Chapter 22

By the time I came back from the armory, the council had been sitting for half an hour, and Caspian’s offer to take me in with him had gone the way of the morning. So I belonged to Lyra.

An hour later, I was beginning to regret it.

She had not stopped talking. Floral prints. Something she called farmhouse, and something she called modern, which as far as I could tell meant furniture you couldn’t sit on. I had stopped following somewhere around the curtains.

“You’re not listening,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand half of it.” That was true. The other half was that I understood what she wanted perfectly well and the details made my head ache.

“Then we’ll walk around and look. It’s easier when you can see the walls.”

“Caspian asked me to stay in the grounds for a while.”

He had asked, not ordered. And he had told me why, because that was our rule now. Valerian, who had called me an ambitious rogue in front of the council and would like