The Queen's Rising(63)

I nodded, my voice too withered to try to speak, even though countless questions began to flood my mind.

“Good. Very good.” His gaze softened, as if he was seeing something in the distance, something I could not discern. “You will cross the channel the last day of September, which will have you reaching Lyonesse the first of October. A Thursday. The royal hearings typically take all day, but I would recommend you go early, because it is a six-hour trip from Lyonesse to Damhan.”

“Don’t worry,” I rasped, to which he gave me a wry look.

“That is like telling me not to breathe, Amadine. I will worry every moment you are away.”

“I can . . . handle a sword now.”

“So I hear. And I am glad you brought that up because . . .” He reached inside his doublet, brought forth a dagger in a leather sheath. “This is for you, what we Maevans call a dirk. To be worn about your thigh, beneath your dress. Wear it at all times. Do I need to tell you where the best places to stab are?” He set it in my other hand, so I now held a silver rose ornament and a dirk. Quite the contradiction, but a flame of anticipation warmed my chest.

“I know where,” I struggled to say. I could have pointed to all the vital blood flows of the body, the ones to cut to make a person bleed out, but I was too weak.

“Liam is going to plan a time to talk with you about the best ways to move in and out of Damhan,” Jourdain continued. “You will need to recover the stone at night, when the castle slumbers. We think it is best if you disguise yourself as a servant, and use the servant quarters to slip in and out.”

I didn’t let him see how the mere thought of this terrified me . . . the idea of wandering alone in unfamiliar woods at night . . . the threat of being caught trying to leave and enter the castle. Surely there was another way I could accomplish this. . . .

“I also hear your birthday was yesterday,” Jourdain said, which startled me.

How long had I been sleeping?

“You slept for two days,” he replied, reading my mind. “So how old are you now? Sixteen?”

Was he teasing me? I frowned at him and said, “Eighteen.”

“Well, I hear there is to be a party of some sorts, most likely tomorrow, after you have rested.”

“I don’t . . . want . . . a party.”

“Try telling that to Luc.” Jourdain stood just as Agnes returned with a bowl of broth and a jar of rosemary water. “Rest, Amadine. We can tell you the remaining plans when you have recovered.”

Indeed, I was very surprised that he had already told me so much, that my original plans had been honored.

After Jourdain left, Agnes helped me to a bath and clean clothes, and then stripped my linens. I sat by the window, the glass cracked open so I could breathe fresh air, my hair wondrously damp on my neck.

I thought of everything Jourdain had just told me. I thought of the Stone of Eventide, of Damhan, of what I should say when I stood before Lannon and made my request. There were so many unknown things, so many things that could go wrong.

I watched as the first golden leaves began to drop from the trees, one by one as gentle promises. My birthday marked summer’s end and autumn’s beginning, when warm days slowly faded and cold nights became longer and longer, when trees gave up their dreams and only the hardiest, most determined of flowers persisted to bloom from the earth.

Summer was over. Which meant Cartier had discovered my mysterious departure by now.

I let myself think on him, something I had not allowed my heart or mind to do since I had taken the mantle of Amadine. He would be at Magnalia, preparing to teach the next passion cycle, preparing for his next ten-year-old arden of knowledge to arrive. He would stand in the library and see half his books on the shelves, knowing I had put them there.

I closed my eyes. What constellation had he chosen for me? What stars had he plucked from the firmament? What stars had he captured with a bolt of the finest blue fabric, to caress my back?

I had to tell myself in that moment, that moment of in-between—in between seasons, in between missions, in between seventeen and eighteen—that I would be at peace even if I never received my cloak. That seven years at Magnalia was not in vain, because look where it had brought me.

“There’s someone downstairs waiting to see you.”

I opened my eyes and turned to see Luc standing in my room, that impish smile on his lips, his cinnamon hair standing up at all the wrong angles.

For one heady moment, I thought it was Cartier waiting downstairs. That he had found me somehow. And my heart danced up my throat, so wildly that I could not speak.

“What’s the matter?” Luc asked, that smile fading as he stepped closer to me. “Do you still feel unwell?”

I shook my head, forced a smile to my lips as I brushed the damp hair away from my eyes. “I’m fine. I . . . I was just thinking of what will happen if I fail,” I said, glancing back to the window, to the trees and the twirling descent of the leaves. “There is so much that can go wrong.”

Luc put his hand on my knee. “Amadine. None of us is going to fail. You cannot cross the channel with such shadows in your thoughts.” When he squeezed my knee, I relented to look back at him. “We all have doubts. Father does, I do, Yseult does. We all have worries, fears. But what we are about to do is going to carve our names into history. So we rise to the challenge knowing that the victory is already ours.”