“No, you watch your words, croon!” Berwick said angrily. “My master may call down a new cook from the North, and then what would you do? But if you mind me and do as I say, all will go well for you.” He gave Owen a dark look and harrumphed, shaking his head as if the boy were already a cold slab of dead fish.

Liona’s eyes sparked with anger as she returned to him, wiping her fingers vigorously on her apron front. She muttered under her breath for a moment.

“I need to get the king’s supper ready,” she finally said, her voice pitched low. Owen noticed that she would not look him in the eye. “There used to be more children playing around the castle. When the queen and king ruled, it was different. Men like Berwick would watch their words better.” Her lips were taut. “If Berwick only knew, if he only knew.” She cast a surreptitious glance at the boy, and then dropped her voice very low. “Are you afraid, Owen?”

He stared at her and nodded mutely.

She hastily walked over to another table and then brought over a bowl with some flour and other ingredients already inside. She cracked an egg with one hand and emptied the yolk into the bowl. She then began kneading the mixture with her strong fingers. Owen felt she wanted to say more, so he waited for her to speak.

She glanced around the kitchen again, making sure no one else was nearby. “My husband and I walk the grounds often,” she said softly, almost in a whisper. “He knows it best. There is a porter door that is always unlocked. Always.” She glanced around again, and when she continued, her voice was even softer. “Owen, your parents did not send you here to be killed. You have friends. Like the princess. Like me. The princess’s mother is in sanctuary at Our Lady. She has been there for the two years since her husband’s brother seized the throne. Mayhap she would help you, Owen. Do you know where the sanctuary is?”

Owen stared at her, his heart pounding fast. “We passed it . . . on the way here.”

“You did,” she said, kneading the dough as if she were trying to strangle Berwick. “If you go to that sanctuary, not even the king can make you come out. You would be safe there.” She glanced back at the crowded kitchen, her eyes darting around worriedly. “If you are a brave little boy.”

A little spark of hope lit in his chest. “I’m brave,” he whispered softly, gazing hard at her. But as he looked up at her, he saw the knifelike spire through the window again.

I am a foreigner to Ceredigion, so I found the political intrigues and bad blood to be almost incomprehensible at first. Let me summarize it thus. The ruling houses of this kingdom can be likened to members of a large family who hate each other fiercely. The grievances go back to the founding of this dynasty, nigh on three centuries ago. These family members make an art out of warring with each other. King Severn’s enemies are all in their graves, or should I say all his male enemies are. He is still estranged from the queen dowager, his brother’s wife, who continues to plot against him from the sanctuary of Our Lady. But in my assessment, her power and her once-great beauty are now waning. My bets are on the crouch-backed king. Rumor has it he fancies his niece, Princess Elyse. It’s a sordid rumor embellished by the queen dowager. Pay it no heed.

—Dominic Mancini, Espion of Our Lady of Kingfountain

CHAPTER FIVE

Ghosts

They had assigned Owen to his brother’s vacant room, and he found he could not sleep at all. Everything about it, even the smell, was strange and unsettling. He had always been very sensitive to sounds, especially unfamiliar ones, and the palace was full of sounds—creaking timbers, the tapping of boots on stone, the distant murmur of voices, the rattle of keys in locks. There was always some commotion outside his door. So Owen sat up on his small wooden pallet and pulled the curtains wide, letting the moon shine through the window. And as he sat and stared at the moon, he tried to calm the frantic beating of his heart and quell the dreadful homesickness that festered there.

That night, he made several decisions. And he made a promise to the moon.

He knew the world of adults was very different from his own. For reasons he did not comprehend, his parents had abandoned him. He had the vague sense that they’d been forced to offer up one of their children and they had chosen him.

In the dark, he wrestled with the feelings that accompanied that realization. He shed more tears, but the tears weren’t sad. They weren’t angry. They were . . . disappointed. When the tears were finally spent, he ground his teeth and dealt with the harsh truth that his parents were not going to save him. He had the intuition that if he stayed at the castle and did nothing to save himself, he would probably not survive. So he had to figure out a way to change the end of the story and not end up in the river.