“Get your head out of your buttocks,” she snapped. “The Tallows is full of parentless brats, picking pockets or begging or eating other people’s trash to survive. None of us are lost princesses of Celantis.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe our naiveté. “Do you really think I’d feel better knowing my parents died of plague, or abandoned me at the Temple of Mercy because they couldn’t feed me, or drowned in a storm?”

I felt a gulf between us as wide as the sea. I’d want to know. But family and home were foreign words to Zaira, with different meanings than the ones I knew.

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.

Zaira pushed her chair back with a resounding scrape and rose to her feet. “You don’t know what sorry means.” She said it without rancor, as a statement of fact.

Scoundrel danced around her ankles, hoping for play. Zaira sighed. “All right, all right, boy. Let’s go to the gardens and get you a stick.” The three of us watched her go, Scoundrel capering at her heels.

“You shouldn’t push her,” Terika said quietly.

I met her gaze. She was a pretty, plump girl, with honey-colored curls, freckles, and a mild Callamornish accent. I’d seen Zaira smile more at Terika than at the rest of the world rolled up together, but now her face was serious.

“You’re right,” I sighed. “Zaira doesn’t like being pushed.”

“It’s not just that. Let her past stay dead.”

Hearing those ominous words in Terika’s sweet voice sent cold spider feet running up my spine. “What do you mean?”

Terika cocked her head at me, eyes grave. “All those years she lived in the Tallows, suffering and scraping to stay alive … I don’t know what she went through, but I know it wasn’t good.” She tapped the edge of her empty bowl. “But at any time, she could have come here and immediately had all the food she could eat, a warm, soft bed, and anything else she could dream of. She knew it, but she stayed where she was.”

I’d never thought of that. Marcello shook his head. “Why? That’s what I don’t understand. Why would she choose that life over the Mews?”

Terika’s Falconer waved to her across the hall, beaming like an indulgent aunt. Terika waved back, her jess gleaming on her wrist.