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“Mine too,” Eamon adds with a twinkle in his bronze eyes. There’s no chiding to be found in him. Only pity.

“Dare’s been kicking my ass,” I mumble and slouch in my seat.

Eamon grins around the words, “His patience is as inconsistent as his flings.”

Beside me, Aleana empties a phial into her chalice. It turns her water cloudy. She steals the chalice into her skinny hand and lifts it to her chapped lips.

I missed too much. She’s back on the tonics, and in all my self-isolation, I had no idea, and now even less of an ideawhy.

Between the sips, a ghastly wheezing sound scrapes through her chest, the kind of strained breath I know from that almost lethal ‘common cold’ I had in my youth.

My mouth turns down at the corners.

I’m a horrid friend.

So selfish, so terrible.

“Ridge is coming this Quiet,” Eamon tells me. “The three of us—” and he lifts his chin in a gesture to Aleana “—are going to have some wine in the garden.”

An invite.

I answer, firm, “The four of us.”

The relief is found in the softness of his eyes and the tender flick of his smile. But his smile is quick to tighten at the sound of a rustling dress coming up the stairs to the dining hall entrance.

I home in on the scuff of leather boots that follows.

I turn my chin and look at the open doorway a moment before Tris skitters to a halt, her hefty skirt tangled around her legs, and her corseted bosom flustered.

“A caller,” she announces with a deep curtsey. “Ronan Bogh of Licht.”

“Ronan?” I echo, and there’s a pitch to my voice, a squeak not unlike the horrid sound of Tris washing the windows clean.

A stroke of brown leather in the doorway; Ronan strides inside. Hands clasped behind his back, his spine is stiffer than a frosted tree in winter.

My chin lifts a touch higher, my brows raise that bit more.

Stiff in my chair, I’m ready to rise and meet him.

But all the greeting Ronan gives me is a flickered look my way, not a bow or a word. Instead, he rounds the end of the table—for Eamon.

A frown tucks into my face.

Eamon stills. A spoonful of custard hovers near his parted lips, but after a beat, he lowers it to the bowl and looks up at Ronan.

Then I see it.

In Ronan’s gloved hand, an envelope. One with a wax seal stamped with the crest of the Queens Court.

“You have been summoned for your crime.” Ronan sets the envelope down beside the bowl. “For your assault against lordson Taroh, heir of Lord Braxis of the Queen’s Court.”

My hand grips the arm of my chair. “What crime? What are you talking about, Ronan?”

He only cuts his gaze to me for a heartbeat before he lands it on Eamon. “There are many witnesses to the assault. By the lawless culture of the Midlands, the repercussions are applied to the customs of these lands. You are challenged to an honour duel.”

Aleana drops her knife to the plate. It clatters just as the air is punched out of me and all I can manage is a strangled breath.

An honour duel…