As we walk, Tessa threads her arm through mine. “I’m going to stop in one of the shops and ask after my childhood tutor,” she says softly. “He should be able to tell me where we can find Avalina. Why don’t you go with everyone else to the inn to drop off bags and I’ll meet you there?” She hands me her satchel and squeezes my arm before darting into a butcher shop.

Rasmus doesn’t even turn to watch her go. It’s a stark, unwelcome reminder that he’s only here to guard me. Nothing else matters. Maybe I’m torturing myself with Bram for nothing.

I should know better than to get my hopes up, and yet the possibility of failure dances along every nerve ending, making me anxious and jittery. Avalina might not live in Leiden anymore. She might be unwilling to talk to me at all. I try to imagine the kind of woman Latham would fall for. Ambitious. Heartless. All angles and sharp edges.

The kind of woman who might take one look at me and kill me herself to save him the trouble.

We turn a corner, and the inn comes into view—a large L-shaped structure made from dark stone that highlights the stained-glass windows that stretch three stories high.

A group of children chase one another around the cobblestone courtyard in front, while weary-looking travelers unload trunks from wagons. It’s busier than I expected based on the emptiness of the pier. As we get closer, I hear snatches of conversations in foreign tongues. Cistonian, with its long, melodious vowels, and the rough, clipped consonants of Novenium. Suddenly the bustling inn makes more sense. Most of these travelers probably arrived by sea instead of sailing down the Shard.

Several heads turn to watch us as we cross the courtyard, and suddenly I realize how strange we must seem in our colorful cloaks. A handful of bone magic apprentices so far from the capital and trailed by a hulking bodyguard.

The innkeeper is a small man with a slender frame and round wire-rimmed spectacles. He looks up briefly when we enter. “Ivory Hall?”

“Yes,” Niklas and Talon say at the same moment.

The innkeeper takes two sets of keys from a pegboard behind him and hands one set to Niklas, and one set to me. “Turn right at the top of the stairs and take the last two rooms at the end of the hall.”

After the grandeur of the rest of the town, I had high hopes for our accommodations, but our room turns out to be disappointing—small, with two questionably clean mattresses shoved against each wall, and a bedroll resting on the floor in between them. My neck aches just looking at it. I can’t believe Norah sent us all this way but couldn’t spare enough coin for an extra room or two so no one would be forced to sleep on the floor.