It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong. When I arrive at the clock tower gate, I’m greeted by two soldiers, armed with swords, their expressions closed and unfriendly. A third perches on top of the tower, arrow nocked and pointed at me. It’s too late to run, and the sight of them sends my stomach plunging, my fingers trembling on the reins.

“Dismount and state your business,” one of the soldiers says.

Shaking, I do, keeping one hand on the pommel of the saddle, my legs braced to throw myself up and into it if they try to attack me.

“You’re a girl,” one of the swordsmen says in surprise. “Well, well. Nice breeches. Let’s see your papers, then.” I peer at him, trying to think of a reason—any reason—why I don’t have them. “You deaf? I said papers. Show us your papers.”

“I … don’t have any. I was robbed, on the way here. They were in my bag—my other bag. I lost my cloak, too.” I try to keep my tone pleasant, and reasonable, but I’m struggling, my chest beginning to tighten. I should run.

“Where are you from?” the man asks.

“Here, originally. I was born in Tremayne. But I don’t live here anymore. Some of my family do, and it’s them I’ve come to see.”

He sheathes his sword and tucks his thumbs in his belt loops, and I let out a soft sigh, some of my tension releasing. “Where have you come from, then?”

“Tressalyn,” I lie. “I’m here to pass on some news to my family. Urgent news.”

“Alone? Just you, riding across the country on a very nice horse?” He’s enjoying this, this tiny bit of power that he has. I can hear it in his voice, and see it on his face. He looks over my baggy breeches, my rough-cut hair, my bandaged hand. “Where did you say you’d come from again?”

“Let her in, Tuck. She ain’t the Sleeping Prince, and she don’t sound Lormerian. It’s almost time to knock off,” the other guard on the gate says. The man above is now picking his nails with the tip of his arrow, his bow slung over his shoulder, ignoring us.

“What did you say your name was?” the bully, Tuck, asks.

“Er … ika. Erika Dunn.” There are plenty of Dunns in Tremayne, plenty everywhere, it’s a common enough name.

“Never heard of an Erika Dunn.” Tuck grins.

“I have,” the arrow man says from above us suddenly. “I thought I recognized you. Ain’t you Tarvey Dunn’s niece?”

“Yes,” I say, trying to hide my surprise. Tarvey is one of the butchers my father used to sell our cattle to, famed for both his excellent meat and for having one leg. And luckily for me, his family is notoriously prolific. “One of many,” I add, throwing a smile at the archer.

Tuck scowls. “Be that as it may, rules are rules. No one gets in or out without papers. And no one gets in or out after sundown. Oops.” He glances up at the darkening sky and grins. “Maybe I’ll be feeling more generous tomorrow.”

“Tarvey’ll be furious if he knows you turned her away. He’s probably expecting her.” The archer scratches his leg with the arrow, before putting it away.

“He is, yes,” I pipe up.

Tuck glares at him, then at me. “Be that as it may …”

“Isn’t it Tarvey who supplies our meat?” the archer says with perfect innocence.

Tuck throws the archer another filthy look, but he’s examining his nails again. With a long sigh and a nod of the head, he finally stands aside, and I walk the horse through the clock tower gate, smiling meekly, my heart still beating violently. I glance up at the archer, who gives me a sly wink and in that moment I could kiss him.

We’ve walked a few yards when behind me I hear the rattling of chains. I turn in time to see the iron gate slam into place.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I told you. No one in or out after sundown.”

“But I have to leave tonight! I’m here to get some things and pass on my news; I’ll be an hour at most. I can’t stay.”

Tuck’s grin is smug. “I’m afraid you’ll have to. You wanted in, and you got it. I’m sure your uncle can put you up. Want me to come with you to make sure?”

I shake my head and quickly lead the horse away, resisting the urge to turn around and make sure he’s not following me as we head toward the town square.

There are more soldiers loitering outside the tavern, one leaning against the Main Well talking to a woman I don’t recognize. There are sandbags piled in one corner of the square, and large barrels on a cart being pulled by a grumpy-looking mule. But that’s the only sign of the war; the chaos across other parts of the country is almost completely absent inside the town walls. Two young boys chase each other in circles outside the bakery; I can see their mother in conversation with the baker himself, others are gossiping and laughing, shop bells ringing, doors closing. The air smells of good, hearty food, meat and vegetables and bread and pastry. It smells of home; Lief and I used to run around in front of the bakery like those boys; Lirys and I used to wait by the well for Kirin. Everything here is coated in memories of what I’ve lost: my friends, my parents, my brother. My old life.

Across the square, lights flicker in the upstairs window of the apothecary I used to work at and I stop and stare. It hasn’t changed. I feel I could walk up the steps, open the door, pull my apron from the hook, and start working.

The boys run past me, screaming joyfully and shaking me from my reverie, and I walk on, keeping my head down. I move through the village square like a ghost, passing the butcher’s where Tarvey is likely working, the cobbler my mother used. I stop at the grocer’s and peer inside, but when I see there are still customers—people I used to know, in passing—I can’t bring myself to go in. I’ll get a cloak first and come back. Then I’ll find a way out.

I leave the main square and walk down the merchants’ lane toward the tailor’s. Each window that I pass has candles glowing inside, and families moving, and I’m filled with longing for home— my home. My old life is everywhere. I walk past the deserted blacksmith’s where Kirin used to work and past the salt merchant’s house. I used to know his daughter a little, and I look up, halting when I see a circle with a line through it carved into the door. It’s familiar, and I frown.

“Errin?”

I whirl around, pulling at my belt for my knife, my hand stilling when I see who said my name.

Carys Dapplewood, Lirys’s mother and a second mother to me, stands half in shadow, a basket clutched in her hands. “Is it really you?”

My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

“I saw you in the square,” she says, stepping forward. “I thought I was going mad. But I had to know … What are you doing, child?”

“I … I … I need a cloak and some food. Then I have to go.”

“What do you mean, you have to go? Where’s Lief? Where’s Trina? How long have you been back? Where are you staying?”

My heart starts to speed up, my throat closes in, and that familiar, clammy feeling starts to crawl across my shoulders. I want to reply. I want to run. I’m not ready for this. I stare at her and shake my head.

Where’s Lief?

Without saying another word Carys drops her basket to the ground and takes my arm in one hand, the reins in the other. She leads us away quickly, saying nothing, and all the while the weight in my chest grows and grows. We cross the bridge and then I can see it, the Dapplewoods’ dairy, butter-yellow bricks and as familiar to me as my farm. Carys lets go of the reins and leads me to the front door, and I panic, trying to pull my arm away. Her grip is surprisingly strong for a woman her age, and I’m too busy trying to breathe to really struggle.

She opens the front door and calls for Lirys. I’m bathed in light and warmth, the smell of roasting meat, and it makes me want to weep. “I’ll take the horse to the barn,” she says, patting my arm and leaving me.

The sound of footsteps makes my stomach lurch, and I brace myself for the blow of seeing my best friend for the first time since my father’s funeral.

She stands before me, blond ringlets escaping from under a cap, her creamy skin flushed from the heat. She tilts her head to the side and the gesture reminds me of Silas. We stare at each other and I realize I’m poised to run.

“Errin?” she says finally, looking me over. I swallow, my eyes prickling under her scrutiny. “Is it really you? You look—” She pauses. “Well, I like your breeches,” she says. “Are they Lief’s? You look like him, with your hair like that. I thought you were him.” She peers over my shoulder expectantly, then back to me. “Is he with you? Are you back? Errin? Errin, are you well?”

Where’s Lief?

I stare at her, blood pounding in my ears, my too-fast heart drumming a tattoo.

Lief.

At no point during my plans—not when I was blackmailing Silas, not when I hoped to evacuate me and Mama to the Conclave, and not since I’ve been on the road—have I included Lief in our future.

At no point when I’ve thought realistically about what will happen next has he been part of it. I haven’t included him in a long time. I kept telling myself he’d come home one day.

I knew it all along. I just didn’t want to.

And now that I’m here, in Tremayne—in our home—I can’t ignore it.

He’s not a prisoner somewhere in Lormere; he’s not wounded. He’s not fighting his way back to us.

Pain, ironclad and locked away, nestled in my heart like a dead thing, radiates out without warning. He’s dead. My brother is dead. He’s not coming home. It’s sharp and it’s a spike that drives me to my knees, pinning me to the cold, wooden floor, and I can’t breathe in, it’s too big, it’s blocking my lungs.

Then Lirys’s arms are around me and she smells like flour and butter and goodness and I howl, my head thrown back against her shoulder like an animal. Through my raging I hear other footsteps, approaching then retreating, but I cling to my friend and she clings back; each time my fingers tighten hers do, too, until we’re gripping each other hard enough to make bruises.

Eventually the tears stop and I sag in her arms, spent.

For the first time in four moons I can breathe.

“You need a bath and some food,” she says in her lovely lilting voice. “And then bed.”

“I can’t,” I say, harsh as a crow. “I have to go.”

“Errin Vastel, you can’t leave. We have a curfew and the gates are locked. And even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t let you. You’re home.”

And with that the tears come again, but these tears are fat and warm and I can breathe through them.

*  *  *

She sits on a stool beside the bath, watching me with slightly narrowed eyes. In the room next door I can hear the faint murmur of her mother and father eating their supper. Lirys has kept them away from me since my collapse, guiding me through to the warmth of her kitchen, where she dragged the tin bath before the fire and filled it with jug after jug of steaming water. She helped me undress and get into it, tutting softly at the bruises covering me, at my too-thin frame, and then she washed my hair. Finally she unwrapped my bandaged hand, re-dressing it with real gauze, rubbing an ointment into it that soothed it instantly.

Though it must be killing her, she waits until I’m ready to speak. She doesn’t ask where we’ve been, or why I’d not written. She accepts it all, patiently and kindly, prattling lightly, deliberately, about Kirin, and the slow, steady dance they’d been performing all autumn, until he finally kissed her and asked her to be his wife. She talks about him being a soldier, and what a shock it was, but how she thinks it will be all right in the end.

She doesn’t believe war will come.

I think of the assault in the woods, of the arrow in Kirin’s leg. Of the golems in Almwyk, and the camp at Tyrwhitt. Of the mercenaries who hunted me in the night and the soldier who forced me to the ground, then slit another man’s throat open. I think of Lief, never returning from Lormere. War has come. It doesn’t matter whether the Sleeping Prince invades Tregellan or not, it’s already here. The worst part is knowing that if I were in her shoes, here in Tremayne, in the place I’d always lived, I’d doubt it, too. I would have continued to think Tregellan was a fair, just, and safe paradise.

The innocence of her words, the normalcy of them—no curses, no beasts, no alchemy, no mystery—tighten something inside me, and I decide I don’t want her to know anything about my life in Almwyk, either, don’t want her to know the worst of what I’ve done—making poisons, punching people, and lighting fires. Stealing. Assaulting her fiancé. I don’t want her to see me that way. And I don’t want to scare her; I want her to stay innocent.

But I have to say something, can feel her waiting for me to unburden myself.

I don’t mention the Elixir or Silas at all. I leave out Unwin’s advances, and the men in the woods. I don’t tell her about the golems, or what happened to me on the way here. I keep it simple, telling her about Mama’s breakdown—leaving out the parts about the beast—and how I was trying to treat her. I’m doing well, until I realize I have to tell her that Mama was taken away, and that I hadn’t been there to protect her. And that now I’m scrambling to get her back.

“It’s not your fault,” she says immediately, passing me a new block of soap and I smell it greedily.

“Of course it is. I shouldn’t have left her alone. Gods, Lir, imagine how horrible it must have been. To have soldiers burst in and take her away. She wouldn’t have known what was going on. I did that to her, because I …”

“Because you what?”

I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Errin, don’t say that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your apologies,” she snaps, and I’m taken aback. “I wish you could have seen yourself when you arrived. You looked like a corpse. Your hair, the bruises. You look like you haven’t eaten a decent meal since you left. How long have you been living like that? Who was taking care of you?”

“I was.”

“No, Errin. You weren’t.” Her voice is gentle, but firm, and again she reminds me of Silas, of the pity in his eyes when he first saw the hut. “I’m not stupid, I know you’re keeping things from me. How did you earn the money to rent a cottage? What did you eat? What did you live on?”

“I—” I look at her, helpless.

“I can’t make you tell me. But I wish you’d written to me—to any of us,” she says, shaking her head. “You should have been here. We’re your people. We would have cared for you.” Her words spark a memory that makes me ache. When Master Pendie came to offer his condolences, I didn’t open the door, didn’t want to tell him I was leaving. Mama was upstairs in her room; Lief was off making some inventory of the farm. I stood behind black drapes and watched through a chink as he knocked at the door, then knocked again. Finally, with a sad glance, he left a basket on the doorstep and went away, his footsteps dragging as though he were tied to the farmhouse with invisible ropes and each step threatened to pull him back to it. When I opened the basket I found vials of potions, for grief and sadness and sleep. And a cake. A lopsided, ugly cake, burned on the bottom and raw inside.

He’d made us a cake. It was awful but I ate every bite. We left the following day for Almwyk and I never thanked him for it.

“I was ashamed,” I say finally, quietly, speaking to the rapidly cooling bathwater. “I still am.”

“Why? You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”

I snort. “The debts. Having to sell everything. Having to leave.”

“It wasn’t your fault. What can I do to convince you?”

“Wasn’t it? If I’d put the tools away, Papa might not have fallen on them. Which means he’d still be here, and so would Lief, and Mama. Instead Lief and Papa are dead and Mama is locked away in some gods-forsaken place in Tressalyn, and she—”

Lirys leans forward and flicks water into my face, surprising me into looking up. “Enough,” she says in a voice coated in steel. “You’re not responsible for your father’s death. And you’re not responsible for what Lief did, or what happened to him. You know what he was like—gods know I loved him like my own brother—but he was reckless. You couldn’t have stopped him, no one could. And you’re certainly not responsible for your mother. None of this is your fault. Stop punishing yourself.”

“Lirys,” I say.

“Errin,” she says back at me in the same pleading tone. “You need to eat. And sleep. I’ve left one of my nightgowns on my bed. If you can bear to wear a dress now.” She smiles.

“I can’t. I have to go. I have to find someone. If I can find her, she’s the key to getting Mama back.”

“And I’m sure you will find her. But in the meantime, stay here, rest. We’ll talk to Mama and Papa in the morning and decide what to do. It might take a little while, but I know everyone will want to help.”

I shake my head. “I don’t have a little while. I have to get her back as soon as I can. You can’t help with this.”

I wish I could explain about the beast, and why time is short.

Lirys, trusting, unquestioning Lirys, sighs. “Well, you still can’t leave until the morning. The gates are locked, all of them. And manned. Like it or not, your quest will have to wait. So you may as well get dressed and eat something.” She ushers me out of the bath and into a thick robe, before herding me up the stairs and into her small, clean room. “I’ll bring some supper up to you,” she says, closing the door and leaving me alone.

I shed the robe and pull the soft linen gown over my head, sighing at the feel of such soft, clean material next to my soft, clean skin. I sit on the bed, trying to calculate where Silas might be right now. If he’s still on foot, he’ll be a good thirty miles away, even if he walked through the night. But if he has a horse … I’ll rest for a few hours, I decide. And I’ll be at the gates at dawn. We’ll ride like the wind to Scarron. I can’t afford to let him beat me.

*  *  *

The man is walking through darkened streets, rain and wind lashing down, his cloak whipping behind him, his hood low over his face. He’s calling my name, over and over, howling it into the wind.

I don’t say anything, watching him, torn again between running to him and running from him.

Then he turns, his mouth falling open when he sees me. He stands there, immobile, while everything rages around him. Slowly he raises a hand and beckons, one gloved finger calling me to him. I watch, still undecided whether to stay or go, and he tilts his head to the side.

“Errin?” he says softly. “Please.”

Without consciously choosing to I begin to walk toward him. His hands reach for me and he smiles. Lightning blazes above us and then I’m ten paces from him, five, then just two. I lift my own hand to take his—

Nothing. They won’t meet. There’s something between us, stopping us. We push and prod at the invisible barrier, moving up and down it, trying to find a break.

“My brother is dead,” I say. “You were right.” I drop my head, my fingers sliding down the obstacle between us.

“Where are you?” he says. “Why can’t I get to you?”

“Where are you?” I ask.

“Where I’ve always been.”

“I’m in Tremayne,” I say, and immediately regret it. Now he’ll know I’m nearly there.

The pale blur of his face turns toward the dark sky. “Tremayne,” he whispers, the wind stealing the word away the moment it’s left his lips. He looks back at me. “Why?”

I turn away from the barrier between us, ignoring him as he calls after me, his voice becoming lost to the storm.

*  *  *

I wake to the sound of soft snores from the floor beside the bed. I roll onto my back and stretch out, sighing at the feeling of the bed beneath me. It’s the first time since we left the farm that I’ve slept in an actual bed and it’s so soft, so welcoming. It’s like being held and I revel in it, wriggling into the center and making a hollow with my body.

Around an hour later I’m still wide-awake, staring upward, annoyed by Lirys’s snoring and her ability to remain asleep. The bed—such a luxury after the pallets and floors I’ve been sleeping on—is too soft. I’ve tried lying in every possible position but I feel unsupported by the feathers, feel as though I’m sinking into them. I know then that I’m finished sleeping for tonight, and push back the covers, sliding my feet to the cold wooden floor. Using the bed as a guide, my fingers stretched out before me, I walk to the window and crack the shutters to peer out. Dark. Still. No sign of dawn.

Closing the shutters I creep back across the room and pull Lirys’s robe from the back of the door, before opening it and slipping out. The cottage is silent as I pad down the stairs and into the kitchen, the slate tiles chilly beneath me. I light a taper from the stove, touching the flaming tip to the candles atop the mantelpiece and then crossing to the pantry. My stomach rumbles, horribly loud in the silence of the night; I slept through dinner.

Hoping the Dapplewoods won’t mind, I help myself to cold chicken, bread, and butter, and pour myself a large tumbler of milk, drinking it in three gulps before pouring another. I take my meal to the table and sit in the seat I’ve sat in my whole life in this house, feet curled under me to keep them warm.

I am tearing chicken from the bone when I hear someone behind me.

Carys Dapplewood walks past, opening the larder and fetching herself a tumbler of milk, before sitting opposite me. I chew the meat and swallow, waiting.

“Lirys says your brother is dead,” she says after a while. “I’m so sorry, Errin. He was a special, silly, funny boy. I was very fond of him. We all were.”

I shake my head, pushing down the wave of grief. She knew Lief. Everyone here knew Lief. I can’t breathe for being reminded of him.

“Your brother, gods keep him, was proud. You are, too. I pray you’re more careful than he was.” Despite the harshness of her words they’re not said unkindly. “I hear tell you plan to leave again, to get your mother. Lirys said she’s been put away, because of her mind.”

“She has. And I do.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Tressalyn. I’m riding there.”

“Via Tremayne? Funny route to take.” Carys’s look is shrewd.

“I have to do something first.”

“So Lirys said. She also said she couldn’t get it out of you. That you’d become secretive.”

“It’s not a secret,” I lie. “I have to go somewhere before I can get Mama, that’s all.”

“Sounds like a fool’s errand to me. You’re lucky you made it this far without being hurt. I know you’re no fair lady but it’s still a great risk.” I remember the feeling of fingers gripping my hair, how powerless I was in that moment. It makes me shiver. I hadn’t told Lirys about it, and the look on Carys Dapplewood’s face makes me glad.

“Fortune favors the bold.” I smile weakly.

“So does death,” she counters immediately. “The craven tend to live much longer than the heroic. You should stay here, go through the proper channels.”

“I don’t have time.”

“Lirys said you’d say that.” She sips her milk. “What will you do, once you’ve got Trina? Where will you go?”

“I have a plan.”

“So did your brother,” she says, silencing me. “I won’t try to talk you out of it. I don’t believe anyone ever talked a Vastel out of doing something stupid. But I will say this: You have a home here. No matter what trouble you’re in, or how bad things are. We are your family, this is your home.”

I nod, a lump in my throat, and she reaches over and pats my hand.

“The door will be open to you, Errin. It always has been. And we’ll always be here. Now”—she brushes the sentimentality away with a shake of her hands—“they won’t open the gates before dawn, so you’re stuck here. But if you don’t mind the company of an old woman, I’ll stay with you.”

“You’re not old,” I say automatically, but as I study her in the candlelight I see that she is. Lirys is a year older than me and Kirin; she’s the same age as Lief. Carys and Idrys tried for twenty years to have a baby, so the story goes, but they weren’t blessed. When it finally happened, Carys didn’t believe it. Though her courses had stopped, she thought it was her natural time and that her thickening waist was another symptom. It wasn’t until her waters broke that she realized she was having a baby at long last.

Now Carys is in her sixty-first harvest and her hair is streaked with grays and whites. The candlelight, so flattering to the young, draws out the shadows under her eyes and cheeks, plays in the lines that bracket her mouth and span out from the corners of her eyes. In my mind, she looks as she did when we were children—a little gray, a little careworn, but fierce, quick of tongue and temper, but the kindest woman you’d ever meet. I lift my tumbler and drink, and she does the same, yet I notice when she puts it down her hands remain slightly curled in on themselves.

*  *  *

When it’s time to leave I take more milk, and chicken, bread, and cheese, and apples for my horse, as well as half a plum pie. We debated whether to wake Lirys so I could say good-bye, but I fretted about the time, and Carys didn’t push me.

As well as the food, she somehow got hold of new clothes for me. I’m now dressed in a neat blue tunic and better-fitting black breeches. I don’t know whose they are and I don’t care; they’re not Unwin’s, and I tell Carys to burn the old ones. In the hour before dawn, Carys neatened the edges of my hair and she has also lent me her old winter cloak, a rich dark green and lined with rabbit fur. With clean hair and clothes and freshly forged papers claiming I’m Erika Dunn, I feel hopeful as I swing up onto my horse, who also looks refreshed.

“We’ll see you soon, Errin,” Carys calls softly from the doorway. “Promise me that.”

“I promise,” I say, turning the horse out of the yard and along the lane.

I let my eyes roam over sleeping Tremayne as I pass through. It looks so idyllic, safe and untouched. And I’m torn because I want very much to come back here and carry on with my life. But I don’t know how I could, because of Mama. More than that, I don’t know if I could after everything I’ve seen beyond the city walls.

That’s the trouble with knowing things: You can’t un-know them. Once you let yourself look at them, or say them aloud, they become real. I look ahead to the gates, noticing the guards are different this morning. They give my papers a cursory glance before allowing me to pass and I glance back one last time at Tremayne, my heart torn as we exit the town.

I urge my horse to pick up the pace a little and then we ride, toward Scarron and the sea. I’ll find the girl, and get my mother back. Then I’ll make a decision.