Chapter Fourteen

“Daethie,” Aien stroked my hair back from my face. I opened my eyes. It was still dark, and his face was almost obscured in the shadows of the room, picked out by the fragile light of the embers of the fire. “It’s just dawn,” he told me.

I rolled out of bed automatically. It had become the pattern of our mornings, to wake early and leave the castle before it stirred to the day and return to have our evening meal in the kitchen with the servants, avoiding anyone who might have noticed our absence during the day. It would not last, I knew. Our absence had to have been noticed. Whilst they could not find us, they could not punish us for our truancy, but sooner or later someone would decide that enough was enough and would go out of their way to trap us on our way in and out, and demand answers as to what we did.

Aien slipped out of the room to go to his own as I used the chamber pot and splashed water on my face before dressing, pulling on my heaviest cloak against a morning that I knew