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“That’s not what I meant,” the Queen murmured softly, looking him over again. Andry saw the same young girl in her eyes, set apart from the rest of the children. Eager to smile and laugh and play, but isolated too. Forever marked as a princess, without the freedoms of a page boy or a maiden or even a servant child.

The young girl vanished with the tightening of her jaw. “You will speak of this to no one, Squire,” she added, turning back to her throne.

Without thinking, Andry followed quickly on her heels, his gut churning.We were caught off guard. That cannot happen again.“People must be warned—”

Erida did not falter, her voice stern and unyielding. She knew how to make herself heard.

“The Spindles are myth to most, legends and fairy stories, as vanished as Elders or unicorns or any other great magic born of other realms. To speak of one returned,torn open, and a man who would wield it like a spear into our hearts? A man who cannot be harmed at the head of a corpse army?” She glanced at Andry over her shoulder, her gaze like two sapphires. “I am ruler of Galland, but I am a queen, not a king. I must be careful in what I say, and what weapons I give my enemies. I will not give anyone cause to call me weak-minded or mad,” she snapped, clearly upset. “I cannot move without proof. Even then, it would cause panic in my capital. And panic in a city of half a million souls will kill more than any army that walks the Ward. I must be careful indeed.”

Ascal was a bloated metropolis, sprawling across the many islands in the delta of the Great Lion. The streets were crowded, the markets overrun, the canals dirty, and the bridges prone to collapse. There had been riots after King Konrad died: opposition to a girl assuming his throne. Fires in the slums, floods at the ports. Disease. Bad harvests. Religious upheaval between the dedicant orders. A criminal underbelly thick as smoke.Nothing compared to what comes,Andry knew.Nothing compared to what Taristan can do.

He gritted his teeth. “I don’t understand” was all he could muster, running up against the wall of the Queen’s resolve.

It was not to be climbed.

“It isn’t for you to understand, Andry,” she said, knocking on the door to her apartments. It swung open to show her Lionguard knights waiting in the passage beyond, rigid in their armored rows. “You need only obey.”

There was no argument to be had with the Queen of Galland.

Andry bowed at the waist, biting back every retort rising in his throat. “Very well, Your Majesty,” he said.

She paused, the knights shifting into formation as she took one last look at the squire. “Thank you for coming home.” Her face was bittersweet. “At least your mother won’t have another knight to bury.”

I’m not a knight. And I never will be.

His heart tightened in his chest. “A small mercy.”

“May the gods protect us from whatever comes of this,” Erida murmured, turning away.

The door slammed shut, and Andry all but ran from the throne room, eager to tear off his clothes and scrub away the last few weeks. Anger overtook his sorrow long enough to propel him through the passages of the New Palace, his feet guiding him down familiar halls.

The gods had their chance.

Asleep, Lady Valeri Trelland did not look ill. She was tucked in comfortably, a fine silk sleeping cap pulled over her hair. She wore no cares upon her face, the skin around her mouth and eyes relaxed. She seemed younger by decades, still a beauty despite the sickness burrowing in her body. They had similar faces, Andry and his mother. Her skin was darker, a polished ebony, but they shared the same high cheekbones and full lips, and their hair, thick, black, and curly. It was an odd thing for the squire to look into a mirror and see his mother. Odder still to see what she’d been before the sickness came, reaching with wet hands for the candle burning so brightly inside her.

She rattled a breath, and he winced, feeling the raw edge of her pain in his own throat.

Sleep, Mother,he willed, counting the seconds as her chest rose and fell. He braced for a coughing attack, but it never came.

Her bedchamber was hot, the air close, with the firewood piled high in the hearth. Andry sweated in his fresh clothes but did not move from his spot on the wall, wedged between a tapestry and a narrow window.

Even with the fire, he felt the cold, the icy finger of dread running down his spine.

It must be hidden.

The whispers spoke with a voice like winter, brittle and cracking. They were a woman, a man, a child, a crone. Impossible to pin down. He shivered as they returned, rising to a howl inside his head.

It is hidden!he wanted to shout, his jaw clenched tight. The cold played along his ribs.

It must not be spoken of.

His teeth gnashed.I said nothing of it. Not to anyone. Not even the Queen,he answered. It felt like madness. It couldbemadness, born of slaughter and sorrow.

The voices had first come on the road home, with the Elder stallion beneath him and the Spindleblade lashed to his saddle. He nearly fell from the horse but pushed on, trying to outrun what was already in his head. No matter how far or how fast he rode, they never left him behind.

There was laughter and sadness in the whispers, both in equal measure.This you are bidden,they hissed, letting the words carry over him.Keep it hidden.

Andry wanted to brush the voices away but remained pressed against the wall. He would not break his silent vigil, keeping watch over his ailing mother.