“I cannot believe you told Barrick and Briony.”

She scowled. “I am not a fool. I said the father was dead.”

He looked at her and his face softened. “Merolanna, I did my best. I never turned my back on you.”

“Too little and too late, always.”

“I offered to marry you. I begged you…!”

“After your own wife was dead. By then I had grown quite used to widowhood, thank you. Twenty years after I was foolish enough to fall in love with you. Too late, Avin, too late.”

“You were the wife of the king’s brother. What was I to do, demand he give you a bill of divorce?”

“And I was older than you, too. But I recall that neither of those things stopped you when you wanted my favors.” She paused, took a ragged breath. “Enough of this. It is also too late for fighting this way. We are old, Brone, and we have made terrible mistakes. Let us do what we can now to repair some of them, because the stakes are bigger than our own happiness.”

“What do you want me to do, Merolanna? You see me—old, sick, cut off from power. What do you want me to do?”

“Find Chaven. Find this moon-stone. And help me to cross the bay so I can meet these fairy folk and ask them what they did with my son.”

“Do you mean it? You are mad. But mad or not, I can’t help you.”

She dragged herself to her feet. “You coward! Everything you worked for your entire life is being stolen by the Tollys, and you sit there, doing nothing…!” She leaned across the table and raised her hand as though she would strike him. Brone reached up and caught at it, folding his immense paw around hers.

“Calm yourself, Merolanna,” he said. “You do not know as much as you think you do. Do you know what happened to Nynor?”

“Yes, of course! They pushed him out so they could give his honors and duties to your lickspittle factor, Havemore! Nynor’s gone back to his house in the country.”

“No, curse it, he’s dead. Hendon’s men killed him and threw his body in the ocean.”

For a moment the duchess faltered and if Brone had not been holding her hand, she might have fallen. She pulled away and sat down. “Nynor is dead?” she said at last. “Steffens Nynor?”

“Murdered, yes. He was talking against the Tollys and he spoke to someone he shouldn’t have. Word got back to Hendon. Berkan Hood dragged Nynor out of his bed in the middle of the night and murdered him.” Brone clenched his fists until his knuckles went white. “I heard it myself from someone who was there. They cut that good old man into pieces and smuggled his body out of the castle in a grain barrel. They can’t quite get away yet with slaughtering their enemies without even a mock trial. Not quite.”

“Oh, by all the gods, is that true? Killed him?” Merolanna abruptly began to cry. “Poor Steffens! The Tollys are demons—we are surrounded by demons!” She made the sign of the Three, then wiped at her face with her sleeve and tried to compose herself. “But that is all the more reason you must help me, Avin! There are things going on that…”