Chapter 46

The Summer Fair fell on the third Saturday in July, and on the morning of it, I found Corwin mucking out the gate-guard’s horses.

He had been my guard since January. Not the only one, but the first one, and the one who stayed: at the Hearth, in the library, on the long rides with Rowan, a quiet shape at the edge of every room I was in. He had a way of standing that made you feel the door behind you was taken care of. And now he was in the gate stables in his shirtsleeves with a fork in his hands and straw in his hair, doing a stable boy’s work.

“Corwin.”

“Luna.” He didn’t stop forking. “You shouldn’t be down here. They’ll have someone new on you by now. He’ll be looking for you.”

“What happened?”

He forked another load of straw into the barrow. Then he leaned the fork against the wall and wiped his hands on his breeches, slowly, and looked at me.

“The King called me in on Thursday,” he said. “Said that from now on, I was to report to him every eve