Lyric looked mournful. “No, he left a little bit ago, but he’ll be at Hilltop Palace for Starfell. Queen Estelle is going to crown him, too.”

There it was—the opening she needed! “Crown,” she repeated, pushing aside her anger and making her eyes as wide as possible, the same way Sophie would when she was trying to look extra innocent. “When you said ‘crown,’ I think—I’m not sure, but I almost had a memory. It felt familiar.”

Not a lie. Crowns were familiar to Claire. She’d worn them at Halloween parties and for history class, when she’d had to give a speech as King George III. And once, she and Sophie had gone through an inordinate amount of construction paper to make a crown for their uncle’s new puppy, Sir Beast, who just kept chewing them up.

Lyric beamed. “Yay! See? I told you Gathering shouldn’t last too long. Maybe you did know about the queen’s coronation! This makes me think your family probably was planning to spend Starfell at Hilltop Palace.”

“Maybe!” Claire nodded quickly. And though she was curious about what this Starfell was that Lyric continued to mention, she kept her question focused: “Can you tell me more about the … what did you call it? The Crown of Arden?”

“Lyric can tell you lots about it,” Mistress Weft said as she hung up her dishrag and moved toward the spinning wheel at the far side of the room. Settling on her stool, Mistress Weft looked at her daughter with pride. “Lyric is one of only two preambles selected to attend Queen Estelle’s re-coronation. Which is why,” she said, arching an eyebrow at Lyric, “I’ve decided that your ten months of detangling my yarn barrels can begin after Starfell, so that you may use all your extra hours for practice.”

“Oh, uh, thanks,” Lyric said, and Mistress Weft smiled before bending over her work. As soon as her mother’s attention was elsewhere, Lyric shot a Look at Claire. Claire didn’t need to know the girl well to understand what that meant: Don’t say a word about the failed audition.

Claire nodded ever so slightly, and Lyric relaxed, though her gesticulations seemed a little more frantic than usual as she dove into the history of Arden’s crown.