Chapter 19: The Square

Solveig's POV

I took off my knife and my rings in the courtyard, and I gave them to Lysander.

"I'll be fifty paces behind you," he said.

"He said no wolf and no king."

"He said I could not come with you." His voice was flat. "He did not say I could not stand where I can hear."

"If you step into that square, Maud dies."

"Then I won't step."

He took my face in both hands, in front of the whole courtyard.

"Come back," he said.

I walked down into the festival alone.

The lanterns were lit, and the masked crowds parted around me without knowing who I was.

I knew the way.

I had not walked it in fifteen years, and my feet still knew it.

I went down the street of the dyers and past the well with the broken lip.

The street opened into a wide square with a clock tower at one end.

There was a cart in the middle of it now, selling roasted chestnuts.

Fifteen years ago a different cart had stood in that spot.

I stopped at the edge of the lantern light, and I felt every one of my eight years rise up through my feet.

"Ellie."

Corvin stood on the stone rim of the dry fountain, in a plain brown coat.

Maud knelt at his feet with her gray hair loose and a blade laid flat against her throat.

Rosamund was beside him in a hooded cloak, and in her hands was a crossbow, aimed at my chest.

"You came," Corvin said, and his voice cracked. "I knew you would. You always did what you were told."

The crowd was drifting toward us, one mask at a time.

Somebody had seen the blade.

"Let her go," I said.

"Walk to me. Slowly, with your hands out."

I walked.

Each step took me closer to the cart, and the lantern light shook on the stones.

When I drew near, Corvin's face crumpled.

The tears came all at once, running down his cheeks, and his lower lip trembled.

"Why did you do this to me?" he sobbed. "I only ever loved you."

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