She was his mother? I sometimes forgot that grown people could have parents. Mine were dead—well, I’d thought they were. Anouk’s were dead. That this man still had a mother—envy blossomed in me.

“He found you outside the schloss walls,” Diantha went on. “How are you feeling after some rest?”

He found me. What had that looked like? “One typically finds mushrooms or berries, not people.” I attempted a humored smile. “It must have been quite a shock.”

“Far better than mushrooms or berries, I assure you,” Bastiaan said.

He was the man who had been waiting outside the entrance of the schloss. But that wasn’t the first time I’d seen his face. It had happened before that. His eyes were silver like a sharpened skate blade. “I believe we met somewhere else.”

“At the markt.” His low voice fell soft upon the room like fresh snow dust. “You gave me bread.”

I tried to wrangle the memory. “Nowhere else?” I hadn’t been to markt since before Coralythe. But I felt as though I’d seen his face more than once. In a dream, maybe.

He frowned. “You don’t remember?”

“I gave bread to a lot of people.” Though none quite so handsome.

He grinned but also seemed a little disappointed. “It was the day we learned the king . . . that King Vämbat died.”

Sven ringing the frost bells. Me shoving through the crowd after him. People whispering about the Wishtress being the assassin. I’d been speaking to a man who sat forlorn in the dirt. He seemed so lonely and hungry. I wanted to warm him—both spirit and belly.

He’d taken the bread and shown me kindness. But the entire encounter was overshadowed by Sven’s news about the king’s murder.

Sven. I needed to get to him. “Thank you for your hospitality. I’d best be going.”

Bastiaan pushed off the railing. “Are you well enough? Perhaps you should stay and rest another day.”

Diantha eyed him with an amused quirk of her lips. If they didn’t think I was recovered enough to travel, I must have given them quite the scare. “I’m well.”

“I can see you to your home then,” he said. “Is it in Fairhoven?”

“There’s no home to see me to.” I didn’t know where to start with that. “I’m in search of a . . . a friend.”

“Sven Hebzucht.” Bastiaan seemed a little shocked when the name crossed his lips, but not as shocked as I was.

My former calm snapped to suspicion. “How do you know Sven?” Moreover, how did he know I knew Sven? Did he know I was the Wishtress? Maybe he was working for the king. Or perhaps Anouk hired him to coax a wish from me.

No. Anouk wouldn’t do that. Would she? I no longer knew my cousin.

“Don’t be alarmed—”

“Why were you at the schloss?” I demanded.