The flickering light revealed the interior of the coach; dust entering the windows coated everything. A discarded cheesecloth and several apple cores covered a pile of parchments spilling from a stack on the opposite bench. Soiled footprints patterned the floor where a blanket, a corset, and two dresses nested along with three shoes. She had no idea where the fourth was, and only hoped it was in the carriage and not left in Lanksteer. Over the past six months, she had felt as if she had left bits of herself all over Avryn.

Hilfred would have known where her shoe was.

She picked up her pearl-handled hairbrush and turned it over in her hands. Hilfred must have searched the wreckage for days. This one came from Tur Del Fur. Her father had given her a brush from every city he had traveled to. He had been a private man and saying I love you had not come easy, even when speaking to his own daughter. The brushes were his unspoken confessions. Once, she had owned dozens—now this was the last. When her bedroom tower had collapsed, she had lost them and it had felt as if she had lost her father all over again. Three weeks later this single brush appeared. It must have been Hilfred, but he never said a word or admitted a thing.

Hilfred had been her bodyguard for years, and now that he was gone, she realized just how much she had taken him for granted.

She had a new bodyguard now. Alric had personally picked him from his own castle guards. His name began with a T—Tom, Tim, Travis—something like that. He stood on the wrong side of her, talked too much, laughed at his own jokes, and was always eating something. He was likely a brave and skilled soldier, but he was no Hilfred.

The last time she had seen Hilfred had been over a year ago in Dahlgren, when he had nearly died from the Gilarabrywn attack. That had been the second time he had suffered burns trying to save her. The first had been when she was only twelve—the night the castle caught fire. Her mother and several others had died, but a boy of fifteen, the son of a sergeant-at-arms, had braved the inferno to pull her from her bed. At Arista’s insistence, he went back for her mother. He never reached her, but nearly died trying. He suffered for months afterward, and Arista’s father rewarded the boy by appointing him her bodyguard.