Chapter 53

Nobody spoke for the length of three heartbeats. I counted them. They were his.

Then Caspian set his glass down on the tray of a footman who had frozen at his elbow, and held out his hand to Saskia, palm up.

She looked at it. She looked at me. Then she laid the things in it one at a time: the long silver pin, the sapphire, and last, carefully, between finger and thumb, the sliver of pale stone, still singing. He took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and wrapped them, corners in, the way Quill wrapped a page that was going under the glass, and put the small white bundle inside his coat, over his heart.

I knew the gesture from ten days in Gareth’s study. It was what you did with a thing that was going to be used.

The singing went with it, muffled by linen and wool and the beat of him, and for the first time in four hours the note in my ear stopped.

“A Seelie ear.”

Valerian said it softly, to the councillor at his side, in the voice of a man r