“I’m studying,” I replied with a lopsided smile.
“But lessons are over,” she argued, setting the lute on her bed and striding over to mine. “We are going on a celebration picnic. You should come.”
I almost did. I was one breath from shutting the tome and forgetting the list of things I needed to memorize, but my gaze drifted to The Book of Hours. I needed, perhaps more than anything, to talk to Cartier about it. About what I had seen.
“I wish I could,” I said, and I thought Merei was about to pull me up and drag me down the stairs when Abree hollered for her from the foyer.
“Merei!”
“Brienna. Please come,” Merei whispered.
“I have to talk to Master Cartier about something.”
“What about?”
“Merei!” Abree continued to shout. “Hurry! They are leaving us!”
I stared up at her, my sister, my friend. She might be the one person in the world I could trust, the one person who would not think I had lost my wits if I told her what had happened, how I had shifted.
“I will have to tell you later,” I murmured. “Go, before Abree loses her voice.”
Merei stood a breath longer, her dark eyes steady over mine. But she knew arguing with me was futile. She left without another word, and I listened to the sound of her descending the stairs, the front doors latching with a shudder.
I stood and walked to our window, which overlooked the front courtyard. I watched my arden-sisters gather into one of the open coaches, laughing as their entourage traveled down the drive, disappearing beneath the boughs of the oaks.
Only then did I grab The Book of Hours and rush down the stairs in a tumble. I nearly collided with Cartier in the foyer; his cloak was draped over his arm, his satchel in hand as he prepared to depart.
“I thought you had left,” Cartier stated.
“No, Master.”
We stood and stared at each other, the house unusually quiet, as if the walls were watching us. It felt like I was taking in a breath, about to plunge into deep waters.
“May I request an afternoon lesson?”
He shifted his satchel and snorted. “I dismiss you from one, and now you want another?”
A smile warmed my lips as I held up his book. “Perhaps we can discuss this?”
His gaze flickered to the book, then back to me and my soft, repentant eyes. “Very well. If you agree to act as yourself.”
We walked into the library. As he began to set down his things, I stood at my chair, sliding The Book of Hours onto the table.
“I wanted you to dismiss me,” I confessed.
Cartier glanced up, one eyebrow cocked. “So I concluded. Why?”
I pulled out my chair and sat, lacing my fingers as an obedient arden. “Because Ciri thinks you favor me.”
He took Ciri’s chair, sitting directly across from me. Propping his elbows on the table, he rested his chin on the valley of his palm, his eyes half-lidded with poorly concealed mirth. “What makes her think that?”
“I don’t know.”
He was quiet, but his gaze touched every line and curve of my face. I remembered how easily he could see through me, that my face was like a poem he could read. So I tried to keep from smiling, or frowning, but he still insisted, “You do know. Why?”
“I think it is because of the things we talk about. Yesterday, she felt left out.”
“When we talk of Maevana?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t about to tell him of the suspected smile. “And I think she is worried about the patrons, about . . . competing with me.” This is what I was most worried about—that Ciri and I would inevitably turn the solstice into a competition, that we would want the same patron.
His gaze sharpened. Any glimmer of mirth faded, and he straightened in the chair. “There should be no need for you and her to compete. You have your strengths, she has hers.”
“What would you call my strengths?” I tentatively asked.
“Well, I would claim you are similar to me. You are naturally a historian, attracted to things of the past.”
I could hardly believe his words, how he had just opened the door to what I was anxious to talk about. Gently, I unwrapped The Book of Hours and set it between us.
“Speaking of the past,” I began, clearing my throat, “where did you come by such a book?”
“Where I come by most of my books,” he smartly replied. “The bookseller.”
“Did you purchase it in Maevana?”
He was quiet, and then he said, “No.”
“So you do not know who owned it before you?”
“These are strange questions, Brienna.”
“I am merely curious.”
“Then no, I do not know who owned it before me.” He leaned back in the chair, that half-lidded expression returning. But he did not fool me; I saw the gleam in his eyes.
“Have you ever . . . seen or felt things when you read this book?”
“Every book makes me see and feel things, Brienna.”
He made me sound foolish. I began to mentally retreat, slightly stung by his sarcasm, and he must have sensed it, because he instantly softened, his voice like honey.
“Did you enjoy reading about the Stone of Eventide?”
“Yes, Master. But . . .”
He waited, encouraging me to speak my mind.
“Whatever happened to it?” I finished.
“No one knows,” Cartier answered. “It went missing in 1430, the year of the last Maevan queen.”
1430. The year I had somehow stepped into. I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry, my pulse skipping. I remembered what the princess had said, what the man had said.
Bring me the Stone of Eventide.
“The last Maevan queen?” I echoed.
“Yes. There was a bloody battle, a magical battle. As you already know from reading about Liadan, the Kavanaghs’ magic in war turned wild and corrupt. The queen was slain, the stone lost, and so came the end of an era.” He tapped his fingers on the table, gazing at nothing in particular, as if his thoughts ran as deep and troubled as mine.
“But we still call Maevana the queen’s realm,” I said. “We do not call her a ‘kingdom.’”
“King Lannon hopes to change that soon, though.”
Ah, King Lannon. There were three things I thought of at the sound of his name: greed, power, and steel. Greed because he had already minted Maevan coins with his profile. Power because he heavily restricted travel between Maevana and Valenia. And steel, because he settled most opposition by the sword.
But Maevana had not always been so dark and dangerous.
“What are you thinking?” Cartier asked.
“I am thinking of King Lannon.”
“Is there that much to think of when he comes to mind?”
I gave him a playful look. “Yes, Master Cartier. There’s a man on Maevana’s throne when there should be a queen.”
“Who says there is supposed to be a queen?” And here came the banter; he was challenging me to flex my knowledge as well as my articulation.
“Liadan Kavanagh said so.”
“But Liadan Kavanagh has been dead two hundred and fifty years.”
“She may be dead,” I said, “but her words are not.”
“What words, Brienna?”