The first toll of the midnight bell shuddered through the stones of Embergrove Palace, and Vespera Thornholt felt it in her teeth.
She stood at the edge of the causeway, where the black water of the palace moat lay as still as poured ink. Lanterns in iron cages hung from the gatehouse, their flames bent sideways by a wind that never seemed to reach the courtyard beyond. The bridge before her was old, older than the house she served, older perhaps than the queen who ruled from within. Its planks had been replaced twice in living memory, but the stone railings remained, carved with twisting vines and watching faces worn featureless by centuries of rain.
Vespera adjusted the satchel at her hip. Inside it, wrapped in three layers of oiled cloth, rested the artifact she had been bound to carry since the day the royal archivist had pressed it into her hands and told her, with the particular softness that precedes catastrophe, that she must not open it, must not name it, and must not, under any circumstance, let it leave her person. The weight of the bundle pressed against her ribs as she walked. She had grown used to the pressure. She had not grown used to the heat that sometimes pulsed from the cloth, as though something inside the artifact kept trying to remember how to breathe.
The gatehouse guard, a thin man whose chainmail hung too loose at the shoulders, studied the folded parchment she offered. He read it once. He read it again. His lips moved over the words as though tasting them for poison.
"House Thornholt," he said at last, in the careful tone of a man announcing a death in the family. "The second daughter."
"Yes."
He grunted, as if she had confirmed something he had hoped to disprove, and handed the parchment back. "You'll be received in the Veiled Hall. Chamberlain Vyre is expecting you. Do not speak until you are spoken to. Do not look at the masks. Do not step from the path."
"What path?" she asked.
The guard did not answer. He stepped aside, and the gate yawned open behind him.
The courtyard beyond was paved in a mosaic so detailed it seemed to shift when she did not look directly at it. Figures in robes and armor moved through scenes of crowning and coronation, of ships setting out and ships returning, of figures kneeling before figures who wore their faces. The mortar between the tiles gleamed faintly, the color of old bone. Somewhere ahead, beyond a colonnade of pale stone, the palace itself rose in tiers, each level darker than the last, until the highest windows vanished into a sky that had forgotten the moon.
Vespera walked.
Her boots found the path without effort. The mosaic beneath her feet had been worn smooth by generations of arrivals, each footstep polishing the same stones until they reflected the lamplight in dim, liquid ribbons. She did not look down. She had been warned, long ago, by a cousin who had served in this court and returned with a twitch in her left eye, that the mosaic rewarded attention. The cousin had not been able to describe what she had seen. She had only said that it had seen her back.
The colonnade opened into a smaller court, and at its center stood the Veiled Hall.
It was not a large building. That was the first thing Vespera noticed, and the first thing that unsettled her. She had expected grandeur, the kind that crushed visitors into submission. Instead the hall was low and rectangular, its walls hung with curtains of black silk that fell in heavy folds from ceiling to floor. No windows pierced the silk. The only light came from iron braziers mounted at intervals along the walls, each burning a pale, almost colorless flame that gave off no warmth and cast shadows that did not behave as shadows should.
A single door stood open at the far end. Beyond it, marble.
Vespera stepped across the threshold and felt the temperature drop, though not unpleasantly. The marble beneath her boots was veined with silver, the lines so fine they seemed to have been drawn by a stylus rather than formed by the earth. The ceiling above was lost in shadow, but she could hear, or thought she could, the faint rustle of fabric shifting far overhead, as though the darkness itself were clothed and breathing.
At the center of the hall, a long table had been set. Upon it lay a single scroll, its parchment so pale it looked bleached. Beside the scroll stood a high-backed chair, and in the chair sat a man who wore a mask.
The mask was porcelain, fitted so closely to his face that the skin seemed to flow into it. It covered him from brow to chin, painted in the colors of the Aelorian court, white and gold and a particular blue that Vespera had seen only on the flags of the royal house. The expression on the mask was neutral, neither welcoming nor forbidding. The eyes behind the eyeholes were the only part of him she could read, and they were busy.
Chamberlain Vyre, for it could be no one else, did not rise when she entered. He inclined his head a fraction, the gesture so slight it might have been an involuntary correction of posture. His hands, pale and long-fingered, rested on the table on either side of the scroll, and Vespera noticed that he did not touch the parchment itself. He treated it the way a man treats a document that has been known to bite.
"Thornholt," he said. His voice was colorless, the kind of voice designed to record minutes and forget feelings. "The second daughter. You are expected."
"I am here," Vespera said.
"You are here," he repeated, as though filing the information. He lifted one hand and gestured to the brazier nearest her. "Warm yourself if you wish. The hall is colder than it appears."
She did not move toward the brazier. She had read once, in a book she was not supposed to have read, that the pale flames burned on wicks soaked in oil rendered from the fat of those who had displeased the crown. She did not know if the book was true. She did not intend to find out.
"The terms," Vyre said, and placed both hands flat upon the table.
The scroll moved.
Vespera saw it clearly. No hand touched it. No breath disturbed the still air of the hall. Yet the parchment unrolled of its own accord, one inch at a time, and as it did, something glistened at the edge of the paper and fell, in a slow, heavy drop, onto the marble floor.
Silver.
It was silver, liquid and luminous, pooling on the white stone in a bead no larger than a thumbnail. The scroll wept as it unrolled, each fresh inch of parchment releasing another tear, and another, until the marble beneath the table was freckled with the stuff, catching the colorless firelight and throwing it back in a constellation of tiny, wet stars.
Vyre watched the scroll with the patience of a man who had seen this many times. When the parchment lay fully open, he lifted his gaze to Vespera, and the eyes behind the mask were unreadable.
"You will hear the terms of your union with the house of Aelor," he said. "You will hear them once. You will not interrupt. When I have finished, you will speak the word given to you by your mother, if you have one, or you will remain silent, and silence will be taken for consent. The scroll will record your answer, whatever form it takes."
Vespera's mouth was dry. She had been told, in the letter that had summoned her from the archives, that her sister Maren had already been received in this hall, and that Maren had spoken the word their mother had given her, and that the scroll had accepted it. She had not been told what the word was. She had been told only that Maren had wept afterward, and that Maren had stopped asking questions afterward, and that Maren had been moved to a wing of the palace that visitors were not permitted to enter.
The scroll waited.
Vyre began to read.
His voice took on a cadence it had not possessed a moment before, a rhythm that belonged to ritual rather than bureaucracy, and Vespera understood, with a small cold shock, that the man behind the mask had been a mouthpiece all his life, and that this was the first time she had heard him use the instrument he had been made to be.
"By the union ordained between the second daughter of House Thornholt and the crown of Aelor," Vyre said, "the key that is carried shall remain carried. The bearer shall not sleep beneath a roof not granted by the crown. The bearer shall not speak the name of the key in any tongue, living or dead. The bearer shall not part from the key by water, by fire, or by the hand of another. The bearer shall not love, in the manner of the heart, any person not sanctioned by the crown. The bearer shall not refuse the summons of the crown, wherever it find her, whatever hour it comes."
Silver tears fell as he spoke, dotting the parchment and the marble and, once, the toe of Vespera's boot. Where the drop landed, the leather darkened, as though the silver carried a weight beyond its measure.
"The crown," Vyre continued, "in its grace, shall provide the bearer with chamber and wardrobe, with servants and physicians, with the protection of its banners in any land where those banners fly. The crown shall honor the house of the bearer with three seats at the high table and the right of petition in the season of thaws. The crown shall not require the bearer to lift her hand against the blood of her own house. The crown shall not require the bearer to enter the Black Garden, nor the Hall of Echoes, nor the Tower of the Spouse."
He paused. The scroll shivered on the table, though no hand touched it, and a single larger tear gathered at its edge and hung, trembling, before it fell.
"In return," Vyre said, "the bearer shall open the lock when the crown commands. The bearer shall not ask what lies behind the lock. The bearer shall not speak of what lies behind the lock, in any place, in any company, until the day the lock is closed forever or the bearer is released by death."
The scroll lay still. The silver pooled on the marble, and the pale flames of the braziers bent toward it as though drawn by a scent only fire could smell.
Vyre folded his hands. "You may speak," he said, "the word your mother gave you, if you have one."
Vespera's tongue felt thick in her mouth. She thought of Maren, somewhere in the upper tiers of the palace, walking corridors she was no longer permitted to describe. She thought of the artifact in its wrappings, warm against her ribs, patient as a held breath. She thought of the book in the archives that had warned her about the pale flames, and of the cousin who had come back with a twitch in her eye.
She did not have a word. Her mother had given one to Maren, and Maren had used it, and Maren had stopped asking questions. Vespera's mother had looked at her, on the morning she left, with an expression that was not quite love and not quite apology, and had said only, "Choose well, daughter. The scroll hears."
The scroll waited. The silver gleamed. Vyre watched her with the patience of a ledger waiting for a figure to be entered in its column.
Vespera drew a breath. The air in the Veiled Hall tasted faintly of metal, and beneath that, something older, something that reminded her of the inside of a locked chest opened for the first time in a generation.
She did not speak.
The scroll, after a long moment, unrolled one final inch. A single tear, larger than the others, slid down its length and fell onto the marble with a sound like a dropped coin. Where it landed, the stone darkened, and the silver lay there, catching the colorless light, and the silence in the hall thickened until it had a texture, until it pressed against her skin like the weight of the artifact she carried.
Vyre inclined his head, the fraction deeper this time, and when he spoke, his voice had returned to its colorless register.
"Silence is taken for consent," he said. "The union is recorded. The bearer is bound. Chamberlain Vyre will now conduct the bearer to her chambers, where the royal tailor waits to take her measure for the garments of the court."
The corridor outside the Veiled Hall was colder than the chamber itself, as though the cold had been waiting in the walls to slip out the moment the doors closed. Vyre walked two paces ahead, his lantern held at the regulation angle, his steps measured and small. He did not look back. He did not need to. The sound of her slippers on the stone was enough.
Vespera followed. Her hand had closed around the second key at her breast without her having willed it to, and her fingers stayed there, warm against the metal through the linen of her shift. The silence of the hall had followed her out, or a cousin of it, and she felt it sit on her shoulders like a damp cloak.
"Sleep lightly, bearer," Vyre said, without turning. His voice carried the particular tone of a clerk who has been charged to deliver a courtesy and intends to deliver no more. "The queen's pleasure is that you be fitted before the second nightwatch. The royal tailor does not abide tardiness. Nor does the queen."
"I understand, Chamberlain."
"You do," Vyre said. "You will."
They turned a corner, and the draft from the seaward wing met them, carrying salt and the faint green smell of the lamps in the gallery of ancestors. A portrait watched them pass, a long-faced duke in a ruff, his painted eyes following her with the patience of a thing that had centuries to wait. Vespera did not look up at him. She had learned, in the archive, that some portraits watched back. Others simply watched.
The fitting chamber lay at the end of the corridor, a wide door of pale oak banded with iron, the iron worn to the smoothness of old silver by a thousand passing hands. Vyre stopped, inclined his head one final fraction, and rapped twice. The sound was swallowed by the wood.
"Enter," said a voice from within, warm and dry, the voice of a woman who had measured three generations of queens and intended, if the gods were willing, to measure three more. "Enter, and tell the stone to mind its tongue."
Vyre opened the door. The fitting chamber breathed out the smell of cedar and lavender and the sharper note of hot irons. A bank of candles lined one wall, each flame guttering in its own little pool of wax, and against the far wall stood a rack of half-made gowns, their hems pinned, their sleeves awaiting arms. In the center of the room, on a low dais, waited a woman of perhaps sixty winters, her hair the silver of a knife left out in the rain, her back as straight as a mast.
Mistress Olyve regarded Vespera over the top of a pair of spectacles she did not, strictly speaking, require.
"So," she said. "The fourth."
She set aside the shears in her hand and crossed the room in three economical strides, her slippers making no sound at all on the carpet. Up close, her face was a map of fine lines, each one earned at the pinning of a hem or the fitting of a sleeve, and her eyes were the color of river water, pale and steady and not to be trifled with.
"Up on the dais, child. Arms at your sides. Chin up. The cloth tells the truth whether the wearer does or not, and I have no patience for lies at this hour."
Vespera mounted the dais. The wood was warm beneath her bare feet, which surprised her, until she realized the floor above the kitchens ran beneath it, and the ovens of the great hall were banked but not yet cold. Olyve circled her once, twice, a third time, her gaze moving with the particular hunger of a woman for whom measurement was a language.
"Hips narrow. Waist acceptable. Shoulders broader than I would wish for a corset, but the bodice can be cut to flatter. Hold out your arm."
Vespera held out her arm. Olyve's fingers were cool and dry and precise, and she ran a length of tape from shoulder to wrist, from wrist to knuckle, from knuckle to the second joint of the smallest finger. She murmured the numbers under her breath as she worked, a private ritual, and Vespera let the sound wash over her the way she had once let the sound of the archivists' brushes wash over her in the stacks.
"The hair will need to be dressed higher than is your habit," Olyve said, without looking up from her tape. "The veil will not sit otherwise, and the queen is particular about veils. The last bride wore hers low, and the queen remarked upon it at every feast for a year following."
"What became of her?"
Olyve's mouth thinned in turn. She did not answer. She moved to the other arm, measured, murmured, and crossed to a tall cabinet of pale wood. From it she drew a length of cloth so white it seemed to give off its own light, and she held it up to the candle flames and let the firelight pass through it.
"Moon-silk," she said. "Woven in the eastern vales under a sky your eyes have never seen. Each thread is a filament drawn from the cocoon of a moth that feeds only on the white lichen of those high crags. It is heavier than it looks, and colder, and it will hold a shape no other cloth can hold. Three of your predecessors were married in this silk."
Vespera's mouth went dry. "Three."
"Three," Olyve said, and set the cloth across her arms like a sleeping child. "The fourth. You will be the fourth to be measured for it. Whether you will be the fourth to wear it to the altar is a question I cannot answer, and do not ask me to, child, for I have no talent for prophecy and less patience for it."
She turned back to the cabinet and drew from it, with the care one might use to lift a sleeping cat, a gown that Vespera knew at once could not be the moon-silk, for this one was the deep green of a forest seen from a height, and the moon-silk she had just been shown was the white of bone. The green gown was heavier in the hand, and it whispered as Olyve moved it, a sound like wind through reeds.
"The court gown first," Olyve said. "For the betrothal feast. The moon-silk is for the day, and only the day. You will not see it until the morning, and you will not touch it before then. That is the queen's command and the old law besides. The first bride touched it the night before, and the queen was displeased."
"Displeased enough."
Olyve did not elaborate. She held the gown open and Vespera stepped into it, and the silk sighed against her skin as it settled, cool and intimate as a second skin. Olyve's hands moved at her back, hooking, lacing, tightening, her fingers deft and impersonal. The gown took a shape around her that felt both foreign and inevitable.
"Hold still."
A pin at her waist. Another at her hip. Olyve's breath was warm against Vespera's shoulder, and her voice dropped to the register she used, Vespera suspected, only when the candles were low and the chamberlain had gone.
"The dress has outlasted three previous intendeds, child."
Vespera's breath caught. She did not move.
"All of whom died before the vows could be spoken," Olyve continued, in the same low tone, her hands still busy at the laces. "One to a fever that came on the night of the fitting and did not break until the morning of the burial. One to a fall from the seawall, in a wind that should not have been strong enough to take a grown woman over, and which the queen forbade anyone to investigate. One to a quietness that came over her in the third week, a quietness that grew until she would not eat, and would not speak, and at last did not wake. I dressed her for the pyre myself. The silk needed cleaning after."
Vespera's hands had gone cold at her sides. The keys under her shift felt heavier than they had a moment before.
"And now I measure the fourth."
"Yes, Mistress."
"And you are the key-keeper."
"Yes, Mistress."
Olyve's fingers paused at the small of her spine. She did not look up. The candles guttered in a draft that came from nowhere, and the green silk rippled against Vespera's legs as though stirred by a wind that did not touch the rest of the room.
"The bodice has a hidden blade."
Vespera's head came up. Olyve's gaze stayed on her lacing.
"I put it there myself," Olyve said, "the night before the first intended was measured. I have put one in every bodice I have made for a queen of Aelor since I was a girl, and I have put one in yours. The clasp at the left side, beneath the lace, beneath the bone. You will feel the catch when you breathe in deeply. Press it, and the bone parts, and the blade is there, slim as a paper knife and as cold as the morning star."
"Why?"
Olyve finished the lace and tied it off with a single sharp pull. She smoothed the silk across Vespera's shoulders with both hands, the gesture at once tender and proprietary.
"Because the dress has outlasted three, child, and I would not have a fourth die in it without a chance to choose how she left. The first intended did not know the blade was there. I had not yet thought to put one in. The second knew, and was too frightened to reach for it. The third," Olyve said, and her voice for the first time lost its warmth, "the third reached, and was too late."
Vespera stood very still on the dais. The green gown held her like a glove, and beneath it her heart beat against the second key at her breast, and the moon-silk waited in its cabinet, and the candles burned, and the draft that came from nowhere moved through the room and touched the hem of the green silk and was gone.
"I understand, Mistress."
"No," Olyve said gently. "You do not. But you will. Stand a little straighter, child. The cloth can tell when you are afraid, and the queen will be able to tell also. We will fit the sleeves now, and the veil tomorrow, and the moon-silk the morning after, and we will not speak of this again until we must."
She turned back to the cabinet, and Vespera let out the breath she had been holding, and the breath came out shaky, and she set her shoulders and held her chin where Olyve had bid her, and the green silk rippled once around her ankles and was still.
The candles had burned down by two fingers when Olyve at last unpinned the last of the basting threads and let the green silk fall to its final shape around Vespera's body. The sleeves ended in points that brushed her knuckles; the bodice lifted and held; the skirt lay in a long sheet of pale water at her feet. In the long mirror she looked like a stranger, and the stranger looked back at her with eyes she did not quite own.
"Better," Olyve said. "Hold still, child."
She took up the veil. It was the same green as the gown, but lighter, a green that remembered the leaves of a forest it had never seen. She laid it over Vespera's hair and pinned it with two slender pins of darkened silver, and stepped back, and nodded once as though she had settled a debt with herself.
"The moon-silk tomorrow. You are to be at my workroom by the seventh bell. We will need the small mirror and the lamp with the blue flame. Do not eat before you come; the breath must be empty for the binding. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Mistress."
"And Vespera." Olyve's hand rested for a moment on her arm, light as a moth. "Whatever you see in the mirror when the silk is on you, you will tell no one. Not the queen, not your sister, not the man who looks at you across a courtyard. Do you understand that also?"
"Yes, Mistress."
Olyve nodded, and the warmth came back into her voice like a candle relit. "Good. Then we are done for tonight. The Chamberlain will want the door locked and the account written. He likes his accounts. Go and let him have them."
Vespera walked back through the workroom and out into the hall. The stone was cold under the slippers Olyve had given her, and the draft followed her out and then lost interest and drifted back toward the candle flames it had come from. She passed the sentries without speaking; they did not speak to her either. At the end of the hall the door to her chamber stood ajar, and a wedge of yellow light lay on the floor inside.
She paused.
The light was wrong. She had left no lamp lit. She had been careful, always, to snuff the wick before she went, because she did not like the smell of burned oil in a closed room.
She put her hand on the door and pushed it inward, slowly.
The room was not empty.
A man stood at her window with his back to her, looking out at the courtyard below. The lightning had stopped, but the sky was still restless, a deep violet that pulsed faintly at the edges as though something enormous breathed behind it. The candle on her table was a fresh one, half-burned, and beside it lay a small square of paper folded once.
He turned.
He was perhaps thirty, though the court had a way of making men either look older or younger than they were. His hair was black and lay close to his skull; his face was narrow and well-made, the bones fine, the mouth a little too ready to smile. He wore no sword, only a dark coat of good wool, and he held his hands loose at his sides, the fingers slightly curled, as though he had just set something down and was not yet sure he wished to pick it up again.
"You are the second daughter," he said. His voice was pleasant. It had the kind of pleasantness that a careful man uses when he wants you to know he is being pleasant on purpose. "Vespera. The archivist's apprentice."
She did not move from the door. The key at her breast felt suddenly heavy, and the green silk at her throat felt suddenly thin.
"Who let you in?"
"The Chamberlain," he said. "He is a man who likes to be useful. He is also a man who writes down what he has done. I find that very convenient, in a Chamberlain."
He stepped away from the window and into the light of the candle, and she saw his eyes for the first time.
They were not his eyes. They were lightning caught in a jar. They flickered, very faintly, in the violet dark of his irises, and the flicker was not the flicker of reflected fire but the flicker of something that had a mind of its own. He blinked, and the flicker was gone, and when he opened his eyes again they were only dark eyes, a little tired, a little amused.
"You may sit," he said. "I have come to discuss a small matter of state, and small matters go better between people who are not standing."
She did not sit.
"What small matter of state requires you to be in my chamber at this hour?"
"Ah." He tilted his head, and the ready smile came and went and came again, like a cat considering a mouse it had not yet decided to chase. "You have a northern tongue, Mistress Thornholt. Direct. I like that. The court is full of people who speak in circles until the circles wear ruts in the floor. I came myself because I wished to see what manner of woman the queen has chosen to carry the moon-silk into the vault. I find that the manner of a woman tells me more than any report that any Chamberlain can write."
"You are Lord Cassian Vael."
He bowed, a small bow, the kind that was not a bow at all but a man bending his neck just enough to acknowledge that his name was known.
"I am at your service, Mistress Thornholt, which is to say at the service of the queen, which is to say at the service of Aelor. We are all of us in service, here, in one way or another. Some of us serve in chains. Some of us serve in silk. You, I think, will serve in both."
The word silk landed in the room like a coin dropped on stone. He had known. Of course he had known. The queen's spymaster did not wait for the queen's tailor to tell him what the queen's tailor had sewn.
Vespera felt the first unwelcome twist of fascination in her chest. It sat there like a hook, and she knew it was a hook, and she hated that knowing the hook did not make her stop feeling the pull. He was a beautiful man in the way a well-made blade was beautiful; she could see the edge, and she could feel the weight in her hand, and the beauty was not less for being sharp.
"You may go, my lord," she said. "The small matter of state can wait until morning."
"It cannot, I am afraid." He moved then, the first real movement he had made, and crossed the room in three unhurried steps, and picked up the folded paper from the table and held it out to her. "The key you wear. It is not only a key. You know this. The queen knows this. I know this. The only question that remains is what we mean to do about it, and the queen and the queen have not yet agreed. Until they do, I must ask you to be very careful with it, Mistress Thornholt. There are people in this palace who would take it from you. There are people outside this palace who would take it from you. And there are people, also, who would like very much to take you from it."
"I am not for taking."
"No," he said, and the smile faded, and for a moment his face was simply a man's face, tired, careful, lit by lightning that did not come from the sky. "No, I did not think you were. Which is why I came myself, and not a man with a blade, and not a Chamberlain with a paper. The queen has chosen you. I am not yet sure she has chosen well. I wished to see."
"And now you have seen."
"Now I have seen." He set the paper back on the table. "You may read it or not. It is only a copy of the oath you will be asked to swear in the vault. I thought you would like to know the shape of the words before the words were spoken over you. I find that people who know the shape of their oaths in advance tend to make fewer mistakes when the oaths are spoken."
"I do not make oaths."
"Everyone makes oaths, Mistress Thornholt. Even the ones who refuse. The refusal is itself an oath, sworn to the refusal, and the refusal remembers."
He bowed again, the same small almost-bow, and walked to the door, and paused there with his hand on the frame. The lightning in his eyes was very faint now, a last ember.
"The moon-silk is dangerous," he said. "Not to you. To the woman who wears it. It shows the wearer what she is. Most women, in my experience, do not survive the seeing. The queen survived. I would not wager much on you, Mistress Thornholt, except that I have learned to wager against my own wagers."
"You are not a kind man, my lord."
"No," he said, and for the first time his smile reached his eyes, and the eyes were only eyes, and the man behind them was only a man, and she was sorry to see how tired he looked. "No, I am not a kind man. But I am a careful man, and careful men are more useful than kind ones, in courts such as ours."
He went out, and the door closed softly behind him, and the candle flame on the table straightened and burned as though nothing had passed through it.
Vespera stood for a long moment in the middle of the room. The green silk pooled at her feet. The key lay warm against her breast. On the table, the folded paper sat square and patient, waiting to be read.
She did not read it.
She went instead to the window he had stood at, and looked down into the courtyard, and there he was, crossing toward the far arch with his hands still loose at his sides and his dark coat moving around him like water. The lightning had come back, a single sheet across the sky, and it lit him from behind for one breath, and in that breath she saw the shape of his shadow on the stones, and the shadow was not his.
It was a woman in a long gown, with a key at her breast, and the key was bright.
The lightning passed. The courtyard was dark. He was gone under the arch.
Vespera shut the window and drew the bolt and stood with her back against the wall and her hands at her sides, and the green silk rippled once around her ankles and was still. The key burned. The veil waited in its cabinet. The moon-silk waited in its other cabinet, in another room, in another wing of a palace that did not love her yet but was learning the shape of her.
The seventh bell would come. The mirror would come. The lamp with the blue flame would come, and the empty breath, and the binding. The oath would be spoken over her whether she made it or not, and the court of Aelor would close around her like a hand, and she would either survive the seeing or she would not.
She reached up and unpinned the veil and laid it on the table beside the folded paper he had left, and the two lay side by side, green and white, and neither of them moved.
She did not sleep that night. But she did not weep either.