“I used to watch the world spin from my third-story windows in Hereswith,” Mazarine began. “Time does not feel the same to me as it does to you; minutes are long and empty, and seasons feel endless. Yet I was patient. I was waiting. Waiting for someone to come along to set things in motion. The moment I saw that red hair of yours—you were eight, skipping along the street beside your father—I knew that you would be that change. Ambrose would never want it, of course. I could smell his fear every new moon; he wanted you to lead a normal, safe life despite the bruise our curse had left on your soul. But fathers often underestimate their daughters, don’t they?”

Her words roused emotion in me. How ironic, I thought, if I crack and crumble right here and now, at her feet. The one who had disguised me.

She must have sensed it. She took hold of my chin, her fingers frigid against the flush of my cheeks. Her long nails bit into my skin, reminding me to be careful. To bury my feelings. “Take care tonight, Clementine. The end draws nigh and many of us are not as we seem.”

“Do you know who struck me last night?”

“I was not watching the hall,” she replied, releasing me. “But the smith is wholly devoted to the heiress, in case you did not know.”

And she picked up the countess’s platter of hen and tossed it out the open window.

I walked the fortress corridors after my meeting with Mazarine, finding my way into the Duke of Seren’s abandoned chambers. The suite that Anna in the dream had guided me to.

It was a different experience to see this chamber in the daylight. The walls were wainscoted with painted oak panels. A massive tapestry dressed one wall, and the marble hearth held a heap of ashes. There were four large windows curtained with red damask and a set of balcony doors that remained wide open, ushering in wisps of snow. The bed was large and sunken in the middle, framed by a grand headboard carved with mountains and moons, and there was a reading chair in one corner, flanked by bookshelves.

I stopped before the bloodstain on the floor.

I imagined Emrys drawing his blade over the duke’s throat, and the duke fighting, clawing for life. It had been a nightmare, a new moon. A bewitching, soul-changing hour.

A mountain wind sighed through the balcony doors. It touched a wardrobe in the corner, whose carven doors were slightly ajar. Something silver flashed within, and I stepped around the blood and snow to behold the heart of the wardrobe.

The knight’s armor hung within.

I stared at it a moment, remembering it from Elle Fielding’s dream, from the nights I had fought beside Phelan.

I reached out to trace its steel. A chill raced up my arm.