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Something of an achievement, given the more excruciating royal dinners she’d sat through, where courtiers insulted each other in complicated ways and foreigners broke the protocols while everyone looked on in horror. Not to mention the times her own curse had been the cause of the awkwardness.

And yet she realised now why she’d been flustered by the idea of dinner with her Malediction.

The awkwardness here was of a type she was wholly unfamiliar with and had no script for, being the specific awkwardness that arises from two strangers eating alone together in a formal setting.

It meant there was no room to hide, no option to view the situation as a distant observer, no way to withdraw while the conversation continued in her absence.

The expectation of making polite conversation pressed down upon them, magnifying every rustle of fabric and clink of dinnerware.

Gisele had received all the usual royal training on how to make conversation, even if she didn’t get much chance to practice.

She knew what was appropriate to say to foreigners and petitioners, to courtiers and servants.

But Malediction occupied none of these categories.

There had been no chapter titled, ‘Conversations With Your Enemy Whom You Are Magically Connected To And Temporarily Allied With, And Who Also Has Distracting Cat Ears’.

Maybe it fell under ‘Conversations With Difficult People’.

I suppose we could always talk about the weather .

There were no servers, but someone had set the table and cooked the food set in the centre of the table. Had the house done all this?

“How is your arm?” she asked and then was annoyed at herself for asking.

“Wretched,” he said, though it didn’t show in his movement as he picked up one of the bowls on the table. “Peas?”

There was an air of stilted formality to his manner, magnified by his dress.

He’d changed for dinner and also carefully augmented his appearance with cosmetics.

His eyes were darkly outlined, and eyeshadow glittered every time he blinked.

Such enhancements had fallen out of fashion among men in Isshia, and she could only be glad for that; the effect was dangerously mesmerising.

Had he dressed in such a way in an attempt to intimidate her?

She was glad she’d had Skymallow’s wardrobe to draw on; it would have been hard not to feel the contrast between the two of them if she’d had to wear her wrinkled day dress.

One thing was the same as the formal dinners she’d attended: her being seated at the foot of the dining table, away from anyone important, with space either side of her so that she didn’t make her closest dinner partners uncomfortable.

She measured the distance between them and made a decision, picking up her plate and cutlery. Carrying them down the table, she seated herself next to him.

He raised an eyebrow.

She refused to be intimidated. “It seems foolish to be so formal when there’s no one else here, and I’d rather not have to shout to be heard.”

“So… peas, then?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

He carefully served her some.

She’d underestimated the new awkwardness that would arise from sitting this close to him, the increased twang of the strange connection between them. Desperate to cut the tension of it, she blurted, “I don’t think it ever occurred to me that evil sorcerers would eat peas.”

“Alas, I cannot subsist wholly on fire and brimstone,” he said drily as he carved up the chicken. She managed to serve herself potatoes. He offered her wine, which she accepted.

“It’s very good,” she said.

“I am fond of this vintage.”

They stared at each other helplessly, caught in polite social impasse, both rusty with disuse. A bubble of her earlier hysteria welled up, and she fell back on the old faithful. “It’s much hotter in Fairyland than I was expecting.”

He caught at the offered topic with obvious relief. “This is only one small part of Faerie. There are lands in forever-winter.”

“Is it forever-summer here, then?”

He shook his head. “No, we get the full range of seasons. In winter, the pools ice over and the snow comes right down to the meadow.” His fingers moved restlessly on the stem of his glass. “How did you find your way here, princess?”

No doubt he was wishing he’d found a way to prevent her from doing so. “A tracking spell. The wild mage said it was actually quite straightforward, since the uncollected debt connected us anyway.” Another thought occurred. “Are you worried your enemy might be able to find you the same way?”

“Not by that method; there is no magical debt between us for him to follow.” He was frowning now. “I meant, the woods are not safe. This is a wild part of Faerie, largely unclaimed. How did you enter Faerie?”

“I went to a hawthorn tree on Summervane and used a ritual spell I’d found. That got me to Faerie. Then I walked through the wood for two days, following the tracking charm.”

He had frozen mid-motion, his mouth slack. “You… walked through the wood for two days? By yourself?”

The disbelief in his voice made her bristle. “I wore as many charms against fae as I could find notes on. I wasn’t sure which ones would work. But I think the curse might have done just as much to keep things away.”

He put his glass down and stared at her. “You are very, very lucky,” he said finally. “In the normal way of things, one does not simply walk into Faerie, nor pass through the wild lands without trouble at night. Even I would not try it, as I am now.”

She didn’t feel lucky. But thinking of her journey made her recall its purpose, and it wasn’t meandering dinner conversations with her host. She pulled out the wooden comb from her pocket and pushed it across the table.

“I remembered that this came from the same walnut tree as my desk. Is there some way it could tell us where your name went?”

He reached out to take it, and their fingers brushed. A pulse of tangled emotions rushed through her, and she pulled back sharply.

“Ah. My apologies,” he said.

“Is it—? What is it? Are we feeling some degree of each other’s emotions?”

Something shifted between them, some of the intensity fading. He fussed with his cufflink, not meeting her eyes. “It appears to be a psychic connection exacerbated by proximity. I can shield against it.”

She swallowed. “Right.” A psychic connection. Wonderful.

He picked up the comb, thumb brushing thoughtfully over the pattern carved into the handle. The wood glittered as he moved it back and forth, examining it.

“You don’t seem terribly enthused by this discovery,” she couldn’t help observing.

He put the comb down. “I did say I’d looked for my name before. Of course I thoroughly checked the tree this wood came from. As then, I can’t sense anything still in here.”

“Could it tell us where it went? Like a tracking spell?”

He gave her a sardonic look. “That isn’t how tracking spells work.”

“You promised you’d help me.”

He sighed. “I’m not trying to be unhelpful, but did you truly think it didn’t occur to me to check rather thoroughly the possibilities stemming from the last place I saw my name ?”

She pointedly raised her eyebrows. “Forgive me for not putting you down as a person who checks things thoroughly.”

He bit back a retort, taking a snappish sip of his wine instead. “I suppose I deserve that. But my point stands: I investigated the tree itself as far as I could.”

It was a blow; she’d put more hope than she’d realised into the wooden comb.

“It was a good idea,” he offered.

She took a sip of her own wine. It was a good vintage. “Can we assign you a new name and never mind about the old one?”

He was already shaking his head. “True names are not so simple.”

“Is a true name different from the one you’re given?”

“They can be different,” he said. “But usually they are not. Usually one’s sense of self crystallises around that which we are named, so that it forms the very core of our identity, but sometimes the name around which an identity is built is not the one that was assigned by our Namers.”

“Can a true name change?”

Malediction grimaced. “In theory, such a thing is possible, but a change at the core of who a person is—that is akin to becoming an entirely new person.”

Still, he hadn’t said it was impossible. “So you’re saying that if someone began deliberately cultivating, oh, better judgement, let’s say, they might be able to change their name?”

She’d expected him to glare at her, but instead his ears drooped, the light in his eyes dimming.

“No. Do you think I wouldn’t have tried—” He took a steadying breath.

“True names are not like that. You cannot consciously set out to change one. If you sincerely believed your true name was wrong for you, then it would already be wrong and, thus, not your true name by definition. But the most likely result of deciding to change your personality into a more insipid shape would simply be that your true name remains as it always was, holding within it the capacity for such shifts already. Which is why true names do not usually change.”

She sighed. “I suppose it makes sense that it wouldn’t be that easy. You’ll have to give up your dreams of Tristan Storm.”

This time he did glare at her, though unwilling amusement tugged at his mouth. “I believe I’ll manage to console myself.”

They lapsed into silence for a while as she mentally marshalled her thoughts. She wished she’d brought her notebook. “Are we looking for an actual object, then? Something that will whisper your name when touched? What did your name look like when you put it into the tree?”

“It was a golden orb made of magic and memory, sunk into the tree. I don’t know if that’s still the case.

It was never a wholly physical object to begin with; the storm that damaged the tree could well have released the magic of it and carried it away into the world, intangible.

There was no sign of it in the palace or even in the city when I searched. ”

“Could it have been destroyed by the storm?”

He winced. “No. I would know if it had been.”

“Could your enemy have taken it?”

His flinch this time was barely perceptible, but he pressed his hands flat against the tablecloth. “No,” he said after wrestling himself back under control. “I would also know if that had happened.”

“So you’re saying that the most likely option is that your name is currently floating about on the winds back in Isshia?” Her heart was sinking.

He picked up his wineglass defensively. “I wasn’t using the word ‘lost’ lightly.”

He didn’t believe it was possible to find his name, she realised with a disquieted jolt.

Was he trying to persuade her to give up of her own accord?

It wouldn’t be breaking his promise if she decided to go back to Isshia and…

what? Gold, twisting as it spilled over the throne.

Her resolve hardened. She couldn’t return to Isshia as she was. The only way was forward.

“Well, it’s only day one,” she said philosophically.

There was an expression she couldn’t quite read in his eyes. “My name has been lost a lot longer than one day.”

“Those days don’t count; you didn’t have me working on the problem.”

He lifted his glass in a silent toast. “I wish you luck.”