“It took me months to wear him down. To break his stubbornness. In the end, he confessed and gave me his full allegiance in order to preserve his life. And the story he had once given about my sister’s disappearance? It had been a lie.

“This is what truly happened:

“On the day he left Cora on the moss, he walked away from her, as he had been ordered to do. But where she had been silent before, her cries now echoed through the forest, and they drew him back to her. He stood a safe distance away, so as not to interfere with the folk, and watched as the day began to fade into evening. It was bitterly cold, and the spirits refused to come and claim her. Soon, her cries drew a wolf, and the keeper fought off the beast and was wounded. His arm bled, and he chose to pick up my sister and deliver her elsewhere. He had lost a good deal of blood and become disoriented, but he knew the river would lead him home.

“He stepped into the currents and followed the river, unaware that he was walking in the opposite direction of his home. He claims that he didn’t realize the moment he crossed, owing to his distress, but soon the trees fell away, and he stood in an unfamiliar valley. He knew he was no longer in the west, but the East Guard had taken no note of his presence. A terrible inkling came to the keeper.

“Which Tamerlaine he first gave my sister up to, I don’t know, for he would never say their name. But I believe they live near the clan line, and that is how the east committed the worst of crimes: they took a daughter of the west as their own.

“I’ve always wondered what the Tamerlaines who accepted her were thinking. Perhaps they didn’t want my sister to grow up so close to the clan line, where the west and her true clan might call to her blood one day. Perhaps at first the Tamerlaines didn’t fully know who my sister was—a child of their greatest enemy. The offspring of the western laird. The keeper wouldn’t tell me, but when I asked him where Cora now lived in the east, he only smiled and said, ‘The Breccan druid once said she was destined for greatness in the west, but he must have misread the stars.’

“I doubted him at first. I believed the keeper’s claims were those of a man gone mad after a life of solitude in the woods. But I also was determined to find my sister. And what better way than to walk the east, listening to the gossip that rides your winds?