Chapter 15: Seven Days

I didn't let him in.

I stood in the doorway with the candle and looked at the blood in my slipper.

"Ottilie's," I said.

"Ottilie's." He turned it in his hands. "After the orchard I went back to the house. I asked to see her foot."

"She wouldn't let me. She said it was a lady's foot and I was only a guard."

"So I told her who I was."

He laughed, and it wasn't a laugh.

"She let me see it then."

"And?"

"She'd cut her own heel. With a kitchen knife, her maid says. The morning of the fitting."

"It's gone bad. It smells. She's been binding it in silk and smiling at me for two weeks."

I thought of her mouth going tight for half a second when the slipper went on.

I'd seen it. Everyone in that kitchen had seen it.

"She found the other slipper in my mattress," I said. "The morning after."

"I know that now."

"I told you that. In the kitchen. In front of the herald."

"I know."

Down the corridor a door opened.

Cassian came out in his shirt and trousers, with his mane loose and his feet bare on the boards.

He looked at Florian. Then at the slipper.

He didn't say anything. He leaned against the wall and folded his arms.

Florian glanced at him and swallowed.

"There's more," he said.

"Tonight at dusk I went into the palace chapel. I wanted to be alone."

"There was a woman sitting in the front pew. Gray cloak. The whole chapel smelled like snow."

My hand tightened on the candle.

"She said I'd sworn a vow in her ballroom. I'd know you anywhere, mask or no mask."

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