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“How was your lunch?” he asks, but his gaze is quick to drop on the scrolls that litter the desk. “Remind me to be more specific about the rules next time. Lunch without a side of adventure.”

I frown before realization hikes my brow.

He knows I went to the scripture room.

How he knows, I haven’t the faintest clue.

Someone saw me, perhaps. Or I wear the particular scent of the stale, dusty aisles.

Whatever it is, I just hope he knows nothing at all about Ronan running me down in the street.

“I’m not allowed to visit a scripture room?” I move for the velveteen armchair. I tug off my silky shawl. It billows to the chair. “Are you not a supporter of well-read females?”

“With you, it might be more accurate to say well-readslaves,” he mutters under his breath.

I throw a sneer at him.

He doesn’t notice. He’s already consumed by the smoothed parchments sprawled in front of him, the curling edges pinned down by ink pots and pebbles.

Still, no mention of Ronan. So I’m sure he doesn’t know. Now I suspect Eamon might have sent him a crow to tell him he left me at the scripture room and took Aleana to Comlar.

Movement flickers at the edge of my sight.

A thick black tapestry—a family tree that glistens silver and gold, threaded letters shimmering as though winking at me.

It calls to me.

I home in on Daxeel’s name, far on the right. A gold line threads his name to another…

Narcissa Elmfield.

Faint, fading, then it’s gone.

In a blink, my name vanished from the family tree woven into the tapestry.

Another blink, it weaves back into place, returned.

I watch it fade, then return, over and over, and I don’t quite know what to make of that uncertainty.

It sways unease in my gut.

Is it Daxeel’s uncertainty that can’t decide my place on the tapestry? Or is it so simple that he might not survive the Sacrament, and that cuts our future down?

‘You won’t make it through the Sacrament.’

Ronan’s warning whispers through me.

‘She wants you to survive...’

I stiffen.

‘…with Daxeel, we do not believe you will.’

But I can’t believe him. Not yet. His intel is misinformed. My life most certainly cannot be in danger with Daxeel, not anymore.

I assure myself that the indecisive tapestry is nothing more than the plain truth that fate is an uncertainty until it is not.

I loosen a breath and, turning my cheek on the troubling tapestry, wander closer to Daxeel.