When I returned to Ashcombe, the air stank of something more than firewood. Whispers. Rumors. A sense that the wind itself carried warning. My absence had lasted less than two days, and already, I was late to my own shadow.
Harroway met me in the lower cloisters, his arms crossed and eyes sharper than I’d left them.
"You disappeared," he said.
"I told you I would."
"You didn’t say you'd vanish without sending a single signal. You didn’t say you'd sign a pact with a rebellion."
I raised an eyebrow. "So the court knows?"
"The court suspects. The Queen knows. Arabella has already begun twisting the narrative."
"Let her. It won’t be the first time she's tried to use fire to frighten children."
He blinked. "What did they give you out there?"
I lifted my glove and unbuttoned the wrist.
