“A good man?”
“We made up afterward.”
Alaric rolled his eyes. He was determined to dislike Ronan.
I dipped my chin. “He brought me here so I could keep you from inflicting death upon yourself.”
“And he’s no doubt waiting with men at all the entrances of this passageway to arrest me so he can find out the whereabouts of my companions.”
“He already knows the whereabouts of our entire party. He could’ve turned us in for treason but instead created a story about a foreign wizard being to blame for the attacks on the wizards. He agreed to let the rest of you go. You can leave in the morning, if you want. I’ve asked you to take word to Gwenyth’s relatives of her condition so you’ve an excuse to go.”
Alaric put his elbows on his knees and considered this. “I don’t want to leave Gwenyth. I’ll wait a day or two and see if she’s able to travel. The sooner she leaves this place, the better. If she’s not able to travel, well, I’ll have to go report to Grey and Sutton that Mage Warison discovered our plans. They’ll want to move me somewhere else, give me a new identity.”
My heart squeezed tight. I’d saved Alaric’s life but I was still losing him.
He turned to me, his brown hair shaggy, his eyes resigned. “When I leave, will I ever see you again?”
I shrugged and teared up. For the last few years, Alaric had been my dearest friend. And now he would leave, disappear. He took me in his arms and hugged me. We stayed that way for a while, embracing in the dark corridor. I tried to memorize the feel of his arms, his scent, his voice so it wouldn’t be completely lost to me.
Finally, he stood to go.
“Be careful when you return to the stables,” I said. “The king’s men all went on alert after I took Zephyr’s mark.”
Alaric nodded and put the cloak back on. Then he was gone.
I sleptthrough breakfast and might have missed the mid-day meal if Alice hadn’t come in to help me dress. By that time, I’d just finished washing off the remaining smudges of dirt that had escaped my notice last night.
“Mage Warison told me not to come this morning,” she said, gathering my kirtle and gown. “He said you were up late tending to Gwenyth. How does she fare?”
I wished I knew. “Better than I’d expected.” This was true as she hadn’t been arrested and executed for treason.
“Well, you’ve missed such an abundance of news this morning, such happenings, that you’ll fear sleeping in again lest you wake up and find the world run by fairies and imps.”
Alice dressed me, relating the attack on Zephyr—mage no more—and that Mage Warison had fought and destroyed the foreign wizard responsible for the attacks. This was indeed a heroic tale with the two grappling at one point as lions. It ended with the foreign wizard, near death, avoiding capture andinterrogation by uttering a spell that dissolved him like dew on the grass.
“But we can guess right enough who sent him,” Alice said as she finished lacing up my gown, “because the most shocking news of all is that last night Lord Clement tried to kill King Leofric. Can you imagine? His own brother-in-law. He died in the attempt, although no one is saying how that happened.”
She brushed my hair, continuing with more details and their accompanying outrage. She only occasionally stopped to pull bits of rubble from my tresses and asked, “La, how in the world did you get pebbles in your hair?”
That either happened when I crawled down the castle wall, knocking off rock flecks as I went, or when I wrestled Ronan on the top of the tower. “I’ve no idea,” I said.
She was too absorbed in her gossip to consider the matter. “Poor Princess Beatrice. She’s beside herself. Her husband’s attack was an act of war, it was. Though I doubt there’ll be any talk of such from King Leofric. He loves his sister, he does. He’ll probably offer to send men to help her rule her lands, lest any interlopers see her as weak.”
The nice thing about having an overly talkative lady’s maid was I didn’t have to say anything at all. She didn’t notice my silence and probably thought I was too enthralled with her news to speak.
In truth, I didn’t want to think about any of it: Lord Clement’s bulging eyes or the shocked betrayal in King Leofric’s voice. I wished I could see Ronan again, talk to him and have him reassure me everything would be fine. He’d said he wanted me to stay at Valistowe, and I’d agreed to that when I became part of the king’s council.
Now, sitting in front of a looking glass, I’d no idea what to expect next. What would I be doing each day and where exactly would I live?
Would Ronan announce that I was staying on because he was courting me? If he wanted a respectable relationship, he would need to make his intentions public, despite his desire for secrecy. The thought of strolling with him every night through the castle gardens seemed like a prize.
Alice finished with my plaits and began tying them in place with ribbons. “At breakfast, Wolfson insisted the attack on Zephyr proved he was innocent of taking any of the wizards’ marks, but the other mages are having none of it. They said Wolfson was likely working with Lord Clement. Little good his innocence will do him at this point anyway. His magic is gone, he can’t teach at Docendum, and he’s been banished from court. Such a topple in fortunes. Who knows what he’ll do now? Might have to learn how to push a plow. At least Zephyr will be allowed to stay on at the castle as an advisor, even though he hasn’t a lick of magic anymore.”
I did feel a bit sorry for Zephyr, although I hoped a humbler position might be good for his disposition. I couldn’t feel sorry for Wolfson. I wondered where he’d go for work and imagined what would transpire if, unprotected as he was now, he ever happened on any of the Colsbury villagers who knew of his order to burn their village.
After Alice finished with me, I stopped by Lady Edith’s chambers to accompany her to the meal. I needed to tell her that Alaric would be leaving soon.
Joanne was pinning Lady Edith’s headdress in place. Lady Edith surveyed me through the looking glass with the same air of tolerant disapproval she’d frequently worn during our stay at court and made a tutting sound with her tongue. “Another night, another uproar, another wizard incapacitated.”