But why? Why did Myrddin think? Why should the king’s adviser care what would make a no-one boy—a castle guard of no name—happy?

Unless he wasn’t no one. A spy, certainly. Maybe a nephew or a cousin or a grandson to someone important.

And if that were so, what kind of betrayal to the king’s adviser was it that he was here, now, with me?

Unable to hold Bear’s gaze, I swallowed and broke away to pace the room’s perimeter. I’d studied political philosophy, but even I flinched at the stern, dry-looking tomes on law and justice heaped upon the desk.

“As I said, Constantine and Bertilak studied at Oxford,” Bear said quietly. I whipped around, staring at him. “The prince has got as many degrees as he’s got limbs. Law and philosophy and such. Makes education rather a thing at court.” He smiled.

The space between us was silent, but only in the way of a concert hall before the music began.

On a displaced sofa cushion before the fireplace, another book lay abandoned. Not a textbook—a slim thing, with a dark green binding. “Beowulf?” I asked.

“I just finished it a few days ago.”

I settled onto the cushion, turning the volume over in my hands. “Old English poetry and legal textbooks. I don’t know what to make of your taste.”

“Skepticism from the girl with what can only be an encyclopedia on her bedside table?” Bear laughed.

I flushed at the teasing shape of his mouth.

“They’re about the same things, really. The rule of law can’t survive where bravery dies.”

He took a basket of food off the old redbrick mantel, tugged another cushion off the couch, and settled in beside me—close, too close.

You are making a mistake.

I knew it was wrong. Infidelity was always wrong. I owed more to Bertilak. To my father, weak and worrisome. To Potomac, which deserved to have someone honest and steady at its steward’s side. And Perrault had warned me: the tsarytsya was always listening.

But my insides ached at the warm firelight thrown over the curve of Bear’s eyebrows and his long nose and soft lips.

I had nothing. Months of time had been stolen from me outright, given away to strangers and to courts about whom I knew nothing. But in this moment, I had this: Bear, next to me, and a room full of quiet and firelight.

He is so very handsome, and we are so very, very unwise.

“Will you read to me?” My voice cracked.

I chose a sandwich from the basket and burrowed deeper into the cushion, exhilaration burning bright in my chest as our shoulders and knees brushed.

“Yes,” Bear said. “I’ll start at the beginning.”