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       Lord Morgane’s Territory, Castle Brígh

       Cartier

      There was a time in my life when I believed I would never return to Maevana. I did not remember the castle I had been born in; I did not remember the lay of the land that had been in my family for generations; I did not remember the people who had sworn fealty to me as my mother held me to her heart. What I did remember was a kingdom of passion and grace and beauty, a kingdom that I later learned was not mine although I yearned for it to be, a kingdom that had held and guarded me for twenty-five years.

      Valenia was mine by choice.

      But Maevana … she was mine by birthright.

      I had grown up believing myself to be Theo D’Aramitz; I had later defiantly become Cartier Évariste, and both were names to hide beneath, a shield for a man who did not know where he was supposed to live or who he was supposed to be.

      I thought of such things as I departed Jourdain’s castle well past midnight.

      “You should stay the night, Morgane,” Jourdain had said to me, after our planning meeting had come to an end. He followed me down the stairs, concerned. “Why ride out so late?”

      What he meant to say was, Why ride back to sleep alone in a crumbling castle?

      And I did not have the courage to tell him that I needed to be on my own lands that night; I needed to sleep where my father and my mother and my sister had once dreamt. I needed to walk the castle I had inherited, dilapidated or not, before my people began to return.

      I stopped in the foyer, reaching for my passion cloak, my travel satchel, my sword. Brienna was there, waiting on the threshold, the doors open to the night. I think she knew what I needed, because she looked to Jourdain and murmured, “It’ll be all right, Father.”

      And Jourdain, thankfully, left it at that, clapping me on the arm in a wordless farewell.

      It had already been a strange night, I thought, moving to where Brienna waited. I had not expected to hear Jourdain speak his regrets, to witness the first step of healing for the MacQuinns. I felt like an imposter; I felt burdened each time I anticipated my own homecoming and reunion.

      But then Brienna smiled up at me, the night breeze playing with her hair.

      How did you and I reach this point? I wanted to ask, but held the words captive in my mouth as she caressed my face.

      “I shall see you soon,” I whispered, not daring to kiss her here, in her father’s house, where Jourdain was most likely observing us.

      She only nodded, her hand falling away from me.

      I departed, fetching my horse from the stables, the sky crowded with stars.

      My lands lay to the west of Jourdain’s, our castles only several miles apart, which equated to roughly an hour’s ride. On the way to Castle Fionn that evening, Brienna and I had found a deer trail connecting the two territories, and we had chosen to take that instead of the road, winding through a forest and over a rill, eventually meandering into the fields.

      It was the longer route, beset by thorns and branches, but I chose again to take it that night.

      I rode the trail as if I had done so countless times, following moonlight and wind and darkness.

      I had already been to my lands once, earlier that day.

      I had come alone and taken my time walking through the corridors and the rooms, uprooting weeds and streaking through dust and cutting down gossamer, hoping I could remember something fair about this castle. I had been one year old when my father had fled with me, but I hoped that a fragment of my family, a seed of my memory, had lingered in this place, proving that I deserved to be here, even after twenty-five years of solitude. And when I could remember nothing—I was a stranger within these walls—I had conceded to sit on the dirty floor of my parents’ chamber, eaten by grief until I had heard Brienna arrive.

      Despite all of that, the castle still took me by surprise.

      Once, Castle Brígh had been a beautiful estate. My father had described it to me in perfect detail years ago, when he had finally told me the truth of who I was. But what he had depicted to me did not correspond with how it looked now.

      I eased my horse to a trot as we approached, my eyes smarting from the cold as I struggled to see it in full by moonlight.

      It was a crumbling sprawl of gray stones; the foothills of the mountains rose steadily behind it, draping shadows on the uppermost floors and turrets. A few slopes of the roof gaped with holes, but the walls were thankfully intact. Most of the windows were shattered, and vines had nearly overtaken the front of the exterior. The courtyard was thick with weeds and saplings. I had never seen a place more forlorn in my life.

      I dismounted, standing in waist-high grass, continuing to stare at the castle, feeling as if the castle was leering back at me.

      What was I to do with such a broken place? How was I to rebuild it?

      I untacked my horse, leaving him hobbled beneath an oak, and began the trek to the courtyard, stopping in the wild heart of it. I stood on vines and thorns and weeds and broken cobbles. All of it mine, the bad as well as the good.

      I found that I was not the least bit sleepy although I was bone weary and it had to be drawing nigh to two in the morning. I began to do the first thing that came to mind: pull up the weeds. I worked compulsively until I warmed myself, sweating against autumn’s frost, eventually getting on my hands and knees.

      That was when I saw it.

      My fingers yanked up a tangle of goldenrod, exposing a long cobble with a carving in the stone. I brushed away the lingering roots until I could clearly see the words, gleaming in the starlight.

       Declan.

      I shifted back to my heels, but my gaze was hooked to that name.

      Gilroy Lannon’s son. The prince.

      He had been here that night, then. The night of the first failed rising, when my mother was slain in battle, when my sister was murdered.

      He had been here.

      And he had carved his name into the stones of my home, the foundation of my family, as if by doing so, he would always have dominion over me.

      I crawled away with a shudder and sat down in a heap, the sword sheathed at my side clattering alongside me, my hands covered in dirt.

      Declan Lannon was in chains, held prisoner in the royal dungeons, and he would face trial in eleven days. He would get what he deserved.

      Yet there was no comfort in it. My mother and my sister were still dead. My castle was in ruins. My people scattered. Even my father was gone; he had never had the chance to return to his homeland, dying years ago in Valenia.

      I was utterly alone.

      A sudden sound broke my chain of thoughts. A tumbling of stones from within the castle. My eyes went to the broken windows at once, searching.

      Quietly, I rose, drawing my sword. I waded through the weeds to the front doors, which hung broken on their hinges. It rose the hair on my arms to push those oaken doors open further, my fingers tracing their carvings. I peered into the shadows of the foyer. The stones of the floor were cracked and filthy, but by the moonlight that poured in through the shattered windows, I saw the imprint of small, bare feet in the dirt.

      The footprints wound into the great hall. I had to strain my eyes in the dim light to follow them back to the kitchen, weaving my way around the abandoned trestle tables, the cold hearth, the walls stripped bare of their heraldic banners and tapestries. Of course, the footprints went to the buttery, to every cupboard in an obvious search for food. Here there were empty casks of ale that still sighed with malt, old herbs hanging in dried batches from the rafters, a family of

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