, more like any sad girl I might have known in Crofton.
“And what would we do there, even if the Queen didn’t discover us?” she says, an uncharacteristic note of roughness in her voice. “No. I’m tired of dead ends and strange towns.”
A protest rises in my throat, but I push it back down and clamber onto my horse. It’s not my place to contest her.
We ride back to Everless in silence—Ina’s in a dark mood, whereas I’m still too consumed by what the clerk told me. Briarsmoor. How can it be—and how could Papa not have mentioned the name or the curious town that dropped out of time?
But there’s no end to what my father kept secret from me. Even his death is a mystery.
Another thought hits me with brute force: maybe I am a mystery—a secret—that needs unraveling, too.
The idea takes hold of me, somewhere deep down, and I know that as soon as I can, I will have to find my own way to the town out of time.
With a sack of Gerling hours on my belt, I think.
If there is some truth to the superstition he mentioned—that Briarsmoor babies are cursed—I’m sure that Ina, the kingdom’s most blessed child, couldn’t have been born there.
But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t.
Time has always moved strangely around me, clinging for one moment too long, then stuttering to catch up with the world. Maybe Briarsmoor has clung to me all these years.
And I certainly feel cursed. The weight of everything I’ve lost is like a collection of stones in my chest. My mother and Papa are the heaviest, but there are a thousand other things too, little things, taken from me—our tiny garden in Crofton, Amma’s comforting embrace . . . and further back, the blazing warmth of the blacksmith’s workshop, Roan’s childhood smile. I pull on Honey’s reins and fall behind, so Ina won’t see the couple of tears that escape and track down my face.
We come into view of Everless just as the sun is starting to set. The estate is a spiky dark silhouette against the orange glow of the sky. Ina stops on the empty road, and I pull to a halt beside her. I peer at her, unsure if something is wrong, but she’s just staring at it, this temporary home we both share, a curious mix of wonder and grief on her beautiful face.
“Maybe it’s better that I don’t know,” she says, half to herself. I lean close to hear her. “There are less than three weeks left until the wedding, for Sorceress’s sake. Maybe this is a sign I shouldn’t be running all over the kingdom looking for answers that probably don’t exist . . . I mean, I have everything I need already.”
She looks over at me, vulnerable. And though I can’t understand why Ina Gold, the daughter of the Queen, should need reassurance from a servant girl, she clearly does. The need is written all over her face.
A hint of irritation seeps into me. Why should Ina need me to comfort her, when she has everything she could ever dream of at her fingertips, when she will sit on the throne one day?
But her eyes remind me of the does I used to see, foraging alone in the Crofton forest. My survival, and Papa’s, depended on my being a merciless hunter. Even so, if a doe ever looked me straight in the eye, I could never bring myself to fire.
I take her gloved hand in my own. In spite of everything, I want to help her. I know what it is to be lost. “My father raised me as his, but then confessed that I wasn’t, Ina,” I tell her. She squeezes my hands so tightly that I wince. “I know what it’s like not to know. But—” I pause, letting the truth swirl inside of me. “It’s more lonely that he didn’t tell me the truth. That he was afraid to, I think, because he thought I wouldn’t love him like a father. But he was wrong.”
The Queen’s daughter takes her hands from mine, covers her own face. Then, in the growing shadow of the estate, she sobs. The sound pierces me—I’ve said the wrong thing, let my grief carry me away.
“Everyone at Everless loves you,” I say. She leans over and quietly nods into my shoulder. “No one talked of anything else before you arrived—just Ina Gold, how beautiful and kind she was, and how lucky Roan was to have her.” Saying Roan’s name makes the stones in my chest get heavier, but I push past them. “And that’s only the beginning. Anyone can see how much the Queen loves you. Caro loves you. Roan”—I pause—“adores you.”
A smile, faint but genuine, breaks out over Ina’s face. “Thank you, Jules.” She gazes back at Everless. “I’m about to marry Roan Gerling. Surely no girl ever had less cause to be ungrateful.”
A memory sneaks into the back of my mind—Roan in the narrow hallway where I ran into him the other day, flushed and smelling of perfume. Lavender, not rosewater. It’s not my business, I shouldn’t, but—“Do you love him?” I blurt out.
Surprise flashes across Ina’s face. She looks at me, at Everless, and at me again. “Yes,” she says. “More than anything.”
Ina urges her horse forward, toward Everless, toward Roan, toward her future. My horse follows ploddingly along—a living, breathing shadow of Ina’s own. I close my eyes against the sight. I am escorted, in case you think this girl is a ghost, she’d said. But right now, I feel like I might be.
After we’ve left Honey and Mava at the stables with Tam and are approaching the east entrance, Ina whispers to me in the pooling shadows.
“It’s not that I’m unhappy, Jules, you must know that,” she urges.
“I do,” I say. “I understand.” It’s possible to feel joy and grief at the same time. It’s possible to look forward to the horizon while mourning what you’ve lost.
I realize Ina’s stopped. I turn to her—she’s wringing her hands. There’s something else on her face, longing to escape. “Ina . . . what is it?”
“You have to promise not to tell anyone,” she says. “Not Caro, not the other servants.”
My heart pounds. “I promise.”
“There was a man.” Her voice is quiet. “A few years ago, at the summer harvest in an Elsen province, the Queen was addressing the crowd. I was standing among them, so I could watch, too.” She swallowed. “The man reached me—he took me by the arm. Of course, I yelled for my guard, as I was trained to do. Before he ran off, he told me—” She stops, looks around.
“What? Tell me,” I say, unthinking and then shocked at the command. Ina’s mouth twitches.
“The Queen means you harm. She’ll kill you.” Immediately after she says it, Ina looks as though she’s swallowed poison. I hear her breathing quicken. “I’ve thought and thought about it. He reached me—risked his life to do so. Why did he do that? He didn’t seem to want to hurt me.”
“He sounds mad,” I say, my voice a whisper. His words sound less mad, though, than they would have before I saw the Queen’s knife flying at Ina’s chest. Lady Sida’s words float through my head once again. She is mad too, certainly, and yet . . .
Ina nods. “That must be it. That’s what I told myself until I got sick of thinking it. For a moment, I thought he might be . . .” She presses her lips together in a tight line. “My father. That the Queen stole me from my parents, like a fairy stealing away with a child in the night.” She laughs. Her laugh is short and bitter. “Impossible, I know. Don’t tell anyone, Jules, please. It would ruin me.”
“Of course,” I murmur, but say nothing more, and neither does Ina. But I know that the same thought has woven itself into our minds.
What if he told the truth?