Chapter 9: Hollow Night

Linnet's POV

I opened the door and Ivar was standing in the corridor with his hand still raised.

He looked tired.

He had clearly stood on the stairs a long time before he knocked.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

"It's your wing."

"It's your room."

I stepped back and let him in.

He stopped in the middle of the floor with the candle between us.

He did not sit.

He looked at his mother's shawl on its hook, and then at me.

"Linnet, I have to ask you something," he said. "You will hate me for it."

"Then ask it fast."

"Where were you on Hollow Night seven years ago?"

The room went very quiet.

I had known it was coming.

I had heard it in Father's voice across the sand, and in every silence since.

I put my hands flat on the table to keep them still.

"You brought me north to ask me that," I said.

"Yes."

"Not for your wards."

"For both," he said, and his jaw worked.

"I want to be honest with you," he said. "I wanted your hands, and I wanted to see your face when I said it."

"And what do you see?"

"Nothing I expected."

I laughed, short and hard.

"I was asleep," I said.

He did not move.

"I was seventeen," I said. "I'd been keeping the wards for a few months."

"Mother brought me chamomile the night before Hollow Night," I said. "I slept through all of it, the whole day and the night."

"You slept," he said.

"I woke at dawn and Father told me the wards had dipped for an hour," I said.

"He said it was a freak failure and the Dusk Court was strong that year."

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