I thought Flannan was going to leave the room without another word. But in the doorway he paused to look back at me. “Have you really changed so much?” he asked. “The woman I knew was all courage. A taker of risks. A seizer of opportunities. She’d never have been content with the life of a village healer.”

“But that’s exactly what I was back then.” I spoke through clenched teeth. The truth hurt sometimes.

“If you believe that,” Flannan said, “either your memory is faulty, or you’re refusing to face reality. What happened to Cass was terrible; I don’t deny that. But—”

“Stop. Just stop. That woman you knew would not have broken her word to go rushing off on a wild quest to deal with a monster. And there’s nothing wrong with my memory. The day my husband and son were burned to death before my eyes is as clear now as it was then. I wish time had blurred those images. I wish it had muted their screams. Now go, please. I have work to do.”

“I’m sorry.” Flannan’s voice was shadow-soft. “There’s more for us to talk about; much more. But it can wait.”

• • •

I wasn’t proud of what happened after that conversation. I did try to keep calm. I knew I shouldn’t give myself time to brood. That would only make me angrier, not with my old friend but with Mathuin and his ill deeds and my inability to do anything about them. Mathuin held such power. A woman on her own had next to no chance of exposing his crimes, let alone of bringing him to justice. Even supposing I got an unlikely opportunity to stand up and accuse him at a council, chances were his fellow chieftains would laugh at me exactly as Mathuin himself had done before he locked me up in the dark. Maybe, if Flannan knew the whole of that story, he’d think me brave after all. But in truth, I’d been a fool. And now there was my vow to Conmael. It bound me to leave Mathuin alone for seven years. And it held me close to home, if you could call Winterfalls home. Lady Geiléis and her monster in the tower might be a quest, but they were not my quest. I couldn’t tell Flannan about Conmael. If that meant he thought I was a coward, so be it.

I went to the stillroom. Just as well nobody was waiting to consult me, as I was in the foulest of moods and liable to snap off someone’s head if they so much as looked at me. I cursed the day I had told Grim the tale of how I lost my family. I cursed Flannan for reminding me of it; for implying that I was somehow betraying Cass by choosing the life I had. For a man whose friendship I had always valued to say those things made them doubly painful.