Chapter 45

He knew before we reached the top of the lawn.

I felt it the moment Saskia let the silence go behind us: the bond, which had lain slack for two weeks, went suddenly taut, like a line with something heavy on the end of it. Not reaching for me. Only knowing. The two wolves on the bank had reported through the pack link before we had taken ten steps—the Luna, the Seelie prince, the boathouse, an hour, a Seelie silence—and somewhere in the black study, he had heard every word of it.

Lucien felt me stiffen. He didn’t ask. He walked beside me up the long lawn with his hands in his coat pockets and his chin up, exactly as he had promised, as if we had nothing to be ashamed of, and left me at the terrace door with a small bow.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “The orchard. Bring your sensible face.”

***

I went to study at ten.

I hadn’t meant to. I had meant to go to bed and lie there and think about Blackwater, and a woman laughing and crying at a table with a