Raisa sat down next to him, put her hand on his knee, rested her head on his shoulder. “Amon, I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry. I’m trying to be gracious about all of this, I really am. I’m just not very good at it. It would be easier if we didn’t have to be together all the time. And if we didn’t have all this trouble hanging over our heads.”

She shivered. The fire had died down and the room had gone chilly. She just wanted to crawl into a warm bed and sleep.

“You should get out of those wet clothes,” Amon said abruptly, as if his mind had been chasing down its own path. “But…I wanted to tell you—there’s news from the Fells.”

“Oh!” Raisa said, jolted awake. That explained Amon’s distraction. It was the first news they’d had since their arrival four months ago.

“I got a letter from my da,” Amon said. “It’s two months old, sent by ship from Chalk Cliffs, which I guess he thought was safer than sending it overland.” He smiled faintly at her eager expression. Fishing under his uniform tunic, he withdrew a creased letter, stamped with a plain wax stamp, not the sword-and-wolf insignia of the Captain of the Queen’s Guard. The seal had been broken.

“He was afraid it might fall into the wrong hands,” Amon said.

Like his liege queen’s hands, Raisa thought guiltily.

Amon extended the letter toward her. “Read it, and you’ll see why I was worried. Then we’d both better get to bed.”

Raisa took the letter from Amon’s hand. She unfolded it, recognizing Captain Edon Byrne’s small, precise script.

Son,

May this find you and your fellow cadets well and safe. I hope you’ve limited your time on Bridge Street and have applied yourself to your studies so as to reflect well on our family name.

I received your message about the Waterwalkers. I am doing everything in my power to resolve that situation. Lieutenant Gillen has been recalled to Fellsmarch. Corporal Sloat was killed in a skirmish near the West Wall. I have handpicked Gillen’s replacement. The Briar Rose Ministry has allocated funds to buy foodstuffs for the Fens as well as Ragmarket and Southbridge. So relations with the Fens have improved, though, as you can imagine, they are still strained.

It has been a difficult season here in the capital. Her Majesty is under extreme pressure from the Wizard Council and others among the nobility, given the continuing absence of the Princess Raisa and speculation as to her whereabouts.