“Okay, that’s a start.” I pop to my feet, reaching for the thick wool cloak edged and lined in soft, fluffy fleece. “You can give me a tour of the place, and I can make note of what needs doing.”
“A…tour?” Morwen repeats, dismayed.
“Well, I’ve been trying to find my own way around, but it’s been a miracle I’ve made my way back to bed each night,” I say, pulling boots up over my stockings. “Maybe if an expert leads the way, I can make better memory of the routes.”
If Morwen won’t tell me how I can make myself useful, I’ll just have to figure it out myself. I certainly can’t sit around and waste the winter away doingnothing. Time always seems to move faster when I keep myself busy, and right now, I’d give anything to make spring come sooner.
When I asked Morwen for a tour, I had no idea the enormity of the undertaking. I thought I’d explored a fair bit of the tree castle, but there’s so much I didn’t see. Endless wings and halls I know I’m going to get hopelessly lost in, many crumbling and blocked by fallen limbs. Seeing the great branches of this massive tree scattered and broken into pieces makes my heart ache the same as finding a horse with a broken leg, or a fledgling fallen from its nest. I get the overwhelming sense that I should bandage it up and nurse it back to health.
But it’s not a baby bird, it’s a tree the size of acastle. I don’t even know what nursing it back to health wouldmean.
“And you’ve already familiarized yourself with the kitchens,” Morwen says as we pass through a fog of delicious smells.
Heat flushes through me, but I tamp down the embarrassment. I can’t be sure the food I’m being served is safe—both for human consumption and in a not-poisoned kind of way—but at least if I grab some spare bread and cheese from the pantry, I can be pretty sure I’ll be okay. Morwen can try to shame me for that, but it’s just survival.
“So I think that’s about everything,” she says, clearly wanting this impromptu tour to be over with.
“Didn’t you say something about stables? And grounds? We haven’t been outside at all.”
“It’s freezing—”
“That’s why I’m wearing this,” I say, hands in the pockets of my cloak as I hold it out for emphasis.
Morwen looks at me in disbelief, waiting for me to change my mind. When she realizes that’s not happening, her face twists in displeasure. She sighs as she wraps a long scarf around her neck, head, and horns, leaving only a small gap for her eyes. After donning a cloak and stomping into a pair of boots, Morwen leads me out of the castle and into a wall of frozen wind.
The hood of my cloak protects me from the worst of it, but where my face and fingers are exposed, the air seems to slice right down to the bone. Low hanging clouds make the dull, gray sky feel like it’s much closer than it should be, like it wants to swallow us up into its icy mists.
I pull my cloak tighter around me and take in the huge courtyard. The space between the doors behind me and the castle walls in the distance is probably enough to fit my entire village in. Morwen quickly ushers me around to the training grounds, gesturing vaguely to places she says are the sparring arena (“no place for a queen”), the blacksmith (“you’ll be covered in soot if we get within spitting distance”), and the temple (Morwen had no comment for this one, but her eyes said plainly enough that it’s not a space for me), and I’m even more overwhelmed than I was inside. Everything within these walls, every building big and small, is technically part of my home now.
At least until you get back to yourrealhome,I remind myself.
It’s strange how quickly I begin to forget that when I’m not actively thinking about it.
Morwen’s teeth are chattering when she starts to turn back toward the castle. I’m fantasizing about a hot mug of ciderthawing my frozen fingers myself when an unusual animal sound catches my interest.
“What was…that?” I turn just in time to see a groom leading an enormous woolly beast toward the stables.
“That’s an ifrak—every bit of your cloak and boots came from a creature like that one. They’re sacred beasts in some parts. Smarter than some folks I’ve known, and the soulbonds they form with their handlers is the stuff of legends.”
The more she talks about the strange creature, the more intrigued I am. Tending the animals was always one of my favorite chores on the estate, and I’ve never seen anything quite like the shaggy-furred mountain.
“Could we stop by the stables?”
I shouldn’t be surprised when Morwen’s nose wrinkles. “They’ve got an awful stench,” she says. When that doesn’t seem to dissuade me, she adds, “And their eyes always make me nervous. It’s like they can see into your soul. Maybe they can. Better appreciated from afar.” There’s a finality to the way she says that, but as she turns to walk away, I realize I don’t have to accept that answer.
My boots stay planted in place. “Morwen, I would like to visit the stables,” I say, no longer making it a question. I’m not at all used to people going along with what I say—I can’t even get my own brother to heed my advice—so there’s a part of me that expects her to scoff like Phillip would and stalk off anyway.
Morwen’s jaw clenches, but that’s the only sign I get that I might have touched a nerve. “Of course, Your Majesty.”
Crap. I definitely hit something I shouldn’t have.
It’s bound to happen, so I try not to dwell on it as the sounds of the strange ifraks grow louder. I have to hope that Morwen has a forgiving side buried under those frowns.
“This is as far as I’m going,” she says, stopping a hundred or so paces from the stables. There’s a large tent set up there with a crackling fire where the grooms can warm their hands and thaw their canteens, and she joins the small group huddled around for warmth, extending her clawed fingers toward the flames. “I’d tell you not to get too close either, but you wouldn’t listen.”
I’m positive that sort of candor is not the norm when speaking to prospective royalty, but as I’m still having as much trouble accepting that the label applies to me as everyone else here, I let it slide off my back, heading into the stables alone.
Morwen wasn’t wrong; the stables definitely have a distinct aroma, but it’s one I’m familiar with. As unpleasant as it might be to her, the smell of hay and lanolin and animals warms me up more than the fire outside could manage.
