I reached for it, the glass cool against my palm, but I hesitated. “Do I still need to drink this now? Since we’re no longer wardens?” That had been Papa’s reasoning as to why I shouldn’t dream at night. It would be difficult indeed to face my own nightmare in the streets of Hereswith. Dreams often revealed one’s greatest vulnerability; dreams were doors that led into hearts and minds and souls and secrets.

“Best you do,” my father replied, and I watched as he drank one himself before settling in for the night.

Even Imonie took a remedy. I followed suit, uncorking my vial and letting the bittersweet liquid rush over my tongue and coat my throat. A familiar taste, one I had been drinking every night since I could remember.

I lay down in the grass, my eyes growing heavy with exhaustion, and I looked to the mountains, now darker than night against the constellations. And I wondered what sort of things would haunt my sleep, if I ever gave my mind and heart the chance to dream.

Travel was miserably slow.

My father was in no hurry, Dwindle meowed the entire time, and our horse and wagon took a plodding pace as we traveled across the Bardyllis Duchy. But all too soon, the mountains faded away and we were surrounded by crop fields still golden with summer heat, pine forests, and rings of small villages reminiscent to Hereswith. We passed over the Starling River and I noticed the shift.

The dirt roads became cobbled, the forests surrendered to chains of houses, the quiet fragrance of the country gave way to the sounds and smoke and smells of habitation. I could see the haze of the capital in the distance, the sprawling and overwhelming city of Endellion, the seat of the duke’s sovereignty, and I suddenly knew exactly where my father was taking us.

I turned to look at him, and his profile was set like granite, his eyes carefully avoiding mine.

He was taking us to my mother.

9

My mother’s town house was in the northern quadrant of the city, in sight of the river that flowed through the capital like a silver vein. The last time I had been here to visit her was three years ago, when I was fourteen, and I had longed for Hereswith the entire summer I had spent with her. Longed for the mountains and the meadows and the slower pace of a country town. My mother had sensed the homesickness within me, and I think that was why she failed to invite me the following summer, or the following. We had gradually grown apart when I had chosen to study my father’s way of magic instead of hers.