used. I stop at the grocer’s and peer inside, but when I see there are still customers – people I used to know, in passing – I can’t bring myself to go in. I’ll get a cloak first and come back. Then I’ll find a way out.
I leave the main square and walk down the merchant’s lane towards the tailor’s. Each window that I pass has candles glowing inside, and families moving, and I’m filled with longing for home – my home. My old life is everywhere. I walk past the deserted blacksmith’s where Kirin used to work, and past the salt merchant’s house. I used to know his daughter a little, and I look up, halting when I see a circle with a line through it carved into the door. It’s familiar, and I frown.
“Errin?”
I whirl around, pulling at my belt for my knife, my hand stilling when I see who said my name.
Carys Dapplewood, Lirys’s mother and a second mother to me, stands half in shadow, a basket clutched in her hands. “Is it really you?”
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
“I saw you in the square,” she says, stepping forward. “I thought I was going mad. But I had to know… What are you doing, child?”
“I … I … I need a cloak and some food. Then I have to go.”
“What do you mean, you have to go? Where’s Lief? Where’s Trina? How long have you been back? Where are you staying?”
My heart starts to speed up, my throat closes in, and that familiar clammy feeling starts to crawl across my shoulders. I want to reply. I want to run. I’m not ready for this. I stare at her and shake my head.
Where’s Lief?
Without saying another word Carys drops her basket to the ground and takes my arm in one hand, the reins in the other. She leads us away quickly, saying nothing, and all the while the weight in my chest grows and grows. We cross the bridge and then I can see it, the Dapplewoods’ dairy, butter-yellow bricks and as familiar to me as my farm. Carys lets go of the reins and leads me to the front door, and I panic, trying to pull my arm away. Her grip is surprisingly strong for a woman her age, and I’m too busy trying to breathe to really struggle.
She opens the front door and calls for Lirys. I’m bathed in light and warmth, the smell of roasting meat, and it makes me want to weep. “I’ll take the horse to the barn,” she says, patting my arm and leaving me.
The sound of footsteps makes my stomach lurch and I brace myself for the blow of seeing my best friend for the first time since my father’s funeral.
She stands before me, blonde ringlets escaping from under a cap, her creamy skin flushed from the heat. She tilts her head to the side and the gesture reminds me of Silas. We stare at each other and I realize I’m poised to run.
“Errin?” she says finally, looking me over. I swallow, my eyes beginning to prickle under her scrutiny. “Is it really you? You look—” She pauses. “Well, I like your breeches,” she says. “Are they Lief’s? You look like him, with your hair like that. I thought you were him.” She peers over my shoulder expectantly, then back to me. “Is he with you? Are you back? Errin? Errin, are you well?”
Where’s Lief?
I stare at her, blood pounding in my ears, my too-fast heart drumming a tattoo.
Lief.
At no point during my plans – not when I was blackmailing Silas, not when I hoped to evacuate me and Mama to the Conclave, and not since I’ve been on the road have I included Lief in our future.
At no point when I’ve thought realistically about what will happen next has he been part of it. I haven’t included him in a long time. I kept telling myself he’d come home one day.
I knew it all along. I just didn’t want to.
And now that I’m here, in Tremayne – in our home – I can’t ignore it.
He’s not a prisoner somewhere in Lormere; he’s not wounded. He’s not fighting his way back to us.
Pain, iron-clad and locked away, nestled in my heart like a dead thing, radiates out without warning. He’s dead. My brother is dead. He’s not coming home. It’s sharp and it’s a spike that drives me to my knees, pinning me to the cold wooden floor,