e that. Not in a palace with for

ros, Mara, and Marek, around the great southern table wit

ou are. Run befo

, or both? Two: how does anyone outside these walls know what Ayra is, when half our own court still believes she's a lucky healer with a famous grandmother? Three: why would Ceri

c. No one in this kingdom says *he* with that particula

ir, the suffering. But binding-work, the coven's kind of work, runs by the dark moon, when the goddess's li

a cursed court and watched the other one come out of it a queen. If Aldric approaches Cerise with *flattery* - with a place at the new court, with her father's debts cleared - she'd run his errands. But Cerise is also a coward, and cowards keep one foot on the escape stair. If the errand she'

he family talent for clean decisions," he said. "

only one door it can walk through. Someone inside carried it out." She let that sit in the candlelight

was Ansa

: I had *liked* her - her quick hands, her gossip, the way she hummed while she braided my hair. She was nineteen. She had

use," I said.

e way it now sometimes did. "A caught spy is worth more than a closed mouth. If Aldric learns we've caught her, he simply grow

out of the truest bai

hat the king had begun sleeping armed. I let Ansa brush out my hair while I "struggled" not to cry. On the third night, I gave her the crown jewel: I "confessed" to her, teary, that the curse could not be healed fr

down,* as Mara put it. Then we w

longed to th

p with her like a second shadow with better posture. The palace at night is a strange place: forty candles' worth of sleeping life, and everywhere else the breathing dark. Ansa went down the service stair, al

hearth: "Good girl. And the healer's moon-ma

y lord. She's frightened. They're sending f

lace knew that voice. It sang toasts at dinner and managed the kingdom's grain and had never once raised it. "Thank you, child. Here - for your family. And Ansa? The da

check, the way we'd learned each other. I was shaking with fury, and he knew

run for the east wing with her payment and her terror. And then we stood in the dark gallery to

g to *use* you - a healer's blood in a coven's chalice on the goddess's blindest night, in the one room of this palace older than my family. He doesn't want you dead. He wants you *spent*." His jaw set. "A spent

im believe all

l away. I stood in a dark gallery plotting rings around a prince who

"Let him spend his gold on the chalice. Let him sleep-walk his captains into the chapel on the dark moon. And while the stitched eyes are watching the front door-" I felt my own smile

murmured. "The Blackmire

thing. "Every curse they've ever sold is a chain with a *receipt*. And I am the last of the line that can unmake what has been made. The Bl

ogether in the dark - and then he laughed, low and helpless and entirely real, the first true laugh I'd heard fro

oins and her guilt, found us - and fled, scarlet, in the wrong

my mouth. "Or was that twenty days of watch

moon," I said, "if

brother spends you like a coin in front of the whole court. And there is nothing in any contract in this world that protects you from the thing I felt tonight when I heard his v

e helpless somewhere useful.

ened, something vast and bound and half-my-mother shifted in its

ince the lists were written, I almost pitied t

mo