“He is no duke,” she all but snarled. “He is a master of coin, and his greed knows no bounds. It took me nearly eighty years to locate him after the curse. That was the extent of his desire to never be found.”

“How were you able to find him, lady?”

“My sons,” she replied, glancing at me. “The duke, who was close friends with my late husband, treated my boys as his own when they were born. When his wife died and he remained childless, he began to lavish great gifts upon us. Particularly Phelan, who needed intensive schooling to amount to anything.”

I held my tongue, although I burned to give a retort. I thought of Phelan’s self-deprecation on the first new moon we had fought together. How he believed himself unworthy of his title and magic, even though he had striven twice as hard as me to earn the illumination.

“Three years ago,” she continued, oblivious to my ire, “the duke approached me about naming Phelan as his heir, the future Duke of Bardyllis. And I do not know why, but it roused my suspicions. It took me another two years to fully understand that this was not Lord Deryn but my old companion from the mountain, and that he must also know where Brin of Stonefall was hiding herself, for as the spymistress of Seren she once wielded the ancient and hazardous magic of guises.”

Hold your act. I heard Phelan’s voice in my memory. Hold your act. . . .

But how close the countess was to uncovering me. I felt as if I walked on glass.

“So you desire to kill the duke for vengeance, because he evaded and deceived you for so long?” I asked.

“I desire to kill him because he is going to oppose the curse breaking,” she said. “He does not want to see the Seren court reinstated. He does not want to see the new moon nightmares come to an end. It is too lucrative for him, this business of taxing dreams.”

Her words sank into me slowly, like a long knife, and for a moment I wavered, overcome with doubt. The duke said he would support me as well as Phelan. And yet the countess believed he would oppose anyone claiming the sovereignty.

I felt her gaze, an icy assessment of my demeanor, and I rallied, focusing on her.

“So you want to bribe Mazarine with a chicken?”

The countess smiled, as if I were some adorable, dense creature. “No, child. The hen is poisoned. And once Mazarine falls, her magic crumbles. The master of coin will lose his guise as duke, and then he will have nothing. No title, no prowess, no fortune. He will have no choice but to support my plans to end this curse.”

“Oh,” I said. “A brilliant move, Countess.”