I knew exactly whom to consult when it came to political strategizing.

Unfortunately, Amy wasn’t alone when I found her.

“My dear.” Lady Cosgrave’s eyebrows rose as I stepped through the doorway of the small, cozy parlor where nine ladies sat gathered in a semicircle around the fireplace with teacups and newspapers in their hands. They all looked up with bright interest as she asked, “Have you finally discovered some interest in politics after all? Your late mother would be so pleased.”

I bit down a bright flare of irritation and smiled tightly. “Actually, I was coming in search of Amy, but if you’re all busy—”

“This shouldn’t take too much longer.” Amy spoke up from the other side of the semicircle, her voice soft but her gaze intent as she studied my face. “Why don’t you take a seat, Cassandra? Pour yourself a cup of tea. You can drink it while you wait.”

Wait? I could feel my last six days of freedom slipping away from me, minute by minute, like snowflakes melting against my skin.

I had to act.

But charging furiously around without information would be worse than useless. So I drew a deep breath and nodded, keeping my polite smile pasted to my face. “If you don’t mind me overhearing...”

“Mind Miranda Harwood’s daughter overhearing our discussion?” Next to Lady Cosgrave, an older woman with dark brown skin and grey curls, Mrs. Seabury, snorted out laughter. “My dear, if you only knew how desperately your mother wished you had any interest in such matters—!”

My teeth set behind my smile. I was grateful for the excuse of the tea urn in the corner, to turn my back on the semicircle of ladies and the crackling fire.

Before anyone in the semicircle could add to Mrs. Seabury’s store of recollections, Amy said smoothly, “So there’s still no confirmation of which representatives the elven court might send to this year’s solstice celebration?”

“If any!” said Lady Cosgrave. A rustle of newspapers behind me signaled several of the ladies straightening to attention as she continued, “And when you add this dreadful weather to the equation—! It might almost have been designed to make our ceremony impossible.”

My hand stilled on the copper tap of the tea urn. Suddenly, I was listening with far sharper attention.

“We’re fortunate that so many of you set off early,” Lady Cosgrave said. “At least five families won’t be able to attend after all because of the state of the roads, and this snow isn’t likely to clear any time in the next week, as far as any of the weather wizards can tell. But then, they never predicted how quickly this storm would begin in the first place, so—!”

I turned around, my cup still empty beneath the tap. “How many weather wizards are at this house party, ma’am?”

“How many?” She frowned. “It’s three now, isn’t it? Sansom, Hilbury, and that young one, Luton, who’s always growling to himself about something or other. Dreadful boy, really, but he’s Delilah’s nephew, so we could hardly leave him out of the invitation, no matter how unpleasant he might be.”

Murmurs of assent ran around the room, and more newspapers rustled.

“Weather wizards are not the question at hand, ladies!” Mrs. Seabury rapped her eagle-headed walking stick hard against the carpeted floor. “There’s no use hoping for a break in the storm now. The question is: will we have enough appropriate representatives of our own for the solstice circle? If there was ever a moment not to offer the elven court any apparent disrespect...”

More than one member of the semicircle winced.

“I can think of at least one elf who would be delighted,” Lady Cosgrave said sourly. “If you ladies had seen the look on Lord Ilhmere’s face yesterday...”

I abandoned my cup entirely as I moved to join the semicircle. “An elf-lord came here? Yesterday?”

“Not here,” Lady Cosgrave said. “He would hardly deign to step into this house, I can assure you. We are far below his touch as mere humans, you know.” She grimaced. “He can hardly bear the humiliation of our treaty, I believe, for all that it saved both of our nations all those centuries ago. But he was spotted on our grounds yesterday afternoon, so my husband transported me out to meet him...as any gracious hostess should.”

The look on her face said everything about the reception she had received. “He claimed he was here on behalf of his king, ensuring that everything was in readiness on our end despite the inclement weather. Needless to say, I assured him that all would be prepared for the solstice celebration...and naturally, he didn’t utter a single word of reassurance in his turn before he disappeared. But if anything isn’t perfect in our circle in six days’ time, I can safely swear that he, for one, will be more than delighted to seize upon it and present it as evidence to his king of our inadequacies as allies.”

“Wait.” I sank into my seat. “You’re saying the solstice ceremony is in six days’ time?”

“Keep up, girl!” Mrs. Seabury snapped. “When did you think it would be? Spring?”

“I...hadn’t thought about it at all, actually.” Of course I knew the winter solstice must be coming soon, but I hadn’t consulted the almanac for a date. After all, it hadn’t had anything to do with me until now. No one I knew was so antiquated as to actually celebrate the twin solstices anymore—except, apparently, the elves.

Perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that they were old-fashioned.

But the elf-lord’s deadline to me had suddenly taken on a new significance.

If anything isn’t perfect in our circle...

He was planning to confront me in the midst of the ceremony itself, wasn’t he? I seriously doubted that two high elf-lords had been lurking in the grounds of Cosgrave Manor yesterday...and I couldn’t imagine any act more beautifully designed to disrupt a treaty ceremony than the capture and abduction of a daughter of the Boudiccate.

Lady Cosgrave might well allow me to be taken for the sake of the treaty. But it would be an outrageous slap in the face of our nation for Lord Ilhmere do it at such a moment, just as our long peace was being reaffirmed. And if the ceremony was disrupted...

“Cassandra,” Amy said, “you haven’t poured yourself any tea. Aren’t you thirsty?”

“What?” I snapped out of my thoughts to find all the ladies looking at me with more or less impatience. “Forgive me,” I said, straightening in my seat. “Too much politics and my brain shuts down, apparently.”

Mrs. Seabury let out a crack of laughter. “So much for that bloodline! Poor Miranda. All her hopes...”

Lady Cosgrave hummed a disapproving, “Hmmm.”

The semicircle tightened back in on itself as conversation resumed, leaving my gauche interruptions behind. I sat in invisibility-seeking silence for all the rest of it, keeping my thoughts to myself.

But I could sense Amy’s gaze on me more than once in the next quarter of an hour, and I knew I hadn’t fooled my sister-in-law in the slightest.

* * *

Jonathan was in his and Amy’s bedroom when we arrived, seated at the small writing table with two piles of papers stacked around him, a bottle of ink on the table, and even more blue ink smeared through the top of his thick brown hair.

Oh, dear.

“Are the footnotes really that bad?” I inquired, as I closed the door behind myself and Amy rustled into the room ahead of me.

“What footnotes?” Jonathan demanded. He pointed accusingly at the stacks of papers with one ink-stained finger. “Those are not footnotes. Those are a maze designed to drive men mad! The printers have jumbled them all out of order, and as I don’t have any of my reference books here to consult—”

“My poor darling.” Amy put her hands on his shoulders and dropped a kiss on his ink-stained hair. “Could you look for them in Lord Cosgrave’s library?”

“Ha! That’s all tedious spellbooks and magical treatises from top to bottom. As if those were of interest to anyone with a—no.” He let out a heavy sigh and grabbed hold of his hair, tugging hard. “Forgive me, both of you. I’m just—”

“Frustrated,” I completed for him as I plopped myself down on the end of their bed. “Why don’t you send the journal a letter and tell them they’ll simply have to wait until you’ve finished your visit so you can consult your own books and fix their errors?”

“And let the article be delayed again?” Jonathan’s voice rose to a pained bellow.

“Shh,” said Amy soothingly. “Dearest, I had a chat with young Miss Fennell over breakfast, and it seems she’s been studying some very rare documents about the elven court in hopes of being chosen as the next ambassadress. But she’s having quite a bit of trouble deciphering some of the ancient annotations, so she could do with an expert’s advice and help. She’s in the library right now...and I did promise that you would take a look at them for her. You know how difficult those old manuscripts can be for people without any practice reading them.”

“They’re probably half-full of ancient Deniscan terms, if they’re about the elven court.” Reluctant interest crept into Jonathan’s voice. “If they really are some of the older manuscripts, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for me just to glance through them...although I ought to keep fighting with these damned footnotes...”

“Later,” Amy told him firmly. “After you’ve had a chance to clear your mind. You know it always makes you feel better to lecture people about history.”

“Rascal.” Jonathan scooped up her hand and kissed it. “But you’re absolutely right, of course. It does. And you’ve put up with more than enough of it already.” He pushed his chair back and brushed down his rumpled waistcoat. His hair, of course, was still standing up in all directions, so Amy stood on tiptoes to pat it down as he shrugged on his dark blue morning coat, which he’d laid over the back of the chair. His lips curved into a worryingly mischievous grin as his gaze landed on me. “Everything resolved now with Wrexham, eh? Last night—”

“You are going to forget what you saw last night,” I told him sternly.

“Ha!” He did up his buttons as his expression turned smug. “You can’t cast any spells of silence on me now, little sister. And if you think you can glare me out of remembering exactly what I saw, in vivid detail—”

“Library!” Amy said firmly, and pushed him toward the door. “You don’t want Miss Fennell to give up on those manuscripts and leave before you get there, do you?”

Shrugging, Jonathan allowed himself to be guided from the room. Just before he closed the door behind him, though, he stuck his head back in for one last comment. “I remember everything!”

“Argh!” I would have thrown a pillow at him if there had been time. But he slammed the door shut, laughing, just as I lunged across the bed to grab one.

“You two,” Amy said calmly as she walked back across the room, “deserve one another.”

“Oh, shush.” I slumped back onto the mattress, suddenly feeling every hour of the sleep that I’d missed.

Of course I’d remembered every detail of last night, too...all night long. It had not been conducive to a good night’s rest.

But there was no use torturing myself over that now. So before Amy could pursue the matter any further, I said, “I need your help.”

“Oh?” She sat down at the writing table, arranging her skirts around her, and looked at me expectantly. “Is this about Wrexham? Or am I finally going to find out what you were angling after in that meeting? What do you care about the elves?”

I pushed myself upright before I could lose all of my momentum entirely. “It’s nothing to do with elves or with Wrexham,” I said firmly. “It’s about Miss Banks. But not only her...”

Amy listened carefully as I laid it all out, her eyebrows drawing down with concentration. When I finished, she sat in silence for a long moment.

“You know,” she said finally, “the Boudiccate won’t be happy about this idea at all.”

“The Boudiccate? What business is it of theirs?” I frowned at her. “They aren’t the ones who train magicians.”

“But they do run the country,” Amy said patiently. “And your mother made them certain promises when she allowed you to attend the Great Library yourself.”

“What promises?” I demanded. “I was never told of any!”

“Because you were doing your best not to notice any of the politics of it, as I recall,” Amy told me. “Still, it must have occurred even to you at some point, mustn’t it? One female magician could be called a rare exception. Two, though...well, that might begin to change the rules—and not just for magic.”

“Oh, their blessed rules.” I rolled my eyes. “The Boudiccate is entirely too hidebound and you know it. You would be a part of it, if they weren’t so ridiculously attached to their traditions!” I waved an impatient hand. “How could you not tell me the real reason why you were denied Mama’s place all those years ago?”

“Someone told you that?” Amy’s lips compressed. She laid one hand on her rounded stomach as if to protect it. Then she sighed. “I suppose it was always bound to come out one day. But what would have been the purpose in telling you at the time? You would only have raged and kicked up a fuss and missed all of your important exams to come running to defend me—and truly, we were dealing with more than enough already, in the wake of your mother’s passing. No one needed any more pain added to that moment.”

“What about you?” I demanded. “You fought for me to get my place at the Great Library. Why wouldn’t you let me fight for you, too, when you needed it?”

“Because it wouldn’t have worked!” Amy said. “Cassandra, only think. The members of the Boudiccate are the proudest women in this land. Do you actually imagine they would have responded well to noise and humiliation in the public realm? Do you believe they would ever have welcomed a new member who’d been forced on them with that sort of battle? I know you like to approach everything with a battering ram, but these women require subtlety.”

“And you’re willing to make do for the rest of your life with that cursed subtlety and compromise?” I snorted. “Being part of their circle but not-quite-one of them forever?”

“Rather than lose my husband? Yes! A million times over.” Amy’s tone hardened. “You come from a family that always loved you, Cassandra, even when they didn’t understand you. I think sometimes you forget how many advantages you have even now, even after everything that’s happened to you.”

I bit back an angry retort as I absorbed the look on her face...and the undeniable sting of truth in her words.

Amy had been my mother’s goddaughter since birth, but after her own parents had died, she’d been shifted from home to home among her various aristocratic relatives—too high-ranking to be fobbed off on strangers, but too inconvenient to be welcomed in any one household for long. She hadn’t had a permanent home of her own until she’d finally reached the age of majority and been taken in by my mother, first as Mother’s assistant and then as her political protégé.

She’d always been so good at adapting to every situation that I sometimes forgot how she’d first developed that skill. And of course, I had only been a girl when she’d arrived all those years ago. It was hard to remember now that she hadn’t always been a natural, essential part of our family, negotiating between me and my mother at our worst and saving all of us from one another more than once.

I released my held breath with a heavy sigh and relaxed my clenched fingers from around the bedcovers. “I love you,” I told her, “even when I don’t understand you.”

“I know you do, darling.” Amy pushed herself up from her chair to join me on the bed. “I’m the only reason you and your brother both remember to change your clothing and even eat proper meals now and then.”

“That’s...ah.” I winced. “Well, that is true, of course, but it’s not why I love you, and you know it.” I aimed her a sidelong look as she settled in beside me. “Does Jonathan know, by the way? Why you weren’t given Mama’s place in the Boudiccate?”

“Oh, really.” Amy shook her head at me. “Your older brother is a historian. Did you think he couldn’t research the truth of that for himself? He even offered to release me from our marriage at the time.”

“Ha.” I bumped shoulders with her companionably. “Clearly he doesn’t know you so well after all. As if you would ever let go of anyone you cared about!”

“Never,” Amy agreed blithely. “You and Jonathan have been caught in my wicked clutches forever.”

I tipped my head against her shoulder, clinging to the moment even as I felt the minutes tick away. More snowflakes melting against my skin...

She let out a gasp and grabbed my hand. “Cassandra!”

Frowning, I let her place my hand on her rounded belly. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain? Or—oh!” Her belly bounced hard against the palm of my hand, and I jerked back instinctively.

Then my brain caught up with me. “Was that—?”

“Your new niece.” Amy’s face was alight with joy. “She must have wanted to greet her aunt! I’ve been waiting and waiting for her to finally introduce herself.”

I stared at her, struck dumb. Then I looked down at her rounded belly, covered by her elegant dark green, ivy-patterned cotton gown.

Holding my breath, I placed my hand with the utmost care in exactly the same place it had rested before. Waiting.

Nothing happened.

Amy laughed. “Don’t look so glum,” she said. “You’ll see plenty of her in just a few more months, you know!”

“Of course.” I took a breath and forced myself to smile and draw my hand back as if it genuinely didn’t matter.

As if I would have months to feel the baby kick, any time I wanted to.

As if I would be there when she was born.

I said, “You are going to help me assist Miss Banks and the other women like us, aren’t you? Even if it isn’t what the Boudiccate desires?”

Amy’s chest rose and fell with her sigh. “I will always support you,” she said, “and I would never refuse you my advice. But I’m afraid that in this particular case, you’re the only one who has a real chance of convincing the people who matter. If you are truly willing to come forward and talk openly about what happened to you—which will mean swallowing your pride, Cassandra, and answering the most intrusive and insulting questions again and again, for the public to pore over at their leisure—until everyone finally truly believes that your accident had nothing to do with your sex...”

“Of course,” I repeated quietly as the truth of it sank through me.

Firing off a series of letters, no matter how passionate, could never be enough to win my case. No, I would need to answer endless, prying questions afterwards from the newspapers, the politicians and the Great Library alike...and that process had no hope of being completed within the next six days.

But I couldn’t leave my sister-in-law to sort that out for me any more than I could give up the opportunity to meet my first niece in person. I had to solve the elf-lord’s challenge, no matter what it took...

...Which left only one option, no matter how unpalatable it might be.

I would have to seek out Wrexham myself and ask for his help.

Suddenly, I wished that I had poured that cup of tea.