Solentine pulled a reed pen and a small jar of ink out of his bag and moved his chair closer to the table. “How old are you?”
Rellas had eight days in one week and four weeks in a month, with three hundred and eighty-four days per year, so I would need to subtract a few months. “Twenty-five.”
Close enough.
“Birthday?”
“The first of Snowdeep.”
Solentine dipped the quill into the ink pot and wrote on the paper in an ornate script. “You were adopted sixteen years ago, at the age of nine. This coincides with the Blaze of Garr, which flooded the area with refugees.”
The Blaze of Garr was the Crimson Empire’s attempt at testing Lorest Everard, Ramond’s father. They had set fire to the fertile wheat fields on their own side of the border and the resulting wildfire burned the border settlement of Garr to the ground. He retaliated so hard, they sacrificed an entire town for the opportunity to poison him three years later.
“You were a refugee, you lost your memory, and my aunt, who always wanted to have a daughter, saved you from the street. This is not a lie, by the way. My aunt always wanted a girl.”
“I know,” I said. “She gave up after the fifth miscarriage.”
Solentine looked at me, shook his head, and wrote something on the paper.
“Won’t the fresh ink give it away?”
“This isn’t regular ink,” he said. “It will lighten quickly in sunlight, and the scribe in the Demarr regional chamber is a friend of the family. This document will be slipped into the archive, and no one will be the wiser.”
“But I have never appeared with your family. Won’t people have doubts?”
“They are free to doubt. Their doubts don’t matter. Only the proof matters and we have it right here. Should they wish to question my aunt and uncle, they will gladly confirm that you are their beloved daughter. Their household staff will swear on their lives that you are the young lady of that estate. Your status will be unassailable.”
He was doing a very good job of selling it.
“All that remains is the name. Maggie is obviously short for something. What is it?”
I sighed.
“Magrane? Magdalinta? Margriete?” Solentine guessed. “Magrefondretta?”
“Now you’re just making things up.”
“I need a name,” Solentine prompted.
“Marigold.”
“Marigold?” Solentine raised his eyebrows.
“Yes.”
My mother loved flowers andMnames. She’d wanted to name me Magnolia, but since we lived on the corner of Magnolia Street and Magnolia Blossom Trail, she named me Marigold instead. While there were many Roses, Irises, and Violets, almost nobody was named Marigold.
Especially afterMarigold’s Garden.
When I was a toddler, I used to watch a cute cartoon about a yellow cow and her friends. They grew flowers in their garden and sang songs. The cow’s name was Marigold. By the time I reached kindergarten, Marigold was everywhere: on toy shelves, on backpacks, on notebooks . . . The other kids made moo noises at me. I became Maggie in my third week of kindergarten in self-defense and had been Maggie ever since.
“It’s a beautiful name,” Everard said.
“It is unusual, but lovely.” Solentine wrote it on the scroll, matching the existing handwriting with ridiculous precision, and pushed the paper toward me. “Sign here.”
I wrote my new name in the empty space.
“Welcome to the family, Marigold Demarr.” Solentine smiled at me and met Everard’s gaze. “You are standing too close to my cousin. Remove yourself to the appropriate distance.”
