“All right,” he said. “Tell me what you know.”

“Saf and Skye have been together for two years or so,” Hava said. “A little longer. Saf keeps breaking up with him and coming back. Saf’s a lot younger than Skye, you know. And he more or less hates that Skye is a prince.”

“He could always stop falling in love with royalty.”

“Oh, grow up, Giddon,” said Hava, which made Giddon snort. “Anyway, that’s pretty much all I know, beyond what Skye just said. They made an arrangement that Saf would go to Winterkeep without Skye, for six months at the most, because Saf needed some time.”

“Time to do what?” said Giddon. “Sleep with everyone he met?”

“Why would you care if he did? Time to think, you idiot.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because I’m not stuck behind a fog of my own projections?”

Giddon snorted again.

“Haven’t you wondered why Skye is hanging around?” Hava said. “He never stays here this long. But a letter from Winterkeep gets to Bitterblue City five or six weeks faster than to Lienid, don’t you see?”

Giddon supposed he was beginning to see.

“Why are you hanging around this court?” Hava added significantly.

“You know I can’t go home,” said Giddon. He’d been a lord once, with an estate in the kingdom of the Middluns. A beautiful estate, with forests and farms and horses, and hundreds of people in his care. King Randa had banished him, stripped him of his title, then razed his castle to the ground, to punish him for his Council work. The people who’d depended upon Giddon had had to accept Randa as a landlord, or else find new homes and work. “And I need to be near Estill,” he said. “You know we’re worried about their new government. I’m keeping an eye out.”

“Wouldn’t you have a better view of Estill if you were actually in Estill?” Hava said. “Rather than sitting across from my sister every night at dinner?”

“Brat,” said Giddon.

“Bully,” said Hava. “I’m done with our walk now. I’m going back to see what happened.”

After she left, Giddon sat alone for a while, finding his better self before he allowed himself to return to the queen.

—

Usually, Giddon had easier access to his better self.

Didn’t he?

After all, he spent most of his time trying to figure out how to solve people’s problems without creating worse problems. Sometimes they were small problems, like what three kinds of batter should make the layers for the queen’s twenty-third birthday cake. This was not a Council matter, of course, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t the man for the job.