“It’s been rather uneventful.” The people following Sven spent most of the day foraging, butchering kills, carving necessary items, and stonecutting arrowheads. Sven wouldn’t tell me anything. Hopefully that would change at the meeting tonight. With his inner circle.

We reached the mare. “How often does Sven have a vision?”

“Once a day.” I rubbed the nose of his horse as he removed the bridle. The stallion shook me off, not quite as affectionate as the mare. “Though he doesn’t always share their contents.” I often wondered how much Sven knew about other things. Secret things. Even about me.

Bastiaan opened his mouth, then closed it. Did he have the same uneasy feeling about Sven’s vision? I wrestled with guilt over my suspicion. Wasn’t that exactly what I had feared as the Wishtress? That if people—if Sven—knew what I was, they would fear me, hate me, use me, suspect me?

That’s what Oma had raised me to believe.

That’s what Oma did.

I couldn’t afford to invite guilt to the hearth of my heart. I had to let the heart embers die out. Turn cold. Ice over so I didn’t feel the things that would stir up emotions. I needed to approach my Wishtress Talent with indifference. Shut off the temptation to let others’ needs sway me. So I needed answers. Knowledge. About myself. And Bastiaan was the only person I knew who had that.

I took a breath to steel myself. “You know so much about Talents . . .” Tell him you’re the Wishtress. Tell him now. I took another breath—

“That’s because I have one.” The blunt way in which Bastiaan said this held resignation. Bitterness, even.

I stared, my sprinting thoughts crashing into a snow berm. Bastiaan had made the pilgrimage? Survived it? As a commoner?

He had a Talent! He was like me! “Why . . . why would you tell me?” I’d lived seventeen years chained to the code of secrecy. I’d assumed most other Talented did too.

“Because the whole kingdom is about to know.” He wrapped his saddle and tack in an earth-toned blanket, then tucked the lot of it inside a tree hollow. “I wanted to tell someone of my own volition—as a friend, not as a strategic informant.”

“Are we friends then?” I joked.

“I suppose if we have to be. I can endure it.” His joke seemed pained, weighed down by whatever happened to Runt.

“So you’ve been to the Well?” What if Bastiaan could take me there? I wouldn’t have to threaten Sven. Was there anything I could offer Bastiaan that would compel him to do so? He never accepted my coin, I had no wish, and our “friendship” certainly wasn’t enough reason. If only I’d stowed away some of Oma’s wish stash instead of smashing them!

“A long time ago.”