“The Justice has eyes everywhere, if Captain Trudan is to be believed,” she insisted firmly. She pulled her hand away as gently as she could. “I’m asking you to trust me—just this one last time. And then I will tell you everything.”

He nodded slowly, reluctantly. “Today?”

“Today. As soon as you like, once we’re safely home. You go around to the west tower entrance. I dismissed the guards there before I left. I will enter here. They won’t question me.”

“Very well, Constance,” he said. “But I will hold you to your word this time. I won’t let you leave me in the dark again.”

And with that barest hint of a threat, he melted back into the storm cloud.

Constance looked up at the four towers above, blacker darknesses against the night’s shadow, slits of yellow light spilling infrequently from their sides. A clap of thunder far below sent a tremor down her spine, but she didn’t jump. Anger and fear broiled within her, and her ears rang faintly, as resting bells hum in the wind.

What am I going to do about this?

She knew what she should do, what the temple would have had her do. Go after him now. Silence him. You know the spells that will kill without a trace. No one will be the wiser.

She shook her head, faintly sickened by the thought. Oh, she could kill—and she had. She wasn’t squeamish. But this was different. This was Xander. No matter how much she tried to deny it, he meant something to her—he always had. Even after six years apart, and whatever she had shared with Emris, those feelings didn’t just disappear.

By the time she entered the courtyard, the storm cloud was lightening, a dull predawn luminescence spreading across the castle.

She was midway to her tower when she heard the scream, the sound of glass smashing. She spun around, unable to pinpoint the direction. Cold sweat prickled her skin. “Who’s there?” she called. She held her cane at the ready, magic thrumming in her blood.

Another scream sliced the air, louder now, high-pitched, followed by a desperate “No, no, no, no!” More smashing, the icy noise of breaking glass. Constance looked up instinctively. The shapes of the four towers were tangled with fog. She knew with sudden urgency, her stomach plummeting to her feet, that the voice belonged to the Duke.

“Father?” She hurried toward the base of the north tower, but it seemed impossibly far away, shrinking like the end of a tunnel in a nightmare. “Father!”

She heard footsteps and a bleary-eyed Winton appeared at her side from his rooms in the west tower, hastily dressed, his furs bulky around his shoulders, his longsword strapped askew to his back. He was holding out a lantern and his nightshirt peeked out above his boots.