To her credit, through, the bride showed no signs of resenting Kethry’s “interference,” despite the plaints of her own mother. She’d had more than enough on her hands, even with the aid of the housekeeper. Dierna had taken over nursing Lordan as soon as Kethry had pronounced him fit for company, and he’d quite fallen in love with his intended.

They’re besotted, she thought resignedly. I suppose it’s just as well.

She looked down over the Great Hall, at all the other guests, like a bed of multicolored flowers in their finery, and many of them just about as immobile. Fully half of them couldn’t stand, and all of them wore some token of mourning, but that didn’t seem to be putting any kind of a pall on the celebrations. Wendar saw to it that the wine kept flowing, and the celebrants were chattering so loudly that it was impossible to hear the minstrels at the end of the hall. All enmities seemed to have been forgotten, at least for now.

But she kept catching strange glances cast her way. It was beginning to make her want to squirm with discomfort, but she kept her seat and her dignity.

I’m a heroine. And I’m an embarrassment.

That just about summed it all up. She looked down into her wine, and felt the all-too-familiar melancholy settle over her.

She didn’t fit in. She didn’t belong. Even her own brother looked at her as if she had suddenly become a stranger.

I rescued Dierna. Which makes me a heroine. Just one little problem—I’m Lordan’s sister.

She’d already heard some of Lordan’s peers teasing him about his “older brother Kero.” It made him uncomfortable, for all that he was deeply, truly grateful, for all that he’d offered her anything she wanted, right down to half the lands. And it shamed him. He should have been the one to rescue his bride. Wasn’t that the way it went in the tales? Not his sibling.

Not his sister.

She could talk until she was blue in the face about how it had been Kethry’s sword that had done everything. None of that mattered—because she had gone out on The Ride in the first place, without the help of the sword. That’s what they were calling it now, “The Ride.” There were even rumors of a song.

Dierna did not want her in the bower. Not that Kero wanted to be in the bower. She most assuredly did not fit in there.

But she keeps looking at me as if she thinks I‘m—what was it that Tarma said, the other day? She’chorne. Like I’m going to suddenly start courting her. like I make her skin crawl.

Kero gulped down half the wine in her goblet, and a page immediately reached over her shoulder and poured her more. The rich fruity scent rose to her nostrils, and tempted her not at all.

I wish I dared get drunk.

The hired guards didn’t want her in the barracks. It was not that it was “unwomanly” for her to be there by their standards. They had enough women with them already. It was that she didn’t fit there because of her status. She was noble, and she was family, and she didn’t belong with the hirelings.