Wasn’t necessarily a lie—I got some names, but I couldn’t do anything with them. Nicolas might know what they meant. Still, would be impossible to handle those lords tonight.
Isidora and Ruby stopped next to us. Isidora glanced from my clenched hands to Nicolas’s face and sighed, glancing away long enough to flag the closest server. He bowed, blond hair falling over his pale eyes. She whispered a request to him.
“Are you corrupting my new protégé?” Ruby asked before plucking a knife from the server’s tray as he ran off and brandishing it at Nicolas. “He’s mine. You can find some other terrible swordsmen to teach your terrible ways.”
I scowled and turned to him. “I’m not terrible.”
“You’re appalling,” Ruby drawled.
“We were talking.” Nicolas pressed a kiss to Isidora’s offered hand, completely ignoring Ruby. “Are you leaving?”
She darted up and kissed his cheek. Ruby made a guttural sound of disgust next to me, and Isidora whipped her head to him. He raised his hands in surrender.
“Ruby’s doing my rounds with me.” She patted his shoulder and glanced at me. “I do house calls with the other physicians at night once everyone is home from work. You should come once you’re settled. It’s a good learning opportunity considering you skipped every day of my training.”
I nodded and smiled, glad my conversation with Nicolas was done but feeling oddly guilty. I’d been doing other important things.
The server appeared at her side, one glass of orange blossom water and another filled with mulled wine. She thrust the wine into Nicolas’s hand.
“You need to relax and eat something before you get back to work.” She moved away, sipping her water till Ruby snatched it from her hands, and beckoned Nicolas.
“Opal,” Nicolas said softly as he bowed goodbye. “Beware the Erlend winter.”
And in the space of a breath, he was gone and the familiar scent of spring washed over me. I turned.
Elise stopped a few paces from me, with her father on her arm.
“Opal.” Elise politely bowed a little, and I returned it with a slightly deeper bow. With her father’s eyes on us, I’d no desire to make him dislike me more. “I’d like you to meet my father, Lord Nevierno del Farone.”
I bowed even deeper and ignored the prickling sense of recognition at his name. Of course I’d heard it before. He was Elise’s father.
Nevierno was old Erlenian, and I was a fool. A traditional name for a traditional man.
Beware the Erlend Winter.
“Lord del Farone.” I stayed bowed, with his damned name chilling me down to the bone, and held back the growing ache for Elise in my chest. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Nevierno. Icy peaks and snow-encrusted forests, the old Erlend name for a winter as harsh and as cold as death itself.
Lady help me, he’d not even used a good secret name.
Elise hadn’t hated me before, but she certainly would now, no matter how monstrous her father. He had to die.
“Welcome to court, Opal.” He returned my bow, neck bared. It would be so easy to kill him here. I could jam my blade through the back of his spine and watch the life leave him. Quick and simple. More than he deserved. “I hope my daughter is being welcoming as well.”
Elise glanced at him, nose wrinkling. He was ill—a pink flush covered his neck and cheeks no matter how he tried to hide it with his high collar, and each word escaped his throat as a dry rasp.
“She is,” I said carefully, not sure what was off but sure that something was.
Maybe he was too sick to be particular.
“Excellent.” He coughed into a handkerchief, hacking up blood, a lung, and Lady knew what else.
But he was Elise’s father, and better that illness take him than me.
“I wish you’d go catch Isidora before she does her rounds,” Elise said, glancing at me and rolling her eyes back to him. “She’s bound to have something for that cough.”
“I am not so old that a cough will kill me.” He straightened up, folding his handkerchief into squares. A smear of red was bright between the folds.
Bright as the red cosmetic cream Maud had used on my lips.
Elise smiled. “Of course not, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
“Of course, darling.” He tucked his handkerchief into the coat pocket at his hip. Perfect. “I’d hate to ruin the festivities as well as your expectations.”
“Lord del Farone.” I bowed again, as close as I could without touching him, and handed him my handkerchief. “I insist.”
He nodded to me, and I let my free hand drift toward his side, as natural as any of Ruby’s wandering gestures. His handkerchief vanished up my sleeve.
“How generous of you.”
I glanced at the speck of red on white. Definitely cosmetic cream.
She stared at his retreating back. “I thought he’d put up more of a fight. Do you think he is that sick?”
“No.” I handed her my wine. He wasn’t ill in mind or body, only in his soul. You had to be to do what he’d done. “I’m sure he’s tired of getting told off for not seeing her.”
He wasn’t ill. He’d agreed to see Isidora too easily, and he was Winter. That was a plot if I’d ever heard one—a long game coming to a head.
Missing this party to see Isidora was either the beginning or the end.
“I suppose.” Elise took a sip, drifting closer to me with each breath. “I knew he wouldn’t argue with me over it because you’re Opal, but he’d never be—”
“Generous and understanding?” I curled an arm around her waist and savored the warmth of her body against mine. “How long’s he been sick?”
Let it be the start. Let me not have to shatter her memories of him so soon, and let Our Queen learn of it quickly.
“Since summer.” She drawled the word like Ruby. “I hate it. He works all day and night, never speaking to anyone but his assistants and won’t see Isidora because it’s unseemly for a man of his stature to show weakness. Traditions have their place, but this is ridiculous.”
Erlend’s ideals had ruined more families than Nacean ones.
Horatio del Seve’s notes had mentioned waiting for winter, but the north wind at my back had nothing to do with the chill running down my spine. I had to get out of here. “I have to talk to Ruby.”
Elise frowned. “What?”
“I’ll be back. I promise.” I held her close, comforted in the fact that I’d see her again no matter what. “Talking to your father reminded me of something I meant to ask Ruby before he left.”
Even if I was wrong, he’d understand. And if I was right, hopefully it wasn’t too late.
“Go.” She sighed, long and sad, but smiled. “I should’ve realized I’d not have you to myself yet.”
I laced our fingers together, brought them to my false lips, and pressed our foreheads together. “I’ll make it up to you.”
I’d all the time and resources to do that. Soon as I figured out what Winter—her father—was up to, I could let Nicolas and Our Queen do as they wanted with it. It wasn’t my fault or Elise’s that her father was what he was. It wasn’t my fault that I had to do what I was about to do, but she couldn’t know my part in it. Not yet. Not if I was right.
Lady, let me be wrong.
Forty-Seven