Chapter 37

Breakfast was laid in the long room that looked onto the terrace, with every window open to the heat and the smell of cut grass coming in off the lawns.

Nana Odette had outdone herself. There were pancakes in towers, and bacon, and the little Seelie honey cakes she said Isadora had loved since she first came to the Seelie court, and a bowl of peaches so ripe that the whole end of the table smelled of them. There were place cards, too. I had not written them.

Mine was where it always was, at Caspian’s right hand. His left, where Rhys usually sat, had a card in a hand I didn’t know. The Lady Vivienne.

“Lyra asked her,” Nana Odette said in my ear, very low, as we came in. She didn’t sound pleased about it. “For the toast, she says. Vivienne has the old court manners, and Lyra thought the Seelies would like it.” She patted my arm. “Eat something, dear. You look like a ghost.”

Lyra came in last, with Vivienne on her arm.

She looked as if she hadn’t sl