“The late Queen was a collector of heirloom varieties,” Cole said, picking a bean pod off the vine that twined around the gates to the adjoining kitchen garden.

Beetles roved the fine layer of netting covering the production gardens, and the sight of them scuttling across the gossamer cloth made Bri itchy.

“These aren’t staked deep enough.” Bri nudged a hole dug under the fence with her boot. “You’ll have rabbit problems.”

“A mongoose did that,” Cole said, nodding to the warren.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mongoose,” Bri murmured, snapping a green bean from the vine and biting it in half.

“If you stay much longer, you’ll be guaranteed to spot a few.” Stooping, he picked up a long stick off the ground. “Though there’s lots of other creatures you’d have to deal with too.”

Narrowing her eyes, Bri examined the item he held, not a stick but a quill, striped in black and white at the end. She shuddered. The spike was longer than her dagger. She had thought porcupines were small, but to have quills that large . . . they must be the size of sheep.

The strangeness of the landscape confronted her once more. She knew that beyond the shadow of the High Mountains the terrain changed, but it truly felt like a waking dream. When they had ventured west to find Remy, the land hadn’t seemed all that different from the East. They’d slogged through rainy, dense forests, the sky filled with clouds, the trees and plants similar to the ones she had grown up around . . . but here, beyond the rain shadow, was red earth and scorching sun.

She looked out at the horizon. To the right, the city of Swifthill was built into the rolling hills. From this vantage point, she could see the sandstone walls circling the clay-covered buildings in a perfect ring. Concentric circles of dwellings spiraled into the giant open-air market-place in the center.

In many ways, it was like the other courts, and yet it was utterly different. The scenery, the flavors, the scents all perfectly complemented each other in a way that gave her an odd sense of rightness. She could imagine what growing up here would have been like. She recognized the strange unity, though she had never known it herself.

Rua had told her there was a word for it in Yexshiri: aviavere. It meant a nostalgia for something that never was, and it hadn’t made any sense to her until that moment.

The thought of the foreign word brought her back to the task at hand.

“Delta found something after the attack,” Bri said, unsheathing the amethyst dagger. “It has Mhenbic on it. . . . Do you know what it says?”

She passed Cole the dagger over the fence, and he studied the intricate swirls of purple stone.

“It’s ancient,” he murmured, tracing a finger down the blunted blade.

“How do you know it’s not just well-used?”

He scrutinized the scuffed hilt. “Because some things are damaged from use and others wear away gently over centuries.”