Ahot, sickly breeze swept the circular room. Two of the torches flanking the statue flared to life, their flames sputtering against the stillness. On the altar, the topmost book began to glow, its light slow and pulsing, like a heartbeat.
Even the Bugul Noz sounded unsteady. “Thank you,” he murmured. “That one is yours.”
Garin didn’t speak. He strode forward in silence, lifted the glowing red book from the altar, and turned away from the statue. He sank onto one of the stone benches lining the sanctum, tucked the book into his vest pocket, and dropped his face into his hands.
“Where did you get it?” Lilac asked quietly.He’d been searching for it.
“It came to me, as with everything here. I did not seek it,” the Bugul Noz said, sounding tired. “Just after the war, His Majesty, John the Gentlehand, had thrown it into the courtyard pond in a fit of rage one night. It’s been calling out to you these past few weeks.
“What is it?” Garin’s voice was a scrape against their throats—a nicking blade.
“I don’t know,” he said wistfully. “I myself cannot read any of the closed books or journals here, not until they’re reunited with their original owners, or those who can use them most. Even then, I’m not privy to theinformation unless someone decides to share it with me. I’m stuck with the unbound letters, manuscripts, and whatnot.” He tapped his head with a sad smile. “Memorized most of them.”
A strange, unnatural stillness had fallen, thick and heavy. Even the pair of torches seemed to hush their flames. Garin’s fury, moments ago barely restrained, had been swallowed whole—as if the chamber itself demanded silence.
“You’re next, Your Majesty.”
“Do it if you want to,” Garin interjected, releasing a handful of his hair. “Onlyif you want to. If not, I’ll get us out of here.”
The Bugul Noz’s eyes bulged in protest, but Lilac stepped up the statue, glaring up at the woman, raising her chin and sheathing the Dawnshard.
Her eyes fluttered shut and spoke from within. Deep within.
“I am Eleanor Trécesson, daughter of a house that fears its own blood.”The words reverberated in her own ears, skull, and bones.“Queen by blood and burden. Daughter of Henri, who named me ‘Lilac’ for the softness he invented to make sense of me. A softness he yearned. A flower—fragile, sweet, blooming in spring.”
Her voice sharpened, but didn’t rise.“But the season of my birth is the only soft thing about me. He never understood that lilacs root best in ruin. That they bloom in silence, and thrive in the abandoned soil of crypts as well as castle hedges. He named me gently because he could not bear the thing I was becoming.
“I speak now not as a bride, nor as a daughter, but as the blade he tried to silence in moments when love was rationed like breath. I was given fire before I was given choice, and tonight I carry both.”
The woman ranthrough the cobblestone alley, even as no one chased her.
Her turnshoes splashed through puddles fouled with soot and slop, her too-large cloak flaring behind her. The eve was dense, thick with mist dulling the sound of her slamming footfall.
Somewhere, far behind, the abbey bell tolled midnight.
She didn’t hesitate, not when the alley twisted unnaturally, not whenthe shadows bent in directions they shouldn’t, or when she thought she saw one of her husband’s castle guards lurking in the fog.
Not even when the crooked sign appeared ahead of her, exactly where it should’ve been—above the warped door adorned in peeling red paint.
The Fool's Folly.
The jester carved into the sign grinned wide, its remaining eye whittled to a jagged hole. It was watching over her. Judging. The Folly never forgot the Fool’s whims.
Even those done in the dark.
She pulled the wool hood over her head and entered without knocking. The brothel’s warmth hit her—cheap perfumed heat and candlelight, bodies pressed close in shadows, laughter rising and falling like the waves during a full moon.
At the bar on the far wall, she spoke the words without ceremony. “Moonlit Path Tea.”
The barkeep didn’t flinch. A deep scar crossed his face, curling like a smile that hadn’t belonged to him; his amber eyes flashed orange. He polished a glass that didn’t need cleaning and nodded toward the hallway behind the bar, just as she’d been advised by the tea maker in Paimpont years and years ago.
She’d been here many times before, up to just a fewmonthsbefore, for a simpler sort of tea. Yet it hadn’t felt simple at the time.
Behind the curtain, the air cooled. The hallway narrowed into a short stairwell carved into the earth. The candles lining the walls burned blue, flickering in the absence of wind, their flames bending toward her as she passed. She descended quickly, though her breathing had changed—shallow, strained.
Above, the brothel throbbed with noise and sin. Before her—below—the silence thickened like the air.
The apothecary walls were ancient stone. Shelves flanked the room, heavy with jars filled with pressed flowers, floating organs, silver dust that moved in circles without wind. Herbs hung like trophies—dried, curled, and beckoning. A cauldron sat at the center of it all, bubbling with something that smelled of burnt cloves, satsumas, and rusted iron.
