The sun was barely an hour risen. Elvado’s residential streets were empty, not only because it was early, but because the city’s mages had begun to fear leaving their homes. Even Orwin had started to find reasons for dallying indoors. It broke her heart. Her husband was no coward… but the ever-present, ever-growing threat of mage-mist had beaten him. It was beating everyone, bruising all of Dorana with blows of dread. Yesterday, as they’d travelled from the Hall to the College, Dreen Brislyn had been unsparing in her descriptions of what Dorana’s other districts endured. Also unsparing was her silent contempt, that the Council of Mages stayed safe in Elvado… for the most part not having to face the suffering visited upon everyone else.

She wished she could summon up some righteous, indignant anger. But Dreen Brislyn had good reason for her disdain. Between her and Morgan… and what she’d found at Morgan’s estate… she had passed an uncomfortable night.

The flower she’d stolen sat on the buggy seat beside her, pink and cream and blue-striped… and wrong.

Brice opened his door to her wrapped in a quilted dressing gown. “Venette.” Pained, he looked past her at the pale morning sky. “I should be surprised, I suppose. However—”

“Let me in, Brice,” she said, and pushed the door. “I don’t need long and besides, the horse loathes being tied up while it’s harnessed to the buggy. If I’m here more than ten minutes it’ll pull free and trot home.”

With a sigh Brice stood back, one hand gesturing her inside. “By all means.”

He kept her standing in his town house lobby, and did not offer her tea. “I’m to take it you’ve already spoken to Morgan? How did he receive the news?”

It would serve Brice right if she told him the truth, that Morgan had laughed, genuinely disinterested in the Council’s opinion of… well, everything. But since that might cause trouble for Morgan, she was tactful.

“He is disappointed.”

“Disappointed enough to mend his ways, do you think?”

“Alas.” She sighed. “He is still besotted with the girl. Until his infatuation dies, Brice, there is nothing to be done.”

Brice grunted, then considered her with tired eyes abruptly sharpened with suspicion. “Venette, do I need to remind you where your loyalties lie?”

That alarming flower was still in the buggy. Almost she’d brought it in with her, so Brice could examine it, so the burden of its existence might rest with someone else, but…

I was friends with Morgan’s mother years before my first smile at Brice. I’m not about to throw her son to the wolves. Not if I don’t have to. And not if I can somehow save him from himself.

“Of course you don’t, Lord Varen. And it’s insulting that you’d ask.”

Brice’s eyebrow lifted. “My apologies, Lady Martain.”