“I need eyes and ears. I need to know what’s going on—in the queendom, in the Wizard Council house on Gray Lady Mountain, everywhere. I feel like a canary in a cage. I see only the four walls around me, and meanwhile the castle is surrounded and my enemies are closing in.”

“What?” He gazed into her face, no doubt looking for signs of madness or drink. “What are you talking about?”

“You know the blooded queens have visions sometimes that foretell the future.” Amon nodded. “Well, I feel the way I did the day of the fire on Hanalea. I’m trapped, with the flames rushing toward me and nowhere to go.”

“Well.” Amon cleared his throat. “How can you tell if it’s a true vision? I mean, I have nightmares sometimes, but that’s all they are.”

“It’s possible that I’m imagining things,” Raisa said. “But I can’t take that chance.”

“Have you told the queen? Seems like that’d be the place to start.”

“The thing is, I think she may be part of the problem,” Raisa said. “I’ve tried to talk with her, and we just end up arguing.”

Her voice trailed off at Amon’s conflicted expression. She and Amon had always shared grievances with each other. But now it felt as though she were asking him to side with her against the queen he’d sworn himself to.

“That’s not much to go on. A feeling,” he said finally.

“And the peculiar way people are acting,” Raisa argued. “My mother went on and on the other day about how I shouldn’t marry a southerner, that things are just too unsettled down there.”

“Maybe it’s just jitters about you getting older, making your debut, and the like.” Amon extended his hands, palms up. “All parents have trouble with that. I remember when my sister, Lydia, had her name day. Da interrogated and terrorized any boy who came near her.”

“I don’t know. At the same time, it seems like she’s in a hurry for me to get married. She says she’d like to see things settled, that she may not be around too much longer, like maybe she knows something I don’t. Even though I’ve not reached my name day and there’s no candidate in sight.”

“You said it wouldn’t be for years and years,” Amon said, almost accusingly.

Raisa shrugged. “If I have anything to say about it.” She shuddered. “I don’t want to get married. I’m only fifteen years old.”

“Well, I’m just seventeen,” Amon said. “And I’m going back to the academy in the fall. What do you want me to do? Who do you want me to spy on?”