“And that’s when you knew you loved him?”

She laughed. “Oh, no. What soldier doesn’t have a posy of sweet words at the ready?” She sighed and shook her head. “No, it was two weeks later, when he’d exhausted every posy at his disposal, and he seemed so dejected, and he looked at me. Just looked at me.” Her eyes glistened. “And then he whispered my name in the sweetest, weakest, most honest voice, ‘Pauline.’ That’s all, just my name, Pauline. That’s when I knew. He had nothing left, but he wasn’t giving up.” She smiled, her expression dreamy, and resumed massaging oil into her foot and ankle.

Was it possible that Pauline and Mikael had shared something true and real, or had Mikael just drawn from a new well of tricks? Whichever it was, he had gone back to his old ways and warmed his lap now with a fresh supply of girls, forgetting Pauline and tossing aside whatever they had. But that didn’t make her love for him any less true.

I bent over and rubbed my hair with the towel to dry it. I want to feel your skin, your hair, run every dark strand through my fingers. I pulled the wet strands to my nose and sniffed. Did he like the scent of rose?

My first encounter with Rafe had been a contentious one, and not by any stretch had I been smitten the way Walther was when he saw Greta. And Rafe certainly hadn’t wooed me with sweet words the way Mikael had Pauline. But maybe that didn’t make it any less true. Maybe there were a hundred different ways to fall in love.

From the loins of Morrighan,

From the far end of desolation,

From the scheming of rulers,

From the fears of a queen,

Hope will be born.

—Song of Venda

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I nearly burst with joy watching Pauline dress in the new clothes I’d bought her, a loose peach-colored shift and delicate green sandals. After weeks of wearing the heavy clothing of Civica or her drab mourning clothes, she blossomed in the summer hues.

“Such a relief in this heat. I couldn’t love it more, Lia,” she said, admiring the transformation in the mirror. She turned sideways, pulling on the fabric to judge its girth. “And it should fit me through the last spike of autumn.”

I placed the garland of pink flowers on her head, and she became a magical wood nymph.

“Your turn,” she said. My own shift was white with embroidered lavender flowers sprinkled across it. I slipped it on and twirled, looking at myself in the mirror and feeling something akin to a cloud, light and liberated from this earth. Pauline and I both paused, contemplating the claw and vine on my shoulder, the thin straps of the shift leaving it clearly visible.

Pauline reached out, touched the claw, and shook her head slowly as she considered it. “It suits you, Lia. I’m not sure why, but it does.”

When we arrived at the tavern, Rafe and Kaden were loading the wagon with tables from the dining room and cases of Berdi’s blackberry wine and preserves. As we approached, they both stopped mid-lift and slowly set their heavy loads back down. They said nothing, just stared.

“We should bathe more often,” I whispered to Pauline, and we both suppressed a giggle.

We excused ourselves to go inside and see if Berdi needed help with anything else. We found her with Gwyneth in the kitchen, loading pastries into a basket. Pauline stared longingly at the golden-crusted blackberry scones as they disappeared layer after layer into the basket. Berdi finally offered her one. She nibbled a corner self-consciously and swallowed.

“There’s something I need to tell you all,” she blurted out breathlessly.

For a moment, chatter, shuffling, and clanking of pans stopped. Everyone stared at Pauline. Berdi set the scone she was about to add to the basket back on the tray.

“We know,” she said.

“No,” Pauline insisted. “You don’t. I—”

Gwyneth reached out and grabbed Pauline’s arms. “We know.”

Somehow this became the signal for all four of us to go the table in the corner of the kitchen and sit. Gentle folds pressed down around Berdi’s eyelids, her lower lids watery, as she explained that she had been waiting for Pauline to tell her. Gwyneth nodded her understanding while I looked at all of them in wonder.

Their words were sure and deliberate. Hands were squeezed, days counted, and sorrows shouldered. My hands reaching out to become part of it all—the agreement, the solidarity, Pauline’s head pulled to Berdi’s chest, Gwyneth and I exchanging glances, so much said with no words at all. Our relationships shifted. We became a sisterhood with a common cause, soldiers of our own elite guard promising to get through this together, all of us pledging to help Pauline, and all in the space of twenty minutes before there was a tap at the kitchen door.

The wagon was loaded.

We went back to our duties with Pauline buoyed among us. If I’d felt like a cloud before, now I was like a planet winking from the heavens. A burden shared wasn’t so heavy to bear anymore. Seeing Pauline’s lighter steps made mine glide above the ground.

Berdi and Pauline left to load the remaining baskets, and Gwyneth and I said we would follow after we’d swept the floor and wiped the crumbs from the counters. We knew it was better to deter furry gray visitors now than watch Berdi chase them with a broom later. It was a small task that was quickly done, and when I had the kitchen door halfway open to leave, Gwyneth stopped me.

“Can we talk?”

Her tone had changed from only minutes earlier when our conversation flowed as easily as warm syrup. Now I heard a prickly edge. I closed the door, my back still to her, and braced myself.