No, mysisterhad belonged to someone else.
After thanking the healer for her time, I stepped back out into the corridor, the air cooler, my boots whispering over the stone.
I passed an older man heading the other way, his armor muted in the dim light, smelling faintly of oiled leather. I stopped him long enough to ask my question, describing Addie as I had before.
He gave a polite but distracted shrug. “Can’t say that I’ve seen her.” At my nod, he moved on, his footsteps echoing down the hall.
I kept walking until I came to a guard posted near the eastern arch. Broad-shouldered, a scar ran from the corner of his mouth, down along his jaw. He straightened when I approached.
A draft slid in through the nearby archway, carrying the faint tang of wet stone from the courtyard beyond. His hand rested lightly on the hilt of his sword, his fingers tapping in an absent rhythm.
“Going for a walk?” he asked when I stopped beside him. “It rained. You might want to wear a cloak.”
“I was actually wondering if you remember a warrior from a month or so ago,” I said, and repeated Addie’s description, every word tugging at a raw place inside me.
His eyes lit with recognition almost before I finished. “Oh, yes, of course. Addie. She had the small dragon, didn’t she? Silver scales. Always kept close to her. She’s quite something, that one.”
Quite something. My sister.
“She laughs a lot,” he said with a faint smile. “Can get away with anything. Even got King Trew to—” He stopped himself and gave a small shake of his head. “Anyway. She’s well-liked. Loves it here.”
Loves it here.
There was that same phrase again. The healer had said it with certainty. Now the guard said it too. But Addie couldn’t have loved this place. She’d been promised to another court. She was murdered.
If they were all telling the truth, then what in all the fates’ names had I missed?
The guard’s mouth quirked. “Her and Fenmark are inseparable. So sweet together it makes you sick. They fell in love fast.”
My sister, inlove?
I blinked at him, trying to stitch the name into the jagged picture forming in my mind. “What’s Fenmark like?”
“As tall as our king.” The guard leaned his shoulder against the arch. “He wears a silver loop in his left ear. Has a laugh like rolling thunder, which pairs well with Addie’s. He got a dragon tattoo. Would you believe that? Black and silver, curling right up the side of his neck. Got it for her and her companion, though he has a wyvern himself. Black as night, that one is.”
I could almost see Fenmark’s smile, the bright gleam of metal at his ear, the tattoo shifting over his skin as he bent toward her.
“You speak as if they’re here, but I haven’t seen them around. Where are they now?” My voice came out too thin. My mind was starting to tilt, this way and that.
Addie was dead. I’d seen her body. I wore her pendant. And yet this man spoke as if she was only away somewhere, that I might round a corner and run into her myself.
How had she ended up dead in Father’s ballroom?
The guard shrugged. “Last I heard, they’d gone on a mission together. They haven’t come back yet.”
I braced my hand against the cold stone wall to hold myself upright. “As a new warrior, I’m not sure what I’ll be asked to do. Will I go on raids beyond the border? Maybe…you know, capturing carriages, people?”
His gaze sharpened. “We’d never do anything that dishonorable. That’s a lie the other courts like to spread. You must know that.”
“I never thought so myself either, but I’m not from that region.”
The floor tilted beneath me. Everything I’d believed was coming apart in my hands.
“What kind of mission were they sent on?” I asked, barely able to think or breathe.
“I don’t know the details. You could ask King Trew.” His mouth twisted into something that was half a warning, half a smile. “If he doesn’t tell you, you’ll have your answer about whether you should be asking.”
My throat closed off, but I forced my next question through the narrowed passage. “One more thing, about the children who arrived recently. Where are they?”
