“My oldest,” said the butcher. “Felix. He’s still with me. I’m grateful for him. Nearly lost him, too, a few months ago, but he’s waiting at home now.”

“Was he ill also?”

“No, no. He’s healthy as any child I’ve ever seen. Great big boy: only just twelve, but he does as much work as me. Maybe more.” The tips of the man’s ears glowed with pride. “He’s so good with the animals… I think the piglets grow faster just to please him. No.” He shook his head. “It was the king’s men that came, not believing he was my own. His mother already gone, they thought—I don’t know. Perhaps they thought I’d found him and claimed him as mine. They had him and a few other children nearly out of the village before we were able to stop them.”

“The king’s men were taking children?” A chill crept along Alba’s skin. She thought of the king’s desperate howling—They must be found now!—echoing in the oracle’s chamber. Though Maurus had kept her informed, as well as he could, on the nights he could sneak away from the kitchens, she had not heard this.

“Oh, yes. Any that looked, oh, just around eleven or so. Any who might not have belonged to their family.”

“How did you stop them?”

“We were lucky. We had a fellow who fancied himself a… chronicler in our village. We always thought him a strange, little man forever asking things and notching lines—Who sold this? Who married her? How many cows did he butcher? What did she name her child?—but weren’t we glad when someone thought to fetch him and his parchments and we galloped after the men. I can’t read myself, but all the little dark lines he’d scratched, well, I guess they marked all the births.”

Alba found she was shaking. “The king is taking children,” she repeated. She heard her own voice echoing across the years: The sibling will bring your own fall. And no one will weep. And no one will mourn. Her words. Her prophecy. Of course he would do anything to thwart it.

She put her fingers to her mouth.

Mirror only, she tried to remind herself of the oracle’s words. I was a mirror only.

“You all right, then?” The butcher turned to her. “Not much further to the house. Thought you might stay with us while you get your bearings. We don’t have much, but you’re welcome to what we have. Always a salt hock to be found if you’re peckish. And sometimes, just knowing there’s enough to eat keeps a person from feeling too hungry.”

Alba, lost in thought, did not answer. Too hungry. That was the king in his ravenous search for the twins. She stared at the shadows around them and saw the king ranging through them, hunting desperately.

The butcher cleared his throat—an awkward, unsure sound. “But if you’d rather not… I know an oracle must be used to finer—”

Alba started. “No, no,” she said quickly. “This is all so kind of you; I don’t know how I can ever repay—”