Bri mapped out the halls in the methodical way she did most nights, learning each corner and dip in the floor. She knew where each passageway led, which doors were cupboards and cellars. Each castle was different, but some things were always the same. The kitchens and dining commons were always near each other, the stables close to the training rings and armory. The most important residents slept on the higher floors, where the air was sweeter and the nights caught the breeze during the hot summer.

There was an intuition to these layouts she had learned over the years during her many travels alongside Hale. They’d stayed in many Lord’s castles, exploring every corner of Okrith . . . apart from the West.

She skimmed her hand along the beaded tassels of the artwork on the wall, reminding her of the one in their sitting room back home. The Easterners had scoffed at it, preferring their intricately carved doors and wooden furniture. The Eastern houses had clean lines, jewel-toned colors, and oil paintings lining the walls, but Bri’s parents had insisted they uphold the Western traditions, even though neither were native by blood. Her mother and father both grew up in Swifthill, as had their parents before them, but her mother had the Yexshiri warm brown complexion of the High Mountains, and her father the golden-olive skin of the Eastern fae . . . and Bri and Talhan came out looking like neither parent.

They carried the blood and traditions of three courts inside of them, those of their ancestors and those of their birth. As such everything about the West seemed eerily familiar to her. She meandered past the woven curtains, covered in brilliant geometric patterns of color, the same style as those in the castle she had grown up in.

“Remind you of something?”

Bri knew it was Carys without turning. Her friend’s light footsteps always sounded like a dance.

“She was meticulous,” Bri mused, tracing a finger along the patterns of the curtain.

As a child she’d spent hours hiding behind curtains just like it when she and Tal played hide-and-go-seek. Everything from the bedding in her rooms to the tile floors to the scent of cooking reminded her of her childhood in a foreign court. It was clear now how hard her mother had worked to preserve those traditions for her children. She had taught them of a place they had never seen.

“Your mother made a miniature Swifthill in the East,” Carys said, stepping up beside her.