The finest quarters in Aats-Kyl were not, as it turned out, particularly fine. The soldiers who had prepared for her arrival had done their best—scrubbing the wooden floors, hanging lanterns from the log walls, kindling a roaring fire in the wide hearth—but the two-story building at the center of the town was little more than a lodge, and the central hall, though cavernous, was gloomy. Adare could feel the cool northern breeze moving through the unchinked gaps in the logs. The antlered heads of moose and deer seemed to watch her with their stone eyes as she stalked across the floorboards.

As soon as the young soldier went in search of il Tornja, Fulton scoured the room, looking behind every door, checking beneath the rustic tables and chairs, even sticking his head into the flaming hearth, as though someone might be hiding behind the roaring fire, ready to leap out. When he had satisfied himself that the room was secure, he took up a position just inside the front door, blade drawn.

“Shall I kill him as he enters, Your Radiance?” he asked.

Adare hesitated. Sweat slicked her palms, and she could feel it cold on her spine beneath her robe. Her heart pounded under her ribs. She could end it all as soon as the kenarang entered. And yet . . . slowly she shook her head. “There’s too much going on here that I don’t understand. I need to talk to him first.”

The Aedolian’s jaw tightened. His wounds from the Everburning Well had mostly healed, and he had regained some of the weight he lost searching for her after her escape from the Dawn Palace, and yet something had changed about the man. He had always been hard, even severe. The severity, however, had been leavened by Birch, by Fulton’s obvious affection for the younger man. With Birch gone, there was nothing left but duty.

“I would ask that you keep the table between you and the kenarang at all times, Your Radiance,” he said, gesturing to a wide pine table stained with grease and circles of ale. “I will be at your side, but added distance will serve us well.”

“You still think he wants to murder me?” Adare asked.

“I believe everyone wants to murder you, Your Radiance,” Fulton replied. “It is my job.”

Adare shook her head, suddenly very weary, then turned to Nira and Oshi. The old man, oblivious to the tension in the room, had retired to a dark corner where he was gently patting the mounted head of a black bear. Adare watched him for a moment, wondering what it would feel like to have lived so long and to remember so little. Sometimes her own short life felt filled to bursting, the record of her days crammed with memories she could neither understand nor dismiss.

“He’ll be here soon,” she said to Nira. “How about some counseling?”