Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 121 - Chapitre 130

ELLARIA.Arren was still loading the bags into the boot when Catherine rounded the car to the back seat.I watched her settle in through the rear view mirror and then turned around properly, realizing somewhere in the chaos of the last two days I had never once thought to ask her name. She had just been the witch. The old woman. The person who showed up at Arren's side with a mug and an expression that saw too much."I never asked your name," I said.She looked at me and smiled. "Catherine," she said. "But you can just call me the Jumperman."I laughed before I could stop it. "The Jumperman?""Long story." She reached across and squeezed my shoulder with a hand that was warmer than I expected. Then she tilted her head slightly and said, "I take it last night wasn't a success. But not the farthest from it either."My lips parted.I stared at her.She held my gaze with that particular unhurried patience of hers that said she already knew everything she was asking about and was simply

ELLARIA.The library was two streets from the restaurant exactly like Catherine said.It was old. Not decorated old, just actually old, the kind of building where the age was in the walls themselves. The door was heavy and the hinges were silent and the woman at the front desk looked up when we came in and her eyes moved across all three of us in a way that sat just slightly wrong.She didn't say anything unusual. Just asked if we needed help finding something.Arren said old records. Local history. Anything that predated the current town records.She looked at him for a moment and then nodded and led us to a section at the back that I suspected most people never ended up in. Shelves that went higher than was practical. Documents say in folders and binders and things that weren't quite organized either. She gestured at the table in the middle of it all and left.Catherine sat down immediately and pulled the nearest binder toward her like she owned the place.Arren and I started going

ELLARIA.The hotel was the nicest thing we'd stayed in since leaving the eastern sector.Why wouldn’t it be with three rooms off a shared sitting area. A window that looked out over the town's main street and furniture that hadn't seen better days. Catherine walked in, looked around once and called it acceptable, which from her was close to a standing ovation.Arren went out for dinner.I made tea in two cups. I set Catherine's on the small table beside her armchair and took mine to the end of the sofa. She had her shoes off and her legs crossed and the ease of someone who was comfortable in any space she entered.Outside the town was settling into evening. Lights coming on in the shop windows. People passing on the street below moving slower than they had in the morning."Nice town," I said."Mm," she said."For a town full of witches." I added pointedly, still not letting her live it down. She smiled into her cup. "Most nice things are complicated when you look closely enough."W

TEN YEARS AGOELLARIA. The palace didn't know what to do with itself. That was the only way to describe it. The king was dead and every corridor and every staircase and every room I moved through in the days that followed had the particular unsettled energy of a place that had been running on a specific rhythm for a long time and had just had that rhythm pulled out from under it. The maids felt it more than most. We were everywhere and invisible at the same time which meant we heard everything. "They're saying the succession has to happen quickly," Mara said. She was working the other end of the upper corridor from me, polishing the same stretch of floor she'd been polishing for twenty minutes without making any progress because she kept stopping to talk. "The council won't wait. They can't." "He's not married," said Deli from the linen cupboard. Her head appeared around the door. "That's the issue isn't it. They can't properly install him without a formal union." "That's not s

ELLARIA.The dress weighed more than I expected.Heavy white fabric that pooled at my feet and required two people to arrange every time I moved. The tailors had been at it since before sunrise, adjusting things I couldn't see and conferring in low voices about things I didn't understand. I stood in the middle of it all and focused on breathing at a normal rate.Some of the women I used to work with were here.That was the strangest part. Women I'd cleaned corridors beside and eaten breakfast with in the staff kitchen were now pinning fabric and handing things to the tailors and not quite meeting my eyes. I didn't blame them. I didn't know how to meet their eyes either.Mirela was the exception.Arren had introduced me to his cousin a week ago. She'd looked me over once and then pulled me into a hug I wasn't prepared for and said she was so glad someone was finally making him do this. I'd liked her immediately in the way you liked people who didn't leave you any choice.She was still