Page 5 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

“Good afternoon, my lady,” he said with a little bow. “Cucumber and tomato sandwiches, my lady, and the morning post, which came late, I’m sorry to say. Would you prefer lemonade or mint tea with your lunch?”

Immediately, my mind cleared and my heart leaped into my throat.

The morning post.

“Lemonade, please, Gilroy,” I said, barely restraining myself from snatching the stack of letters right out of his hand. Quickly, I sorted through them. An alarmingly thick envelope from our cousin Delia, an Anointed silvertongue who lived on the southern coast and never tired of the sound of her own voice. A booklet of advertisements for various shops in Derryndell, Tullacross, and Summer’s Amble, the nearest settlements of note. Notices of payments owed to Mrs.Rathmont’s favorite grocer, Father’s tailor, the elemental carpenter who repaired our formal four-horse coach…

Then, at the bottom, two more letters. One bore the rather severe, slanted penmanship with which I had unfortunately grown familiar over the past weeks. It belonged to Ryder Bask, talented Anointed wilder and insufferable ass, son of Lord Alaster Bask. The Basks had for years been my family’s greatest enemies, and now? In the wake of everything we had done in the Old Country? After freeing Talan from the curse that bound him to the creature Kilraith, thereby eliminating the evil force behind our families’ long feud?

I shoved the letter into my coat pocket. I couldn’t handle a missive from Ryder Bask at the moment. The contents would no doubt give me a raging headache: yet another report about increased sightings of Old Country beasts in the northern Mistlands, or an obviously irritated request for us to finally allow him and his horrid sister to visit, or some finicky detail about the speech we were all meant to give at the upcoming royal ball. A speech commemorating a new era ofpeacebetween the continent’s two most powerful families.

Peace.The word sat askance in my mind. Gilroy had gone to the sideboard, his back to me, so I allowed myself to make a quick ugly face at my plate.

Then I ripped open the other letter, the one sealed with a red wax insignia in the shape of a rose. When I tore open the seal, a hot pane of magic cracked open at my touch, allowing me in with a slight shock to my fingertips. A bit of spellwork, no doubt implemented by one of the Order’s beguilers to prevent tampering.

Dearest sisters, read the letter in Mara’s plain, efficient handwriting,I miss you both terribly and wish I was writing with better news…

I pushed my chair back hard and jumped to my feet just as Gilroy approached the table with my glass of lemonade. I knocked into him, sloshing the drink all over his front. He let out a little grunt, andhis bushy black eyebrows shot up in dismay, but then I turned to him, holding the letter to my chest like the precious thing it was, and breathed, “It’s from Mara.”

His face brightened at once, the spilled lemonade forgotten. “Go, my lady,” he said, shooing me away with one stained white glove. “I believe Lady Gemma is in the library.”

I beamed at him and hurried out of the room, but before I could get even halfway across the entrance hall’s gleaming parquet floor, the sound of murmured voices made me turn.

Father was emerging from the corridor on the other side of the hall, accompanied by two people I didn’t know: a lean woman with dark brown skin who wore a smart white gown and matching jacket, and a ruddy-faced man, clean shaven, auburn hair curling at his collar. His body sat awkwardly in a brown suit with a dark blue waistcoat, as if he had never worn such garments before. They came out onto the entrance hall floor in pieces: a gloved hand, a polished boot, a crisp hem. Shadows snapped around their bodies, and the air near them wavered as if turned liquid with heat. The sour tang of magic filled the room, making my bile rise and my stomach drop.

It was no wonder I’d not been able to find Father upon returning to the house. He’d made sure I couldn’t, that no one could, shutting himself and his companions away behind some sort of spell that hid their voices, their very presence.

Father was no beguiler, deft with spellwork; he was a sentinel, Anointed by the gods with extraordinary strength and speed, unthinkable prowess in combat. One of his guests must have been a beguiler, then, though I couldn’t tell which one simply by looking at them. I looked at their faces for a long moment, trying to make sense of it. I didn’t know them; how did I not know them? I knew every one of Father’s guests, all his friends and enemies, every merchant whose goods he preferred and why.

What was he doing meeting with some beguiler I didn’t know?

I hid Mara’s letter in my coat pocket, lifted my chin, and strode across the entrance hall to meet them with what I hoped was some kind of smile on my face.

“There you are, Father,” I said brightly. “I didn’t realize we were entertaining guests today. I’ll inform Mrs. Rathmont at once so she can adjust our supper menu.”

Father smiled fondly at me, as if I were silly for talking about such things as menus. “No need, dear heart,” he said, kissing my cheek. “My friends were just leaving.”

I glanced over his shoulder at hisfriends, these strangers whose stony expressions chilled me to the bone. But their gall brought me courage; this wasmyhouse, not theirs.

“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I really must speak with my father for a moment,” I said.

I put a firm hand on Father’s arm and guided him across the hall into one of the adjacent anterooms, where the walls were sky-blue velvet and the ceiling was covered in Mother’s ivy vines.

“Who are those people?” I demanded in a whisper.

Father looked at me hard and said nothing. The quiet, cold patience of his gaze made something queasy unfurl in my stomach, but he wouldn’t cow me as easily as that.

“I don’t know them,” I went on. “Who are they?”

“Is it a requirement that I introduce to you everyone I bring into my own home?” he said smoothly.

It was meant to make me feel stupid and childish, the sort of question he might have launched at Gemma to discourage her from meddling, but never at me. I’d always been the one to meddle alongside him. I had known the truth of things long before Gemma had figured it out: that the demon who held our family under his control was real, that the path to his lair lay inside the old oak by the fountain, and thatthere were eighteen greenways scattered across our estate of which Gemmastillremained unaware.

And now my father was looking at me as if none of that was true, as if every confidence we’d shared, every worry he’d confessed to me, was some figment of a needy daughter’s imagination.

“Yes, itisa requirement,” I replied, unflinching, “because I live here too, and I oversee the daily workings of our house, and I’m not accustomed to having strangers roaming about.”

“They were hardly roaming. They were with me.”

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