She found the carriage ride unexpectedly relaxing, for she hadn’t been forced to make polite conversation with her absent suitor. Katkin took the opportunity to gaze out the windows as they passed street after street, climbing steadily to the heights above the City, to the shoulders of Mount Hythea herself. The finest houses in St. Valery perched here on the steeply sloping mountainside, above the smoke and dirt of the City, like so many fancy eyries. She would have enjoyed this unaccustomed view of the City, spread out before her like a fairy world of twinkling lights, if she wasn’t dreading the ball quite so much.
Presently, they turned on to a long winding drive, after passing through a set of magnificent gates emblazoned with the white horse crest and bearing the name “Havenwood.” Kat
