I start toward the palace on foot, sure it will take the guards far longer to realize I have gone than it would take the stable hands to discover a missing mount. Still, I am breathing hard soon after I start. Halfway there I have to stop and rest on a stump.
You’re fine, I tell myself. Get up.
It takes me a long time to make it to the palace. As I walk toward the doors, I square my shoulders and try not to show just how exhausted I am.
“Seneschal,” one of the guards at the gate says. “Your pardon, but you are barred from the palace.”
You will never deny me an audience or give an order to keep me from your side. For a delirious moment, I wonder if I’ve been in the Undersea for longer than Linn told me. Maybe a year and a day is up. But that’s impossible. I narrow my gaze. “By whose com
