Crav gives him a withering look. “I know what ‘shit’ is.”

“Shid!” Peligli chimes happily, beating her fork against the table. “Shid shid shid!”

Perriot, perhaps the most polite of the three, panics and tries to distract her with a cherry, which Peligli joyfully accepts, her mouth staining deep fruit-red. She’ll bleed it out from her eyes later, as Heartless do with all human food, but her temporary joy is worth it. And the temporary silence.

Y’shennria pours syrup only on Lucien’s and then lets Reginall pour it for the rest of us, sitting back down in her emerald skirts elegantly. It’s so bizarre, but Lucien and Y’shennria just go on to talk spiritedly about the precise height, in miles, of Windonhigh, and Fione joins in with equations eagerly. Malachite looks a little sick when they settle on a massive number, but I’m still stuck on the syrup. Have I lost my courtly edge? I know there’s something to read between the lines in what Y’shennria did, but why would she—

I’m staring down at my own delight when it hits me. The spire of fluffy cream off-center, the four cherries situated around it evenly, as if demarcating quarters.

Quarters.

The spire in the center is the High Witch building in Bear. And the four cherries are the four quarters—Bear, Fox, Deer, and Crow.

I look over at Lucien’s dessert, untouched.

The syrup Y’shennria poured pools on the edge of Crow.

If Y’shennria had to resort to visual representations in whipped cream instead of telling Lucien the information she wanted to out loud, it means several things, all of them troubling.

One, we might be being listened to.

Two, if we’re being listened to, it means someone views us as a potential threat.

And three, whatever Y’shennria’s pointing us to is likely heavily secret, and therefore, heavily guarded. Heavily important.

There’s a fourth, of course. And it’s that Y’shennria is giving us this information at great risk to herself. Once again, it’s Vetris all over—Y’shennria putting her life and the lives of her household on the line to help me. Not the witches this time, but me.

I watch her smile at me through the candlelight over my teacup—cinnamon and dread wafting into my senses.

She’s doing this for me.

And this time, if the witches catch wind of it, she has nowhere else to run. Windonhigh is the last sanctuary for an Old God family like hers. If they don’t kill her, they’ll chase her out to the ground, to Cavanos, to a Cavanos being ravaged by the valkerax. A Cavanos where no one is safe anymore.