“He did. He’s being tended to, back home. Not quite himself yet, but he will be.”

“I’m not sure if I should ask this,” I said, “but I will. There was a man, one of your kind, who spoke to Grim, soon after we came to Bann. Grim helped lift something. The man gave him a warning. We heard later that there was a penalty if your kind spoke out about the one in the tower.”

“That is true. Our king suffered for every word.”

“Then we’re deeply sorry,” I said. “And I hope the one who did speak out, to Grim I mean, was not punished for it.”

“The king bore the punishment for us. A long curse, and a cruel one.”

“I have another question for you.”

“Ask away.”

“True love’s tears. The herb. You kept reminding me of it. I thought I needed it to break the curse that lay over the Tower of Thorns. So I gathered some and took it with me, but when I got there I didn’t use it, because . . .”

“Because you did the deed, and they were back to themselves without the need for it,” said the little healer, nodding. Her beady eyes had lost some of their combative look. “And then you were changed.”

“I tried to tell Grim about the herb, but I . . . my mouth was odd, deformed, and I couldn’t make him understand. And then . . . suddenly I was myself again, and he hadn’t used it either. I don’t know what undid the spell. Or why the woman who invented the curse didn’t make it end with Lily and Ash.”

“Her?” The little healer lifted her brows in scorn. “She wasn’t only bad; she was as mad as a half-witted dog at full moon. Did what she wanted and didn’t give a fig about anyone else. That’s why she was so angry when the girl, Lily, crossed her. Angry enough for two hundred years of sorrow and a bit more. Be glad your man broke the spell for you.”

“Grim broke it? But he never even touched the herb.”

She threw back her head and let out a hearty laugh. Heads turned toward us from everywhere. “For a wise woman,” she said, “you’re a touch blind about some things. Tell me, did your man weep over you up there? Did he weep over the poor thing you’d become?”

I recalled Grim wiping my face with the red kerchief. Wiping his own. Saying he’d stand by me for two hundred years, if that was what it took. “Yes, but—”

“There you are, then,” she said. “Now it’s time we were on our way. Your fellow will be fit to ride by the morning. Trust me. And safe journey to you.”

“And to you.”

I thought about it later, when Grim was feeding the horses and I was readying our bedding for the night. What she’d said couldn’t possibly be right. True love’s tears? That was just nonsense. It wasn’t like that with him and me and it never would be. What we had was far too precious to be complicated by that kind of thing. Grim would have a good laugh when I told him.