“Right after your father was killed and you were carried off. She never gave up hope that you were alive. She used to come in here now and then and brush the dust off so they’d be ready. On the day of your funeral she locked herself in her room and refused to come out.” The eye she fixed on him was disapproving.
“I’m sorry I put her through that,” Adrian said. He could spend the rest of his life apologizing and it still wouldn’t be enough. There was no way to atone for this, no penance great enough to even the scales.
“Her Majesty had new stoles made for you with your father’s ravens. They’re in the drawer. Will you be needing anything else, Your Highness?”
Not if it comes with a lecture. “No, thank you.”
“Don’t forget, Her Majesty the Queen’s reception begins at six, and it’s quarter past five now. You’ll hear the bells in the cathedral temple—”
“I remember,” he said. “I’ll be there.” She probably thinks I’ll run out on that, too. He waited until he was sure Magret was gone before he fingered the nearest coat, an emerald silk. He leaned down to sniff it, hoping it might still carry a trace of his father’s scent, but, whether due to cleaning or the passage of time, it did not.
What would it have been like had he stayed? If he and Lyss had worked through their grief together instead of each on his or her own? He wouldn’t have met Jenna, and Gerard Montaigne might still be alive. He might be married now. Or he might be dead.
There was no fair way to compare what had been with what might have been. He just had to find a way forward.
Here was a coat he recognized, one that sent his stomach plummeting into his boots. It was his father’s clan mourning coat, stitched with his sister Hanalea’s gray wolves. On the back, the Waterlow ravens, and the High Wizard flame and sword down the sleeves. His father had worn it to Hana’s funeral.
Ash sank onto the bed, cradling the coat in his arms, his tears falling on the leather and wool, his fingers tracing the intricate stitching. He shivered, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. It was almost as if his father had prepared this coat for him, blazoned with the signia of those Ash had loved and lost.
Should he wear it in honor of his father? Or would it be seen as arrogant, as if he’d wandered back home and made an immediate claim on his father’s legacy, down to his serpent amulet?
He decided he didn’t care.
It had been a long time since he’d worn anything but the drab brown healer’s garb at Ardenscourt and the nondescript breeches and coats that had served him well on the road from Ardenscourt to Fellsmarch.
He was just fumbling with the tiny buttons on his shirt when someone banged on the door.
“Come,” Ash said, guessing he was far enough along in dressing to entertain company.
It was Lila Barrowhill Byrne, unfamiliar in the blue uniform of the Queen’s Guard. She ran her eyes up and down the length of him and snorted.
“Back for a day, and already tricked out like a proper princeling,” she said, flopping into a chair. Something about the scene reverberated in Ash’s memory, recalling his last day at Oden’s Ford, when Lila barged into his room and invited him to a party at Wien House.
“You should talk,” Ash said. “Looks like you’re planning to join the family business.”
She shook her head. “Nah,” she said. “I’m in disguise.”
“That’s a disguise?” Ash raised an eyebrow.
“I’m disguised as someone who could fit in here,” she said, thrusting her fingers into her collar and yanking at it until a button popped off. “That’s better,” she said. “This comes off as soon as I cross the border. By the way, you can forget Lila Byrne. I’m still Barrowhill.”
“Barrowhill? I was just getting used to Byrne.”
“As someone who has more names than a clicket-house rusher, you’ll get no sympathy from me.”
“But . . .”
“I’m a spy,” Lila said. “And a smuggler and a fixer. If I want to keep working that line, I can’t show up here at court and be Captain Amazing Byrne’s daughter. If you think this place isn’t full of spies, you’re wrong. There’s too great a chance I’ll be seen by unfriendly eyes and heard by unfriendly ears.” She gave him a measuring sort of look. “Somebody gave you up to Arden, and that somebody wasn’t me. It wasn’t widely known here at court, either—I hear that the queen didn’t even tell your little sister. So who would it’ve been?”
Ash couldn’t help thinking of Micah Bayar, his father’s default when it came to villains. “You’d probably know better than me,” he said.
“Anyway. I need to get back to Ardenscourt before everyone forgets how very helpful I can be. Out of sight, out of mind, you know.”
“You’re going back there?” Ash stared at her.
“I’m leaving within the hour.”
“I thought maybe you’d stay here permanently now that you don’t have to watch over me at Oden’s Ford.” Though keeping Lila here had its risks, Ash was suddenly eager to have someone around who didn’t remember him as a thirteen-year-old runaway. “I’m sure Captain Byrne could use your help to—”
“No!” Lila said. When Ash stared at her, she added, “I hate it here. Isn’t that enough of a reason? This is just a job to me. The family I care about is at Wolf’s Head, on the coast.”
“Wolf’s Head?”
“You wouldn’t know it,” Lila said. “You’re not supposed to. Anyway, they’re the ones who raised me. I’m traveling south by way of Spiritgate so I can visit with them.”
“Oh,” Ash said. “All right then.”
But Lila seemed compelled to make her case. “You don’t think the queendom needs eyes and ears in Arden with a new king and a civil war in the offing? Anyway, the food is better down there. I’ve never been much
