“The Seneschal-elect,” Captain Lang muttered to a man on the dock.

“Right this way, Your Grace.” One of the men gestured toward a forest-green carriage with gold and black scrollwork on its doors. Skop climbed up after Cobie and our luggage into a nearby wagon, and Captain Lang helped me into the carriage with one charcoal-smudged hand, Yu and Perrault taking seats across from us.

Fish stalls and old buildings swept past our window as we clattered over the cobblestones. Farther into Winchester we passed small homes with thatched roofs, inns with lamplit windows, rows of shops, and then larger houses built of stone. The color of their plaster and the warp of their wood and the tiny, damp sprouts of lichen between their stones told me many of them were older than Potomac itself. Other carts crowded the village streets, but children stopped playing to stare as our carriage rolled past.

Cobblestones quickly became a gravel path rolling past a damp meadow swathed in fog and lavender—soft grays and greens deeper than I’d ever seen before, even during our wettest springs. Then, at the word of the men driving the wagon ahead of us, guards in red jackets and black pants moved in lockstep to admit us through a black iron gate in a low brick wall.

We had reached Winchester Castle.

Milky light sluiced through the stately grove of oaks and poplars just inside the gate, but we came soon to a wide emerald lawn, where blackbirds hopped over close-cropped grass and beds of pink and white roses bloomed tentatively in the mist. Somewhere nearby, water splashed against rock. Elegant topiaries flanked the edges of the path like sentries. I’d never seen such aggressively tended trees at home; I sat up a little straighter beneath their watch. But when the carriage came to an abrupt halt, I flung out an arm to catch myself.

My hand found Lang’s as I fumbled backward.

The crunch of footsteps and the slap and thump of luggage being passed from hand to hand replaced the sound of hoofbeats and rolling wheels. Across from me, Perrault gabbled to Yu about dinner or the weather or something. I wasn’t listening.

For half a heartbeat I met the captain’s stare. Two of my fingers were wound between his, fingertips pressed into the hollow of his hand, the blood beneath my palm thrumming against his knuckles.

His face was almost perfectly composed. But a tiny seam stitched itself between his eyebrows, and a faint pink color rose in his cheeks. Gingerly, as though I were an animal he was afraid to frighten, he unlaced his hand from mine.

Before Yu and Perrault had even noticed us, before anyone could stop me, I shoved open the carriage door and threw myself out. My eyes traced the gray gravel path to the castle steps as I begged my heart to slow to a walking pace.