In the flurry of greetings that met us at the door, I was finally able to detach myself from young Miss Banks, using the pretext of disposing of my outerwear. A quick duck and a dive behind the group of gathered visitors all exclaiming and commenting upon our arrival, a careful swerve past the servants hovering behind them, and I was free of my would-be questioner...

...But my ex-fiancé fell smoothly into step beside me. “May I take your coat?” he inquired sardonically.

“Certainly,” I told him, and tossed Jonathan’s greatcoat straight at his chest. Then I spun away on one heel of Lady Cosgrave’s excellent boots and strode across the blue-and-gold-tiled floor of the entry hall as quickly as I could.

With his annoyingly long legs, Wrexham had no difficulty keeping up, but at least he couldn’t grasp my elbow to stop me with both of his arms full of thickly piled coat. “Harwood—!” he began, in a near-snarl.

“Ah, there you are!” Someone far more frightening stood before us: my sweet, smiling sister-in-law, waiting for me in the open archway between me and the rest of the house. Her bright gaze moved from me to my ex-fiancé. Her eyebrows rose. Her mouth dropped open to form an “O” of delight that filled me with instant and overwhelming dread.

“No!” I said hastily. “No, we haven’t reconciled. And we’re certainly not going to! In point of fact, I can’t even speak to anyone at all anymore. I’m—I’m terribly, terribly tired. From my exertions. I think I need a nap.”

“Cowardly, Harwood,” Wrexham muttered. “An unworthy move.”

I winced but stood my ground.

Amy’s eyes narrowed as she studied me. “You do look tired,” she said. “I’d better show you to your room.”

“You needn’t—” I began, just as Wrexham said, “Mrs. Harwood, if you please—”

“The servants,” she told me firmly, “are all occupied, and you couldn’t possibly find it on your own. As for you, Mr. Wrexham...” She gave my ex-fiancé a firm nod. “I’m sure we’ll both be delighted to speak with you later.”

“Delighted,” he said wryly, and bowed deeply before turning away without any further argument.

My mouth dropped open in outrage as I stared after him.

If Wrexham actually possessed the heretofore-unseen ability to recognize an impossible battle when he saw one...then why had he never been intimidated out of arguing by me?

But there was no time to fathom the depths of that injustice as Amy tucked a firm hand into the crook of my arm and swept me, simmering, through the archway. She chatted happily all the way as she led me up a curving set of stairs, the walls beside it lined by stately portraits of the many women who’d proudly led the Cosgrave family and the nation itself through the centuries. Every one of the Ladies Cosgrave, judging by the weighty gold-and-silver torcs painted around all of their necks, had been a member of the Boudiccate in her own turn...and it was impossible, as I passed that grand and glowering procession, not to be entirely aware of my own bruised and disordered appearance and generally unwomanly lack of dignity by comparison.

Even my own mother, by the end, had given up on my ever following in her famous path. Still, it had been rather easier to stand strong in that recollection four months earlier, before I’d failed in the vocation for which I’d given up her shining legacy and pride.

“...And of course,” Amy continued as she swept me off the staircase and down a branching corridor lit by warm, expensive fey-lights set in spellbound sconces along the wall, “there are all the latest troubles with the elves to complicate matters, and—”

“What?” I stopped abruptly, tugging her to a halt along with me.

Amy’s eyes widened as she looked at me. “My goodness, Cassandra, I didn’t imagine you were actually listening to me. I’ve never known you to be interested in politics before!”

I forced myself to unclench my jaw and suck in a deep breath. “What were you saying about the elves, exactly?”

“Surely you must have heard—well. No. You haven’t been following the news lately, have you?” She looked pained at her own misstep.

I gave her arm a bracing squeeze. “Oh come now, Amy. You know perfectly well I was never a great reader of newspapers even before...what happened.” No, I’d been far too consumed with my own magical pursuits beforehand, and afterward...well. “You needn’t worry about any tender feelings on my part,” I said briskly. “Only explain to me what’s been happening.”

She sighed and tugged me with her along the corridor, leaning into my side and lowering her voice as we walked. “It’s more what hasn’t happened, actually. The elves send a representative each year at the end of Samhain, when the fairies make their great pilgrimage underground. At least one elf always stands beside an officer of the Boudiccate to jointly light the fairies’ passage.”

“And?” I glanced instinctively at the closest spellbound sconce on the wall nearby. The fey-light there burned golden-bright, illuminating the leaping horse pattern of the mosaic art along the wall in a warm, caressing glow...but of course that was little rational comfort; it would continue to burn regardless of its creator’s fate. Like fey-silk (soft as butterflies’ wings, the advertisements always claimed), fey-lights cost the earth, and for good reason. They lasted for years with no need for renewal, even during the darker turnings of the year when the unpredictable fairies themselves were safely contained underground.

“This year, no representative from the elven court arrived.” Amy’s face tightened, fine white lines of tension showing beneath her warm brown skin. “The elven king sent his regrets instead, and his best wishes.”

“And...?” I frowned, thinking of the icy elf-lord I’d just faced. “That sounds like the best possible outcome, I should think. If you can keep the elves’ friendship without being afflicted with their company—”

“Oh, really, Cassandra!” Amy shook her head at me, unaccustomed exasperation leaking into her voice. “I know you’ve spent most of your life fighting not to be drawn into politics, but just this once, take a moment to actually think about it. They haven’t missed that ceremony for four hundred years! It was either a deliberate snub, in which case our treaty is in grave danger—or else a sign that their own court is in such disarray that he didn’t trust any one of his courtiers to meet with us in public this year.”

“I see.” I nibbled at my lower lip. What was it that the elf-lord had said to defend himself against the charge of kidnapping? “Our noble king would never hear of such a thing.” But his tone...

“So we might have the king’s best wishes, but not his nobles’.”

“We might,” Amy agreed grimly. “In which case, we are in very dangerous waters indeed.” My gentle sister-in-law’s face was, for once, set in forbidding lines—not the usual warm, loving expression of my affectionate sister-in-all-but-blood, but that of a woman of certain power and intellect...who should, if luck and justice prevailed, be selected as the newest member of the Boudiccate the very next time an opening arose.

She should have been granted my mother’s seat, as I myself would have been if matters had gone as planned by the older generation—but there was no time to meditate on that old injustice now as Amy continued:

“Without being allowed entrance to their halls, we can’t do any more than guess at what might be happening inside them. But our last ambassador returned to her family at the turning of the summer solstice, and they haven’t authorized a new one since.”

She stopped at a white-paneled door and turned its bronze handle—shaped as a leaping stag in tribute to the male Cosgraves’ own magical contributions to the family history—as she spoke. “Oh, they don’t say that they’ve closed their court to us entirely—they couldn’t, without breaking the treaty—but they’ve come up with one excuse after another ever since. One ambassador is too young, another is too old; it’s simply impossible to make any decisions until a certain elven courtier returns from his travels...”

She stepped aside, ushering me before her into a warm, white-and-gold room with a canopied bed, a large window facing out onto the snowy darkness, and a giant allegorical painting of Boudicca’s victory hanging on the wall over the fireplace.

“But,” she finished, closing the door firmly behind her, “they all end with the same result. We have no ambassador in their court; we know something is amiss but don’t know what; and poor Lady Cosgrave is preparing to host the winter solstice now with no idea whether our allies will even bother to attend the very ceremony that’s meant to seal our alliance for another year.”

“Ah.” My gaze slipped to the glass window and the darkness beyond, where the elf-lord and his troll both waited...somewhere. “So.” I took a breath. “It’s rather important, then, that we not do anything to offend them at this point.”

“Cassandra!” Amy let out a startled burst of laughter. “How can you even jest about such a thing? It’s no laughing matter!”

“No,” I agreed glumly. “I imagine not.”

The expressions on the kneeling Roman soldiers’ faces, in the nearby painting, echoed my feelings rather well.

“Now.” Amy plopped down onto the bed and patted the mattress invitingly. “No more excuses from you, please, darling. What on earth were you and Wrexham up to out there, to send you home in such a state?” Her eyebrows furrowed, her expression becoming fierce. “He wasn’t insulting to you, was he?”

“No! Of course not.” I stalked over to the window, unable to hold her gaze. The curtains hadn’t been lowered yet; I gripped the window-frame with tight fingers, embracing the damp chill that emanated from the dark glass.

The protection spells scrolled in iron along the edges of this frame wouldn’t be enough to protect me if the elf-lord came; the last war we’d fought had been more than proof enough of that. No, these spells would only keep out a minor fairy, at the most...and even if I still possessed my old powers, I couldn’t fight back without sacrificing my nation’s safety in exchange.

It was a startlingly bitter gift to discover that I still had more to lose, after all, than I had spent the past two months believing.

But if I told my sister-in-law the truth of the danger I was facing, I might as well rip that treaty up with both hands and damn the safety of the rest of our nation forever...because Amy never, ever gave up on the people she loved.

No. I’d spent the past four months being cosseted by my family, but this was one problem I would have to face alone.

My reflection was a ghost in the window before me. I said, keeping my tone as idle as possible, “You don’t know of any weather wizards in this party, do you?”

“Here?” Amy, bless her, took the change of subject in stride. I saw her eyebrows rise in her reflection, but after only a moment’s pause, she said, “I imagine at least half the husbands here must work magic. I know all of the members of the Boudiccate married magicians, certainly. But I’ve never asked about any of their specialties. That was always...” She stopped abruptly, but I could easily finish her sentence for her:

That was always your business, not mine.

I took one long, steady breath and then another, my breath frosting the glass in front of me. “Would you find out, please?” I asked. “If you could?”

“Of course.” Amy’s tone gentled. “But darling...”

My shoulders stiffened. I knew that tone only too well.

“You know what the physicians said,” my sister-in-law murmured, with sympathetic pain lining every word. “Any use of magic is prohibited. I know that weather wizardry isn’t quite the same as the sort you used to work on—”

“Used to cast,” I gritted through my teeth. “I used to cast magic. That’s what it’s called.”

The pity on Amy’s reflected face was unbearable. I closed my eyes to shut it out, my fingers tightening around the window-frame.

“I beg your pardon,” I said quietly. “I shouldn’t have interrupted you so rudely.”

Amy sighed. “Never mind.” Silk swished behind me, followed by the brush of footsteps on the polished wooden floor. I opened my eyes and found her standing behind me with her folded hands resting on her rounded stomach, gazing gravely at my reflection in the window. “You know we’ll always help with anything you ask,” she said softly. “And I will ask about any weather wizards who might be here. But please, darling, remember: there is more to you than your magic. There always was.”

Her words pierced a too-thin shell inside my chest. I let out a half-laugh as pain flooded out through the opening. “Magic wasn’t just what I cast, it was what I was. You, of all people, should know that! By the time you met me—”

“I know,” she said firmly. “I know you. And I know how tightly you had to shut out everything else to keep from losing your own purpose and being swept away by your mother’s great plans for you instead. But I know something else, too: Wrexham, for one, never wanted you for your magic.”

“Oh, Amy.” Giving up, I tipped my head forward against the damp, cold glass, letting my eyes fall shut as memories overwhelmed me. “Of course he did,” I said in a near-whisper. “If you knew just how strong our castings used to be when we worked together...” It had been a perfect partnership. It had been beyond exhilarating. It had been...

“He would have left you four months ago if that was all he’d cared about,” said my sister-in-law flatly.

I pulled myself upright, shaking myself out of the maudlin memories as I gathered my strength and turned to face her. “Wrexham is a good man,” I said wearily. “He would never willingly abandon anyone in need, much less someone he’d cared about. And when you add in his sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness...”

“Yes?” Amy raised her eyebrows, looking ironic.

If there was a message in that expression, I had no interest in reading it. Instead, I gritted my teeth and met her gaze full-on. “I have no interest in being Wrexham’s pity project,” I bit out, “or the burden hanging about his neck. And fortunately, I don’t have to resign myself to either fate—because, although you seem to have somehow forgotten this, we are no longer betrothed!”

“Hmm.” Amy gave me a measuring look. Then, maddeningly, her lips curved into an understanding smile. “You are tired,” she said. “It wasn’t only an excuse after all.” Reaching out, she patted my arm consolingly. “I’ll see you at supper-time. You’ll feel better by then.”

Argh! I had to press my lips together to keep my groan of frustration from emerging.

The moment that the door closed behind her, I gave in. Scooping up a pillow from the bed, I pressed it to my face and let out a safely muffled howl.

There was some satisfaction in letting my feelings out, after all. But it couldn’t change the truth.

In only two hours, the supper bell would ring. Wrexham would be waiting. So would Amy...and so would a whole party full of happy, practicing magicians, laughing and toasting and arguing over spells that I would never, ever be allowed to cast again.

Cowardly though it might be, I wanted to barricade my bedroom door and stay hidden in this room for the next two full weeks of our visit. But...

“You have one se’ennight.” The elf-lord’s remembered voice whispered in my ear.

I set my teeth and braced myself as I dropped the pillow back onto my bed.

It was time to prepare myself for an evening of social gaiety...because like it or not, I had a rogue magician to catch and only one week in which to do it.