“Leave her alone, Matt,” Wila said. “She was having some fun at her wedding. You can’t blame her for that.”

“I’m not blaming her for anything. I’m trying to understand.” He scratched at the back of his head. “Where is your husband, by the way?”

“He’s down talking to the team before they leave,” I said.

“Giving them instructions and words of encouragement.”

“You didn’t want to see them off yourself?” Wila asked, turning a bit to look at me.

“No.” I thought back to my conversation with Finn and shook my head. “No. Tove’s got it covered. He’s the Prince now. He can share some of the responsibility.”

“When do you think the refugees wil get here?” Wila asked.

She set the straightener down on the nearby dresser, and I could see burn marks on it from her doing the same thing many times before.

She must pretty much live here now.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe in a day or two or six. But we should have the rooms ready, just to be safe.”

“Wel, we can definitely help you with that.” Wila leaned forward, inspecting her hair to make sure it was perfect, and then she turned around. “Where are the extra blankets and cleaning supplies?”

Most of the second floor of the South Wing were servants’

quarters, along with the Queen’s chambers, which was now my room. I’m not sure exactly why the Queen resided with the servants, except that the South Wing was where the more formal business took place.

Since we had almost no live-in servants anymore, other than two maids, a chef, and a couple trackers, most of the bedrooms were empty. They hadn’t been used in ages, so they were musty and needed freshening, but they weren’t exactly dirty.

Each room had extra bedding in it, so we just needed to dust and vacuum. We raided the supply closet at the top of the stairs, and Duncan came up to meet us. He’d been with Tove sending the team off.

Tove stayed with Thomas to work on caling al the trackers in.

It was a long and arduous task, and I thought about helping them, but I felt better doing physical work. It felt more like I was accomplishing something.

Duncan helped carry supplies down to the rooms, and I decided to enlist Loki to help us. I wanted to keep him out of sight, but nobody would be checking the servants’ quarters. And if he was staying here, he might as wel be of some use.

While we cleaned the first room, I asked Loki again if he knew anything about the Vittra plans. He insisted that he didn’t know anything about it, other than that Oren wanted me al for himself. His only advice was to stay the hel out of Oren’s way when he was pissed off.