“But you are. Of course you are!” Giles’s lips twisted. “How could I not have seen it before? You weren’t talking to Mother or Connall after all. You’ve been talking to the land all along, haven’t you? That’s how you knew what was happening in our forest—and it was the land that healed you, too.”

“So maybe I was the one who started out as an animal! That’s what you two always called me, remember? Everyone knows I’m wild and feral. I’m just—”

“You’re tied to the land. You always have been.” Rosalind shook her head slowly, her eyes shuttered and impossible to read. “That’s why Mother”—she bit her lip, then forged onward—“I mean, why the duchess could never keep you inside our castle. The land was calling to you all along … Your Majesty.”

Lowering her head, Rosalind dropped heavily to one knee on the grass and placed her sword before her in submission.

“No!” Half sobbing, Cordelia lunged forward to drag her sister upright. “Don’t do that!”

“Why not?” Giles’s tone was terrifyingly empty. “We’re only your loyal subjects. What else can we be?”

She could see him preparing to turn and walk away. She knew him. She knew them both to her very core.

How could she ever have doubted their true relationship?

“Lady Elianora told me I wasn’t your real sister,” she said, “but I should have known better than to believe her. She’s never understood what family means! You were right before when you told her it doesn’t matter how we first came together. Our father told Connall the same thing—and I should have understood it from the beginning. Real family is about love and loyalty, not blood!”

“But why didn’t Grandm—I mean, Lady Elianora tell us Mother was only carrying one child when she first ran to the woods?” Rosalind tugged free of Cordelia’s grip to clutch her sword with both hands. “If she could tell that Mother wasn’t really carrying triplets, couldn’t she tell there was only one baby, not two?”

“I know the answer to that question.” Giles’s voice was dry and bitter. “She said it herself, didn’t she, Ros? You and I were the ones who were foolish enough to trust her. Cordy sensed the truth from the beginning—so Lady Elianora knew the two of us would be easier for her to manage once she got one of us onto the throne. She didn’t care which of us was her real grandchild.”

“She said she knew Mother’s magic as well as her own.” Cordelia’s chest twisted at the unhidden pain on her brother’s face. “When she saw all three of us together, she must have guessed that Mother had cast a spell like that as a ruse.”