As she walked, taking in the mountain view—the green and blue of the peaks before her, slowly receding as they dropped in altitude—a man appeared on her left side and took in the landscape with her. Corinn looked over at him, knowing who he was before her eyes touched him: her brother, Aliver.

He said nothing, just smiled at her, shook his head, motioned back toward the carriage in which Aaden sat, likely still green with his illness. He was saying that he understood her and that he loved the boy. Such a good boy. He was saying that the boy would be the king he never got to be. He was saying that he understood Corinn’s actions and she had no need to explain herself, even now, as she walked in the fresh air while maids swabbed the vomit from the corners of her son’s mouth.

“I’m not a bad mother,” Corinn had said, though Aliver had said nothing to suggest he thought she was. “You don’t know how much I love him.”

“No, of course not,” a voice said. Not Aliver’s but the man on her right side, walking with them as well. She turned toward him. Hanish Mein. His clean, crisp features. His blond hair shone around his face and draped his shoulders. His gray eyes glowed. She wanted to press her lips against them and pull in the gentle calm of them.

Before she could, Hanish dipped his head forward. He threw his body after it, jumping into a somersault. Before he had turned one circle, his body became one large, orange leaf. It danced on a sudden breeze. Aliver did the same, and the two men, who were now leaves, twirled and dipped and rose on currents in the air. Watching them, Corinn began to whistle.

Though there was joy in the final moments, she awoke with the memory of the dream—and of the actual day that began it—imbedded in her abdomen as a physical pain, a knot that remained within her even after she joined the flow of the living day. She swore to herself that if she ever, ever, got the chance to pull Aaden close and kiss and caress him in illness like that she would do it with all her heart, holding nothing back. But this was not something she could see to today. She set it aside and continued with the course she had decided on.

First, she surprised a guard by arriving outside the cell that housed the prisoner Barad the Lesser. The soldier stood nearly asleep on his feet and did not seem to register Corinn as a real person until she stood right before him. “Soldier,” she said, “open the door.”

The man shot fully awake at the sound of her voice. Suddenly terrified, he turned and fumbled a long time with the keys to the door, apologizing the entire time, dropping them twice and cursing himself and then apologizing more. His terror of her seemed out of all proportion to the circumstances, but on entering the cell Corinn recalled that any guard of this prisoner had reason to fear her.