20. Torgan
TORGAN
Three days later, I lift my coat from its hook to ride for Starling Vale.
That’s when I know something is wrong with it.
I stop with it halfway on. Harek waits in the corridor with the saddlebags while I stand there like an idiot, one arm in a sleeve, trying to name what my body already knows.
The familiar weight is gone.
The left breast pocket. I’ve carried the small glass vial there for months, and my shoulders know it the way they know a sword’s balance.
The coat came off the hook lighter than it should have.
“My lord?” Harek says.
I reach into the pocket and find only the seams inside.
Nothing.
It’s empty.
“My lord,” Harek says again. His hand has gone to his axe. “What is it?”
I pat the other pockets, panic rising through me. They’re empty too, which doesn’t make sense, because...
Because...
The vial is gone.
“When did I last wear this coat?”
He doesn’t ask why. That’s Harek for you. “The wedding, my lord. You’ve ridden in your brown coat since.”
The wedding.
It hung on the rack beside the feast tables for six hours in the dark while two hundred people watched the ceremony. While I danced with Lissy and made love to her for the first time.
Not once did I think about my coat, because it was the best night of my life.
One night. I stopped watching it for one night, and someone watched me let down my guard.
I’m going to be sick.
“Harek. Get the guest list from Saskia’s wedding. I want to know whether anyone was seen near the coats—”
Boots pound on the stairs. Fast. Their owner takes them three at a time.
Saskia takes the last four in one jump, still in her nightgown. She and Mikka are staying at the Hall while their home is prepared.
I was glad for the extra time with her.
Now I wonder if it will be my ruin.
“Torgan,” she demands. “Have you seen Mirelle this morning?”
“No. Why?”
“Because Ysolde found this on the hall table.”
She holds out a folded page. I take it and scan the words.
It isn’t a letter. It’s a draft of one. Mirelle’s neat handwriting is loose and scratched through from top to bottom, like she searched for the right words and didn’t care enough to destroy the attempts she left behind.
“The real one went out by rider last night,” Saskia says. “To Valeforth. To Caden.” She swallows. “She ended it, Torgan. The families don’t suit. I return the ring with my thanks. Her thanks.”
She grabs my arm, searching my face. “That isn’t the work of someone with a broken heart. When I banged on her door this morning, she opened it and looked at me like... like...”
“Like nothing,” I say.
My voice comes out flat.
“Like a stranger being polite about the weather.”
Saskia stares at me. “How do you know that?”
Because a witch told me the price months ago, while the woman I love stood four steps away.
“Anger, or indifference, or something,” the witch had said. “About a month. Then it breaks, and she feels everything it held back.”
Someone stole a month of my sister’s heart with a weapon I bought, carried, and kept while telling no one about it.
There is one man in the four realms who wanted this courtship dead, and he told me so in his own gallery.
I told him no.
He told me we would see.
Now we are seeing exactly what he meant.
“Torgan.” Saskia’s voice drops into a low warning. “What are you hiding?”
I never could hide anything from her.
“Get Ysolde, Brynna, and Mirelle,” I say. “Ma and Pa too. All of them in the hall. Now. There are things I should have said months ago.”
Harek is already moving.
Saskia doesn’t. She looks at the letter, then at me. Something dawns behind her eyes that I would give anything to stop.
“Torgan?”
“I fucked up, Saskia.” I drag both hands through my hair because I can’t think of anything else to do. “I fucked up Mirelle’s life.”