“Your bribes are awful,” Sylva replied. “And expired.”
“It builds immunity.”
Basil wasn’t listening anymore.
His gaze was fixed on a boarded-up window to the left. Thick planks were nailed crookedly over shattered glass. A few splinters jutted out like teeth. Whoever had boarded it up had done it quickly and not gently.
Basil inhaled sharply. Then the entire mood of his body shifted from annoyed to alert in the space of a heartbeat.
“Esther was here,” he said. “Recently.”
Lucy’s head whipped around so fast her neck cracked. “I knew it was too clean! Wait—how do you know?”
“I can see the trace of her magic,” Basil said, voice low.
Lucy squinted at the boards. Squinted harder. “Oh, yes. I see it.”
Sylva snorted. “No, she doesn’t.”
Lucy elbowed him and kept squinting anyway, because she refused to be defeated by a piece of wood and her lack of magical education.
Basil stepped closer to the window, stopping just short of touching the planks. He didn’t have to touch them to know. His eyes tracked along the edges like he could read the air.
Lucy felt it then. Not the magic itself, but the way the room responded to Basil noticing it. The careful murmur of conversations in the tavern dipped. Not silent, but cautious. A few patrons shifted. One man in the corner suddenly became very interested in his drink.
This place was clean because it was controlled.
Basil’s voice tightened. “Her magic clings. It always has. Most spells dissipate like heat after a flame. Hers…lingers.”
“What does that mean?” Lucy asked, quieter than she intended.
“It means her emotions were high,” Basil said. “Often due to anger or fear.”
The Baroness made a sound that might have been a gasp or might have been the beginning of a faint. “My princess broke a—a window? In a tavern?” She clutched the edge of her seat. “I need water. Or smelling salts. Or both.”
Luna slid a glass to her with the ease of someone handing a knife to a person who didn’t know what to do with it. “She’s fine,” she said lazily. “Mostly.”
“Mostly?” Basil barked, spinning on her.
“Oh, calm down,” Luna drawled. “I gave her coffee and asked her a few friendly questions—”
“You interrogated her,” Sylva corrected.
“Semantics,” Luna said sweetly.
“Princesses do not get interrogated in taverns,” the Baroness declared, voice trembling with aristocratic offense.
“She wasn’t a princess,” Luna said, her smile softening in a way that somehow made Lucy more nervous. “She was simply Essie.”
Lucy’s vision sharpened like a knife. “Where is she?”
Luna hopped off the counter with a satisfied sigh, like she’d been waiting for that line. “Ah. That’s the part where I help.”
Lucy did not like her tone. Help from people like Luna usually came with fine print.
“She left a few days ago,” Luna said. “Took the Larkspire Road south. Flower fields. Very scenic. Very safe. Probably.”
Basil stiffened. “She went south?”
