“This is Stone.” Nell ran a hand over her wet cheeks. Laughed. “And yes, I know what you’re thinking. Who gives their daughter an impossible name like Nelladinellakin and their son a good hearty name like Stone? You can tell who’s the family favorite.”
There was no doubt Stone was Nell’s baby brother. He had the same dark brown skin, though his wiry black hair grew up and out—the same way, Pilar guessed, Nell’s hair would grow if she took out her braids. Their round faces were practically identical. Stone would be handsome in a few years, Pilar decided. For now: adorable.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said.
“Look at him,” Nell gushed. “He was eleven when I saw him last—now he’s all grown up!”
Stone flashed a good-natured grin. “Don’t worry, Sis: I still have my baby fat.”
“It’s part of your charm! But don’t get too attached, it’ll all melt off by your sixteenth birthday, mark my words. These are my friends, Mia Rose and Pilar d’Aqila, they’re sisters, well, half sisters, really, do you see the resemblance? I’m not sure I do! Pilar is a fighter, like you.”
“Used to be,” Pilar corrected. “I haven’t sparred in a long time.”
Stone looked at her with newfound respect. “Maybe you’ll spar with me?”
It caught her off guard. Before she could respond, Stone turned back to Nell.
“Does Mumma know you’re here? She’ll be so happy to see you, she thought—”
“Nelladine.”
The voice was quiet. Much quieter than Stone’s and Nell’s. But somehow Pilar heard it. Maybe because all the other sounds—clanking, talking, smacking—ceased.
An older woman stood in the doorway of the Swallow. White linen robe pale against deep brown skin. Curly white hair streaked with pink. Brown eyes behind wire glasses.
Whatever Pilar had expected the Shadowess to look like, it wasn’t this. But she knew from the way the woman carried herself that this was the one they’d come to see.
“Mumma,” said Nell, in a voice Pilar had never heard her use.
Nelladine turned to face them. Gulped some air.
Pilar said it for her.
“She’s your mother.”
Chapter 10
The Leading Man
THE MOMENT QUIN SET foot in Kaer Killian, the memories cut through his mind like a carving knife.
The castle was a terrifying place. As a boy he’d kept a close eye on the servants—all female, to his father’s taste. Quin watched the girls slip silently through the corridors, their hands always gloved. Even then, he recognized their silence as a form of self-preservation: the women were desperate to not attract attention. They yearned to be invisible.
As Quin would learn, invisibility was a gift.
At six years old he had wandered into the Hall of Hands by mistake. He’d befriended one of the more boisterous cooks, who, unlike the other servants, seemed to have no fear of his father. In later years he would come to understand this was not a friendship, but a kindness: the cook had taken pity on him. She never tired of chasing Quin down the castle corridors for animated games of get-the-Gwyrach or hide-’n’-hunt.
But one day he took a wrong turn. He skittered into the dark Hall and froze, eyes wide, transfixed by the hundreds of dangling Gwyrach hands—until he felt an awful wrench in his shoulder. The cook was yanking him out by the arm. She pulled him back into the corridor, swearing profusely, her forehead sweaty and her palms, too.
“Don’t you ever go back there! Do you understand me? Never!”
She’d slapped him across the face.
At the time Quin was mortified—and righteously indignant at being manhandled by a servant. Only much later did he realize that the cook had been trying to distract him from the horrors he had just witnessed with a smaller, more immediate horror.
He could still recall the look in her eyes as she dragged him back to the kitchens: fear. What he mistook for fear of punishment—she had, after all, just struck the heir apparent—was in fact fear of what it would do to him, now that he had seen the Hall of Hands.
She was a good soul, that cook. Quin had always liked her. But even his smarting face could not erase the memory of those hanging, severed hands.
A few years later, King Ronan had concocted some imaginary grievance against the cook. He made a big scene in the Grand Gallery, accusing her of casting a Gwyrach spell on his supper. Quin pleaded with him to spare her life, but it only made his father angrier.
“Is that why you spend all your time in the kitchens?” the king spat. “Swooning over that old crone?”
It was useless, arguing with his father. Ronan always won.
The cook had shielded Quin, but he could not do the same for her.
The very hand that had tried to protect him from the Hall now hung inside it.
“How long since you’ve seen the Grand Gallery?”
Tobin’s voice drew Quin out of his macabre thoughts. He blinked, waiting for the castle corridors to arrange themselves in his mind.
They had made it quite deep into the Kaer, the other Embers a ways behind. They weren’t far from Quin’s drawing room in the north wing, where he’d performed many a lonely play on the small wooden stage—and practiced his first kisses on a marble bust. The bust was just face and neck with the barest hint of shoulders; Quin never knew if he was kissing a marble girl or a marble boy. He would have been happy either way, and with that realization came the first prickling of shame incumbent on the son of a bigoted, hateful king.
“Remember the piano?” Tobin asked.
Of course he remembered the piano. Toby had smuggled in an exquisite plumwood piano from Luumia and installed it in Quin’s drawing room as a tremendous birthday surprise. Of course, once King Ronan discovered the instrument, he beat it to a woody pulp. The king would not stand for his son pursuing such a feminine hobby.
But he did not destroy the black upright in the library. He had no objection to others practicing piano; he had, after all, brought Tobin’s family to court to play the patriotic war songs he held most dear.
And so commenced Quin’s clandestine music lessons in the library.
“I remember the clavichord,” he said, smoothly shifting the conversation.
Tobin laughed. How Quin had missed the sound of that laugh.
“We filched a whole bottle of rai rouj, didn’t we?” said Toby. “Snuck into the buttery and claimed it as our own.”
“As the heir apparent, it was quite literally my own.”
They’d sat on the edge of the stage that night, passing the rai rouj back and forth between them, until Toby was drunk enough to attempt the clavichord. I never thought a musical genius could play an instrument badly, Quin had slurred. Tonight you have proved me wrong.
“As I recall,” Tobin said, “it was the heir apparent who couldn’t hold his liquor.”
“Oh, I remember. I got dreadfully sick and retched all night.” He flushed. “You took care of me.”
Toby smiled. “You would have done the same for me.”
Quin could feel himself softening. Was he really so foolish? Whatever sentiment still existed between him and Tobin—if it existed at all—should not be trusted. At best, the Embers were unwelcome guests in the castle. At worst, usurpers.