Your father doesn’t like you to stay out late?” Locke gives me a pitying look.
I know he’s just trying to make me feel childish when he knows perfectly well why I shouldn’t be there, but even though I am aware of what he’s doing, it works.
Locke’s estate is more modest than Madoc’s and less fortified. Tall spires covered in shingles of mossy bark rise between the trees. The spiraling vines of ivy and honeysuckle that twine up the sides turn the whole thing green and leafy.
“Wow,” I say. I have ridden by here and seen those spires in the distance, but I never knew to whose house they belonged. “Beautiful.”
He gives me a quick grin. “Let’s go inside.”
Although there is a pair of grand doors in the front, he takes me around to a small door on the side that leads directly to the kitchens.
