Chapter 32

Three days after the gathering, Caspian came to breakfast with a letter in his hand.

It was sealed in his own black wax, addressed in his own hand to His Highness Lucien of the Seelie Court. He put it on the table between my plate and his, so I could see it, and didn’t let go of it.

“I can’t tell you what’s in it,” he said. “But I can tell you what it’s for. You asked me what I was afraid of. This is part of it.”

And then he told me the part he could.

When the war between Vaelmoor and the Seelie court ended, three hundred years ago, the peace had been bought with an oath. Both crowns had sworn it: that what had happened to one woman, and how she died, would never be spoken of by either side without the other’s leave. Not to councils, not to mates, not to anyone. It was the price of the truce. To break it, even in a bedroom, even to me, would be an act of war on the eve of the first real treaty in a century.

“I didn’t make the oath alone,” he said