“You’re a very capable girl, Myrthe, even with . . .” He glanced down at my feet. They were firmly planted in the soil, but I knew he was imagining my limp and the fact I couldn’t run. Why couldn’t he remember me as I was in winter? On skates? When my legs seemed to work like everyone else’s?

“This is no canal skate race. I’m taking the pilgrimage. I’m going to find the Well of Talents, once and for all.”

“Is Prince Mattias funding your journey?”

Sven let out a hollow laugh. “He relieved me of my position as schloss cartographer.”

I reached for him. “Oh, Sven, I’m so sorry.” Sven had been so proud when the schloss took him on. It had promised food in his belly, travel, adventure.

He was the first cartographer since the slaughter of Winterune’s cartographers fifteen years prior by a wild man. And the destruction of all maps to the Well.

He’d been brave to apply. To pick up the mantle of a lost trade.

“How will you find the Well without a map?”

Firm lines of determination turned his jaw to angles. “I’m not helpless.”

“I’ll help you.” He had no idea how much I could help—how easy I could make this for him. For us.

“Even if I manage to find the Well, I still have to defeat King Vämbat’s Trials. I get it, Myrthe. The desire for a Talent is tempting for everyone—especially us commonfolk who aren’t allowed to seek one in the first place.”

“The crown is blaming Talented right now. If you come back with a Talent, what’s to stop them from accusing you of the king’s murder?”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take—a risk a lot of people are willing to take. A Talent could protect us. Provide for us.”

“You don’t even know what type of Talent the Well might give you.”

“That’s the beauty of it. It could be anything! Have you ever heard of a Talent that wasn’t appealing?”

I hadn’t spent my life dreaming of having a Talent like so many others. But I’d heard of others—Talents to heal, to make bread, to start flame, to grow plants, to perceive truth or hear thoughts.

“I want a Talent, Myrthe. And I’m going to get one. That’s worth angering the crown over. But . . . people die on this pilgrimage. Almost all of them. I can’t . . .” He took a deep breath. “I can’t put you at risk like that.”

My growing irritation melted. He wasn’t refusing me because he thought I’d be a burden. He was trying to protect me. “Sven, I don’t want to go so I can acquire a Talent. I want to learn about Talents. How they work and how they’re supposed to be used.”