Chapter 3

Nerissa POV

The key turned a little past midnight, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my boots already on.

"You're awake," Dunstan said from the doorway. He sounded disappointed.

"Somebody locked me in. It's hard to sleep when you're being kept like a pie in a cupboard."

He looked at the key in his hand as if it had insulted him. "Regent's orders."

"Do you always do what the Regent says?"

"Only when I agree with him, which is less often than he thinks. Come on."

The tower stairs wound up forever, with one torch on every landing, and Dunstan took them like a man who climbed them a thousand times.

"The healers call it the Long Sleep," he said over his shoulder. "The wolf takes over and the body shuts down. Some wake up. Most don't."

"How long has he been like this?"

"Since the Harvest Moon. He went down in the middle of a toast. Eight months now. I read him the grain reports every morning, and he's never once told me to shut up."

"That's a very patient man."

"That's a very stubborn man."

"What else do you read to him?"

"Border reports. Once, a recipe for plum pudding, when I ran out." He stopped on the last landing. "Madam Vane usually sits the night with him. She's hardly slept since he went down. Tonight the Regent wants you alone, to see whether the wolf behaves."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then you shout, and I come in, and we find out how fast I can swing a sword."

"That's comforting."

"It isn't meant to be." He gave me a long look. "I held a basin while the healers dug claws out of a girl barely seventeen, and she kept calling for her mother. So you'll excuse me if I'm not friendly."

"I'm not offended."

"You should be. I'm being rude on purpose."

"It's working," I said.

"Good." He grunted, which might have been a laugh. "Hold his hand if you want. Talk to him. The wolf likes a voice." He opened the door.

"Does he ever make a sound when it's just you?" I asked.

"Never. Not once. I'll be right outside. Shout if he twitches so much"

The room at the top was round and cold, and the wind pushed at the window. It held one lamp, one chair, a high bed, and a table with a bowl of broth that had grown a skin. It smelled of old linen and sickness, and I couldn't find a trace of lavender anywhere. I sat in the chair, then got up and sat on the edge of the bed instead, because the chair was too far away to look brave. I skipped the hand-holding. That seemed like a conversation for the second night.

"Hello," I said. "It's me. The marsh girl. I'd say it's nice to meet you, but you grabbed my wrist in front of the whole Council, so I think we skipped that part."

His face didn't move. Up close he was better looking than I noticed in the hall, which was annoying. The ends of his hair were chopped and crooked, as if a servant had cut it in a hurry, and his hands were big and scarred across the knuckles. They didn't look like they spent their lives being served grapes.

"They locked me in, you know. Your uncle did. I'm Luna Princess and I don't have a key to my own door. I asked." I waited. Nothing. "For the record, I'm not good at this. My wolf has never said a word, my mother used to say she was shy, and I haven't had my cordial in four days, so now I'm hearing things. Candles. Mice in the wall. Your heart, in the hall." I wiped my palms on my skirt. "I hate your uncle, by the way. I think he's a horrible man."

His heartbeat jumped.

It was one hard knock and then a stumble, and then it went slow and even again. I stared at his face. Nothing.

"Okay," I said, very slowly. "I love your uncle. He's wonderful. He's so kind to children."

Slow, even, steady as a clock.

"I hate your uncle."

Knock. Stumble.

"What the hell?" I whispered. "Either that's the best reflex in the kingdom, or you're a very bad sleeper. Since you're listening, or not listening, I should tell you about Finn. He's nine, he's the reason I'm here, and he thinks I'm a princess now, so he'll be unbearable about it. And there's a boy back home called Tobias who put my name on the paper. If I ever see him again, I'm going to feed him something that makes him very, very regular."

His heartbeat slammed once, hard.

"That one's new," I said. "You don't like Tobias either?"

Nobody answered, obviously. I sat there with my own pulse going harder than his. Then I remembered the honey cake wrapped in a napkin in my pocket, because I can't sleep without something to hold, and I took it out and unwrapped it on the blanket.

His stomach let out a long, wet gurgle, rrrrrrghhh, loud enough to bounce off the stone.

"Holy shit," I said. "Was that you?"

Nothing. Not even a blink.

"Fine, don't admit it. I'd be embarrassed too if I just growled at a cake. But a sleeping man's stomach doesn't do that." I broke off a corner and held it near his face, and his heart took off like a runaway horse. "You can hear me. You're in there, and you can hear every word." I slipped two fingers into his open palm. "Squeeze if I'm right."

His hand didn't move.

"Okay. Hears everything, can't move. That's horrible."

The bowl on the table was the only thing in the room I hadn't looked at yet. When I leaned over it, the smell came up cold, broth and onion and something green and sweet underneath that didn't belong. I touched a fingertip to it and then to my tongue, the way my mother taught me, and my tongue went numb.

"Sorry for tasting your dinner," I told him. "My mother told me never to taste poison, but she also told me never to talk to boys, so I'm having a bad night for rules. It's poppy milk. And marsh dust. We use it back home on goats that kick. One pinch and they sleep through a thunderstorm." I spat into the washbasin and wiped my mouth. "This isn't a pinch. This bowl would flatten a horse. If you can hear me, this isn't the Long Sleep. Somebody's feeding you a drug. They've been feeding you for eight months. You're not stuck in there. You're being kept in there."

"Girl?" Dunstan's voice came through the door. "Everything all right?"

"Fine!" It came out much too high. "I was just telling him about the grain reports and the weather!"

A long pause. "Hm," Dunstan said, and his boots scraped away from the door. I counted to twenty before I let my breath out.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "If I'm right, I'm so sorry. Eight months, and nobody checked the broth."

His hand closed around my wrist.

I didn't scream, though it was close. His grip was hot and rough and steady, and his thumb tapped twice against my pulse, the same as it had in the hall, only now I knew what it meant.

His eyes opened.

They were amber, pale and almost yellow in the lamplight, and they looked straight at me, wide awake, like they'd been awake for a very long time.

"Keep very still," he said, in a voice like a door that hadn't been opened in a year. "And lower your voice. The walls in this tower listen.”