LITMIR.BIZ

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feet had accidentally stepped on a piece of glass.

      I knelt, touching the blood. It was fresh.

      The trail of blood took me out the back door of the kitchens, into a narrow corridor that emptied into the rear foyer, where the servants’ staircase wound in a tight spiral to the second floor. I stepped through a hoard of cobwebs, stifling a shudder when I finally reached the second-floor landing.

      Moonlight poured in patches through this hallway, illuminating piles of leaves that had blown in from the broken windows. I continued following the blood, my boots crunching the leaves and finding every loose stone in the floor. I was too exhausted to be stealthy. The owner of the footprints undoubtedly knew I was coming.

      They led me right to my parents’ chamber. The very place I had stood with Brienna hours ago, when I had given her her passion cloak.

      I sighed, finding the door handles. Nudging them open, I peered into the dim light of the chamber. I could still see where Brienna and I had wiped the dust from the floors, to admire the colorful tiles. This room had felt dead until she had stepped within it, as if she belonged here more than I did.

      I entered and was promptly assaulted with a handful of pebbles.

      I whirled, glaring across the chamber to see a flash of pale limbs and a mop of unkempt hair disappear behind a sagging wardrobe.

      “I am not going to hurt you,” I called out. “Come. I saw your foot is bleeding. I can help you.”

      I took a few steps closer but then paused, waiting for the stranger to reappear. When they didn’t, I sighed and took another step.

      “I am Cartier Évariste.” And I winced, to realize my Valenian alias had come out so naturally.

      Still no response.

      I edged closer, nearly to the shadow behind the wardrobe …

      “Who are you? Hello?”

      I finally reached the back of the furniture. And I was greeted by more pebbles. The grit went into my eyes, but not before my hand took hold of a skinny arm. There was resistance, an angry grunt, and I hurried to wipe the dust from my eyes to behold a scrawny boy, no more than ten years old, with a splash of freckles on his cheeks and red hair dangling in his eyes.

      “What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to subdue my irritation.

      The boy spat in my face.

      I had to find the last dregs of my patience to wipe the spittle away. I then looked at the boy again.

      “Are you alone? Where are your parents?”

      The boy prepared to spit again, but I pulled him from the back of the wardrobe, guiding the lad to sit on the saggy bed. His clothes were in tatters, his feet bare, one still bleeding. He couldn’t hide the agony on his face when he walked on it.

      “Did you hurt yourself today?” I asked, kneeling to gently lift his foot.

      The child hissed but eventually let me examine his wound. The glass was still in his foot, weeping a steady trickle of blood.

      “Your foot needs stitches,” I said. I released his ankle and continued to kneel before him, looking into a pair of worried eyes. “Hmm. I think your mother or father will be missing you. Why don’t you tell me where they are? I can take you to them.”

      The boy glanced away, crossing his lanky arms.

      It was as I suspected. An orphan, squatting in the ruins of Brígh.

      “Well, lucky for you, I know how to stitch wounds.” I stood and slipped my travel satchel from my shoulder. I found my flint and sparked some of the old candles to life in the chamber, then withdrew a woolen blanket and my medical pouch, which I never traveled without. “Why don’t you lie down here and let me tend to that foot?”

      The boy was stubborn, but the pain must have worn him down. He settled back on the wool blanket, his eyes going wide when he saw my metal forceps.

      I found my small vial of stunning herbs and dumped the remainder into my flask of water.

      “Here. Take a drink. It’ll help with the pain.”

      The boy carefully accepted the mixture, sniffing it as if I had sprinkled in poison. Finally, he relented and drank, and I waited patiently for the herbs to begin to work their numbing effect.

      “Do you have a name?” I asked, propping up the wounded foot.

      He was silent for a beat, and then whispered, “Tomas.”

      “That’s a good, strong name.” I began to carefully extract the glass. Tomas winced, but I continued to talk, to distract him from the pain. “When I was a lad, I always wanted to be named after my father. But instead of Kane, I was named Aodhan. An old family name, I suppose.”

      “I thought you said your name was … C-Cartier.” Tomas struggled to pronounce the Valenian name, and I finally pulled out the last of the glass.

      “So I did. I have two names.”

      “Why would a man”—Tomas winced again as I began to clean the wound—“need two names?”

      “Sometimes it is necessary, to stay alive,” I replied, and this answer seemed to appease him, for the boy was quiet as I began to stitch him back together.

      When I finished, I gently bound Tomas’s foot and found him an apple in my satchel. While he ate, I walked about the chamber, looking for any other scrap of blanket that I might sleep with, for the night’s chilled air was flowing into the room through the broken windows.

      I passed my parents’ bookshelves, which still held a vast number of leather-bound volumes. I paused, remembering my father’s love of books. Most of them were moldy now, their covers stiff and rippled from the elements. But one slender book caught my interest. It was drab in comparison to the others, whose covers were exquisitely illuminated, and there was a page sticking out at the top. I had learned that the most unassuming of books typically held the greatest of knowledge, so I slipped it beneath my jerkin before Tomas could see me.

      No other blanket could be scrounged up, so I eventually conceded to sit against the wall by one of the candles.

      Tomas rolled around in the wool blanket, until he looked more like a caterpillar than a boy, and then sleepily blinked at me.

      “Are you going to sleep against the wall?”

      “Yes.”

      “Do you need the blanket?”

      “No.”

      Tomas yawned, scratched his nose. “Are you the lord of this castle?”

      I was surprised by how I wanted to lie. My voice sounded odd as I replied, “Yes. I am.”

      “Are you going to punish me, for hiding here?”

      I did not know how to respond to that, my mind hung upon the fact that the boy thought I would punish him for doing all that he could to survive.

      “I know I was wrong to throw pebbles in your face, milord,” Tomas rambled on, his brow wrinkled in fear. “But please … please don’t hurt me too badly. I can work for you. I promise I can. I can be your runner, or your cup bearer, or your groom, if you like.”

      I didn’t want him to serve me. I wanted answers from him. I wanted to demand, Who are you? Who are your parents? Where do you come from? And yet I had no right to ask such of him. These were answers that would be won by trust and friendship.

      “I’m sure I can find a task for you. And as long as you are on my lands, I will protect you, Tomas.”

      Tomas murmured a sigh of gratitude and closed his eyes. Not a minute passed before he was snoring.

      I waited a few moments before withdrawing the book from my jerkin. I gently leafed through the pages, tickled that I had randomly chosen a book of poetry. I wondered if this had been my

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