She put the brush down on the table and ran her hand behind her head until she found it, a different kind of softness nestling within her hair. Sprouting from the base of her skull was a feather, long and black. Over the years she’d tried trimming it back, cutting it off, once in a desperate rage, she’d pulled it out by the shaft. But whatever she did, however extreme she’d been in her self-surgery, she’d find it sprouting there again, good as new, the next day.

Two dealings with the Wild.

Two marks of shame.

She should have told Lord Vasin when he found her. She should have told High Lord Yadavendra. But she didn’t because Satyendra needed someone to hide his imperfections until such time as he’d grown out of them.

At least, that was how she justified her crime to herself.

The truth was she couldn’t bear the thought of being judged any more than she could bear Satyendra being cast out. And beneath that was another truth: she wanted to be there when Varg came back.

Tucked away out of sight in her chambers was an old piece of cloth, and wrapped within it were pieces of a mosaic. Each fragment had arrived quietly, discreetly, pushed into her hand by a travelling merchant who visited the castle the same time each year. Together, the pieces made a picture of two people kissing: a bearded man and a long-haired woman, their lips pressed together in a smile, with a large white Dogkin sleeping nearby.

Fifteen pieces sat within the cloth. Fifteen units of time. Only one gap in the mosaic remained, and it had not escaped her notice that both the merchant and Pari’s rebirth were due any day.

The last piece was coming, already on its way, and Varg with it.

She still wasn’t sure what she’d do when he arrived, but the thought of him, the fantasy of him, had given her a much-needed escape.

And though the wait had been agonizing the years had passed with a strange swiftness. Normal life had muted the reality of her time in the Wild. She’d taken to wearing gloves in public and plaiting her hair so as to tuck the feather from sight. The precautions had soon become habit, almost natural. From a lesser servant, such behaviour might have raised suspicion, but she was above reproach, a model Sapphire. Rather than garner criticism, she’d generated new fashions among the sky-born.

A footstep, close, too close, broke her from her reverie, and she span round in her seat, putting her back and the feather to the wall.

‘No need to be afraid,’ said Satyendra, clearly delighted to have caught her out. ‘It’s only me.’

‘It’s not becoming for an Honoured Vessel to creep about like that. Suns! How many times have I told you to sing for entry like everyone else?’