Emi chuckled and plucked a small glass vial from her leg pouch. “The king desires his melder to feel at ease here, as promised. You’re not leaving the walls, and you’ll have protection.” She gestured at herself. “Besides, he’s recently learned a thing or two about thorn blossom dye.”

My lips parted.

Emi removed the cork on the vial and handed the dye over to me. Her expression sobered. “You are not the servant girl any longer. The prince especially encouraged his father to let you live freely, as best you can within a fortress.”

“I don’t understand why,” I admitted.

“You’ll find Prince Thane knows what it is like to have a duty forced upon him. He tends to try to make the best of it.”

“But…the king fears for my safety—”

“Lyra, it is a revel in the royal tavern. Take moments you can to live beyond duty. You’ll be surrounded by Stav Guard and your shadow. No harm will befall your pretty little neck.”

Unbidden, a groan slipped through my teeth. Ashwood. My assigned watchdog. The worst part wasn’t that I detested the thought of the man following me, it was more that I didn’t.

I’d done little else since I was given the guide from Emi but study the language of the Sentry. Each gesture was inked across my thoughts, unforgettable, and it had become a strange sort of obsession to know more.

I recalled Gammal teaching me to read Jorvan and even symbols from her lands across the Night Ledges as a girl. Neither came to me as simply as Roark’s words.

I didn’t understand it, but his hand speak came clearer with every passing day.

Truth be told, it was a little frightening. Almost like a spell cast had captured my mind, I was pulled into his mystery, his violence, and the way he looked at me like he might wish to slit my throat or step a little closer whenever our paths crossed.

Naturally, the hidden pull needed to die a quick death before anyone in Stonegate caught wind. Kael would be one. Gods, he could smell it if I looked twice at a man. But Emi was another. She had a strange relationship with the Sentry, one I still didn’t know.

“Was I not clear enough?” Emi’s voice cut through my wandering thoughts. She placed her hands on her hips, her pale features flushed. “We’re to leave shortly. Get washed. I’m certain it is as frosted over as the Black Fjords in the North.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. The Black Fjords hugged uninhabitable lands that snowed even in the warm months. A place where rapists and thieves and unwanted crooks went to labor until their penance was paid on jagged mountain walls between a distant Dravenmoor border and the cold edges of Jorvandal.