POV: Gina
The guards didn't notice me at first. That was the useful thing about being a maid: people talked over you like furniture, right up until the moment they remembered that furniture doesn't usually blink.
"—footprints weren't hers, though. That's the part nobody's saying out loud."
"How do you know they weren't hers?"
"Because these ones were there before she ever went in. Days before. The King said so himself."
I stopped walking. The linens in my arms suddenly felt very heavy.
"Said so to who?"
"Varric. Who said it to half the guard captains, who apparently can't keep their mouths shut, which is how I know."
"So, who was in there first?"
"That's the part nobody's saying."
I made myself keep walking before they noticed me standing there like a woman who'd just had the fl
