But she didn’t care about the prince, or the tea, or the dress. She could barely walk back to her room, and that night she dreamt of the maggot invading her mind, waking with screams and flames in her mouth.
At dawn, her parents took her out of the castle, headed for their manor two days away. Their foreign visitors might have caused too much stress, the healer said. She suggested Lady Marion take her, but her parents insisted they go. Her uncle approved. The King of Adarlan, it seemed, would not stay in the castle with her magic running rampant, either.
Aedion remained in Orynth, her parents promising he would be sent for when she was settled again. But she knew it was for his safety. Lady Marion went with them, leaving her husband and Elide at the palace—for their safety, too.
A monster, that was what she was. A monster who had to be contained and monitored.
Her parents argued the first two nights at the manor, and Lady Marion kept her company, reading to her, brushing her hair, telling her stories of her home in Perranth. Marion had been a laundress in the palace from her childhood. But when Evalin arrived, they had become friends—mostly because the princess had stained her new husband’s favorite shirt with ink and wanted to get it cleaned before he noticed.
Evalin soon made Marion her lady-in-waiting, and then Lord Lochan had returned from a rotation on the southern border. Handsome Cal Lochan, who somehow became the dirtiest man in the castle and constantly needed Marion’s advice on how to remove various stains. Who one day asked a bastard-born servant to be his wife—and not just wife, but Lady of Perranth, the second-largest territory in Terrasen. Two years later, she had borne him Elide, heir of Perranth.
She loved Marion’s stories, and it was those stories she clung to in the quiet and tension of the next few days, when winter still gripped the world and made the manor groan.
The house was creaking in the brisk winds the night her mother walked into her bedroom—far less grand than the one in the palace, but still lovely. They only summered here, as the house was too drafty for winter, and the roads too perilous. The fact that they’d come . . .
“Still not asleep?” her mother asked. Lady Marion rose from beside the bed. After a few warm words, Marion left, smiling at them both.
Her mother curled up on the mattress, drawing her in close. “I’m sorry,” her mother whispered onto her head. For the nightmares had also been of drowning—of icy water closing over her head. “I am so sorry, Fireheart.”
She buried her face in her mother’s chest, savoring the warmth.
“Are you still frightened of sleeping?”
She nodded, clinging tighter.
“I have a gift, then.” When she didn’t move, her mother said, “Don’t you wish to see it?”
She shook her head. She didn’t want a gift.
“But this will protect you from harm—this will keep you safe always.”
She lifted her head to find her mother smiling as she removed the golden chain and heavy, round medallion from beneath her nightgown and held it out to her.
She looked at the amulet, then at her mother, eyes wide.
The Amulet of Orynth. The heirloom honored above all others of their house. Its round disk was the size of her palm, and on its cerulean front, a white stag had been carved of horn—horn gifted from the Lord of the Forest. Between his curling antlers was a burning crown of gold, the immortal star that watched over them and pointed the way home to Terrasen. She knew every inch of the amulet, had run her fingers over it countless times and memorized the shape of the symbols etched into the back—words in a strange language that no one could remember.