“What is it we need to clarify?” I ask stiffly. “As you might’ve guessed from stalking me every day to South Gate, I’m a busy woman.”

Lucien swallows hard. “Very well.” He stands but keeps his distance. “The Tree.”

I snort. “That’s all anyone talks about anymore—”

“I knew about the Tree before anyone,” Lucien interrupts. “Before even Varia knew.”

I turn the dove feather over curiously. “What?”

“Fione told me Varia’s been having nightmares about the Tree. That you saw it last night. I was the first one to ever see her have a nightmare about it.”

I try not to betray the interest in my voice. “When?”

“I was seven,” he says. “She was ten. We were in the palace’s nursery.”

“That’s so young. She wasn’t a witch then, right?”

He shakes his head, the sun catching on his black cowl and illuminating the rich darkness. “No. But I remember the night it happened for the first time. And it kept happening. Mother brought every polymath to her, desperate to diagnose her, to ‘fix’ her. It was the best kept secret in the palace—that Varia was ‘sick.’”

“Why?”

“Father was worried,” Lucien says, and cracks his neck leisurely. “You’ve heard of the assassins Malachite deals with, trying to kill me. The royal family isn’t liked. And the whole court knows the rumor that we are a witch family. Any display of oddness was Father’s greatest fear.”

“So he didn’t want rumors of Varia’s nightmares to get out,” I muse. “Because it would make the nobles uneasy.”

“Uneasy at best,” he agrees. “And at worst, it would give them cause to dispose of the d’Malvanes. Witches are never trusted in Vetris—no matter who they are.”

“So your mother brought polymaths to her?” I lead. He nods, shaggy bangs nodding with him.

“They all said she was mad. Father refused to believe it, but it kept happening. He used to order the servants to drug her with moonroot every night so she could sleep without hurting herself.”

I’m silent. Lucien isn’t.

“On bad nights, she used to sleepwalk.” His eyes get a glassy, far-off look in them. “I remember waking up and finding her on the balcony staring off into space more than once.”

I go still, my fist clenching around the feather. So that night…she was dreaming.

Lucien presses on. “I’d try to wake her, but all she would do is mutter about the Tree. They got worse, the older she got. She broke both of her wrists when she was thirteen.”

“Are they just nightmares?” I ask. “Or could they be magical?”