of the story of Fox, Wolf, and Bear. How none of them could trust the others.
Crier looked down at her own hands and imagined, for a moment, her fingers dipped in violet blood.
Minutes later, Crier sat in the chair across from her father, the two of them alone in his study, and tried not to let the guilt and horror show on her face.
Murderer. That’s what she was.
Luckily, Hesod was lost in his own thoughts, surfacing only to bark orders at the servants who kept arriving at the door. Ready the carriages, curry the horses, pack clothes and heartstone for three days’ ride, prepare a party of guards and footservants, send word ahead to the estates of the deceased. They were going on a mourning tour. It was like the victory tour Hesod had taken in the weeks after he was crowned sovereign, but instead of victory in the air there was nothing but death, and shock, and Hesod’s simmering anger. He was taking the deaths of his Red Hands personally.
If he ever found out Crier’s role in their murders—
No. He wouldn’t find out.
He couldn’t.
“Daughter.”
Crier started. Hesod was watching her closely from across the desk. She tried to seem blank, nothing but dully empathetic and concerned for him. “Yes?”
“I leave for the South in an hour to pay my respects to the estates of Councilmembers Laone and Shasta and Lord Foer. You will remain here while I am gone and keep up with your studies and your normal duties. That is all.”
Maybe a month ago, Crier would have accepted this without question. But something about spending so much time around Ayla—who questioned everything from Kinok’s motives to Crier’s preferred bathing oils—made her sit up a little straighter, and shake her head.
“No,” she said. “I have a relationship with Rosi, Foer’s promised wife. Foer’s death will be weighing on her. I—I must go see her and make sure she is all right.”
Hesod regarded her coldly. “After everything that happened last week on the night of Junn’s visit, what makes you think I trust you to manage part of this tour?”
“This is a way for me to rebuild that trust,” Crier insisted, even though his words stung. “You can spend more time with the Red Hands’ families—they are higher ranked than Foer, are they not? I can go alone to Rosi’s estate and comfort her myself.” She leaned forward. “I want to prove myself to you, Father. I made a mistake, being so lenient with—with the handmaiden. I know I disappointed you. Let me make amends.”
He was still hesitating.
“I only wish to perform what is my duty to, to the state, Father,” she went on. “Foer’s estate, where Rosi had taken up residence during their courtship, is barely a day’s ride south, near the border of Varn and the border village of Elderell. I can be gone for less than forty-eight hours, if that’s what you want. How would it look for me to ignore my closest companion right now?”
“Fine,” Hesod said. “You may go. But if anything goes wrong, daughter, anything at all . . .”
“Nothing will go wrong, Father,” Crier said. “I promise.”
As Crier left her father’s study, she caught the first servant she saw. “Send for the handmaiden Ayla,” she ordered the girl. “Tell her she is to meet me by the stables immediately.”
“Yes, my lady.”
The girl scurried off and Crier stalked through the halls back to her bedchamber, taking a precious few minutes to dress herself—her hands fumbling, unused to tying the laces herself. Then she threw two days’ worth of clothes into a trunk.
She felt wild, heart skittering, reminding her for a moment of the tiny, rapid heartbeats she’d heard radiating up from a rabbit’s den all those weeks ago, during her Hunt.
She really was going to comfort Rosi. To force herself to witness the effects of what she’d done, in the wake of Foer’s murder. But she had another, ulterior motive for traveling south.
The village of Elderell.
A place Councilmember Reyka had mentioned a few times over the years, though she’d never said why such a tiny speck of a village was significant to her. Crier had asked once, and Reyka had said only: “I’ve business there.”
Now, Crier couldn’t help but wonder if that business had something to do with her disappearance.
Grabbing her traveler’s bag, Crier made her way out of the palace and toward the stables, where there would already be a carriage waiting for her. The morning sun was hidden behind thick gray clouds, the