summer solstice, were still in pieces in the tailoring suite. Her betrothal gown, though, already hung on Elly’s bedroom wall, the scarlet and gold wrapped in fine gauze to keep off the dust. Elly had endured the fittings stoically. She’d seemed much more interested in the green gown being made for Judah, and the ferocity she devoted to that one was almost frightening. Elly had insisted for months that this once, at least, Judah would have her own dress, made just for her. Since Judah had been burned, Elly had put all of her energy into making sure that dress was perfect, with the result that the gown hanging in Judah’s little alcove actually fit her. It was even flattering, and—Judah grudgingly admitted—quite beautiful, with an embroidered silver vine crawling up from the hem and down from the neckline. The dress had long sleeves to hide her burns, which were crusted but healing (thanks, in large part, to Darid’s skill in tending them). Elly even had something planned for Judah’s hair. She refused to say what it was, but hinting about it was the only thing that made Elly smile.
Judah didn’t see why her appearance mattered, but would not deny Elly any pleasure she could find these days. Everything was suspended: there was no studying, no training. Only the oiling of the rushes happened on schedule, and that probably would have been put off too had Elly not been grimly determined that it should happen. Too often an assertive tap at the door brought a summons from the Seneschal, ordering Elly and Gavin to meet with some important courtier—people familiar to Gavin, though Elly knew them only by name. Inevitably they came back drained, as if smiling their way through the formalities of introduction had taken all they had. And why wouldn’t it? Judah had to assume that, at this point, all the courtiers knew Gavin and Elly’s betrothal would never happen. At the ball, Elban would make the announcement: Amie of Porterfield would step into Elly’s place, and everyone would pretend to be surprised—or not—but in the meantime, the fiction had to be maintained. The courtiers were probably enjoying it immensely.
In private, Elly ignored Gavin. Gavin knew better than to try to mend the breach. He spent hours on the terrace, attacking the target Theron had set up before the hunt. He shot arrows. He threw knives. From the way his heart beat, Judah guessed that he was imagining them landing in vital parts of his father’s body. Sometimes Judah watched, sometimes she didn’t. She tried to spend time away from the House, in the stables or the pastures or even the orchard. Every time she saw a guard wearing Elban’s scarlet badge, she wondered if she were looking at the guard who’d been assigned to murder her, or Elly or Theron.
Theron, as it turned out, was the only one of the four of them who remained untroubled. He had reclaimed the music box he’d fixed for Elly, and he spent hours sitting in Gavin’s room listening to the uncomfortable little tune. If he was asked to get up or move or eat or wash, he did so, occasionally with help, but a part of him seemed never to have woken up. When he was spoken to, he answered, and when she could think of enough questions to ask in a row it was almost like talking to the old Theron. He still gave off a faint sense that he was waiting for you to finish talking instead of actually listening, but where the old Theron’s waiting had been colored with impatience, in the new Theron there was just...nothing. It was as if he were waiting for a clock to finish chiming. As soon as she ran out of questions, he would go back to the music box. Once, when Judah brought him coffee, she found that he’d opened the side of the box, and felt a thrill of hope. But he watched the gears spinning inside with the same vague interest he applied to the shadows moving across the wall, or the coffee she brought him.
She hated Gavin’s hurt; she hated Elly’s self-isolation. But it was Theron who filled Judah with hopelessness. Sometimes she thought she would welcome the walled tower, when it came, if it meant she didn’t have to see those distant eyes anymore, and know they were her fault.
Two days before the ball, someone knocked on the door. Theron was listening to his music box