I don't move.
"He told us everything," Saskia says. "Where he bought it. What he paid." A pause, and the blade of her voice turns toward me. "It was here. In Starling Vale."
The room goes small.
"I know," I whisper, closing my eyes against the tears.
The whole room seems to hold its breath.
"You what?" Brynna asks. "How?"
"I—"
"How, dammit?" Saskia thunders.
I lick my lips. Saskia could kill me for hiding this, even though I didn't know I was hiding anything.
"I was helping a client with a fitting," I say. "I went to the spell shop to get a potion, and there was a young orc lord there buying an anti-love draught."
I meet their eyes, trying to make them understand.
"It was Torgan."
"Months, Lissy." Saskia takes one step toward me. "You watched our brother buy an anti-love potion, and then you came to our weddings."
"I didn't know who it was for."
It is true. It is also not enough.
But Saskia won't stop now that she's charging.
"You made our dresses. You sat at our table and held our baby cousin, and you never said one word."
“I didn’t know it was for Mirelle. He was a stranger, and I overheard a private sale. Noemi stopped me from interrupting. I couldn’t come to your family with something a customer bought in confidence.”
The words are true.
They still aren’t enough.
“I thought about it later,” I continue. “When I knew Torgan. When Mirelle’s courtship began. I told myself the potion belonged to some old business. To some woman from before.”
Ysolde’s face goes very still.
“And you never asked him?”
No.
That is the part that belongs to me.
"No," I say softly. "I never asked."
Who is she?
For months, I asked the dark that question. The woman he paid twenty gold pieces for. The woman he loved enough to protect from her own heart. I measured myself against her. And when I lay in his arms three nights ago, I nearly convinced myself it had all been a nightmare.
There was never a woman.
There was only his baby sister, who he'd been trying to protect.
