Tisala slept backward on the chair, her arms folded over the back with her chin resting upon her forearms. I didn’t want her to see me, somehow certain that what I’d done under Jade Eyes’s hands would be written upon my flesh.

Quietly I pulled on the covers until they cloaked my miserable self. If I’d had a knife at hand, I’d have slit my own throat.

The door opened and Oreg, whose light footsteps were unmistakable, came in.

“All right, Tisala,” he said. “Time for a changing of the guard. There’s a bed with your name on it on the other side of the wall.

“Ouch,” she said, and I heard the legs of the chair shift on the wooden floor. “Though mind you, anyone who falls asleep on guard-duty deserves to be stiff.”

“Go sleep,” Oreg said, and I heard from his tone that he was fond of her. “I told you I slept just across the hall, you didn’t need to stay here.”

“Yes, I did,” she said, yawning. “He watched over me under similar circumstances.”

He waited where he was until she’d shuffled out and the door shut behind her.

“All right, Ward,” he said. “Time to wake up and face the day.”

I took a deep breath and pulled the covers down. “Good morning,” I said, trying to sound normal.

Oreg sat on the foot of the bed. “How did you sleep?”

I opened my mouth to lie and tell him I was well-rested when I remembered that at least one of the nightmares I’d had was important. “The Tamerlain was here—I don’t know if I told you her part in all of this. Yesterday is a bit of a blur.”

Oreg nodded. “You told all of us that she cleared your head so you could think and throw Jakoven’s plans to the wolves. It was a near thing, though. I talked to the guardsman who was watching so he could summon your uncle’s men if they were needed. Even as it was, he said that but for your uncle’s hold on Tosten, he’d have gone for the king right there and then.”

“Well,” I said, not wanting to think how close I had come to getting my entire family beheaded for treason. “She visited me last night and told me that Aethervon had a gift of true dreaming for me—out of gratitude for cleansing the land, I think she said. I dreamt the king was looking for a boy, my father’s son out of a Hurog-bred whore. The boy’s mother is dead, but the boy would be Hurog-born from both parents.”

“Can youfind him?” Oreg asked.