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How many potatoes is that now?he teased.Three?
The riotous look she gave him almost made him forget he’d come to ask her a serious question. She shifted the paring knife to the hand holding a potato and signed,Try three hundred, brother.
Three hundred potatoes. For a festival about apples.
Everyone else is serving apples. We’re “special.”She smirked and returned to peeling.
Tyr pursed his mouth and moved closer to catch her eyes again. She wouldn’t lie and wouldn’t steal, and he needed to approach the question with those facts in mind.Have you seen my letters? The ones Asterin and Sesto brought.
Addy’s chin dimpled in a frown. She shook her head.
You certain?
She nodded.Did you lose them?
I don’t think they’re lost. I think someone took them.
Why would anyone do that?
Tyr hadn’t told her about the false translations, and there was nothing in her face suggesting her question was for show.That’s what I’m trying to find out.
Addy’s mouth twisted in contemplation.If I see them, I’ll bring them to you.
Tyr shifted in discomfort. He didn’t want to press it, but their mother had seen Addy hidingsomething.There was only one way to clear it up. He breathed in and signed,Mother said she saw you hiding some papers in your dress. She thought they might be the missing letters.
Addy froze. Her eyes shifted to the side and then back at him.She saw wrong.
Tyr balked. She’d just lied to him.Mother wouldn’t have said it if she hadn’t seen it.
She saw wrong.
All you have to do is tell me. I won’t be angry. I just need to find them.
She saw wrong, Tyreste.
Tyreste? Are we fighting?
You tell me.Her fingers flew with furious speed. The bloom in her cheeks reddened.If I say I don’t have your letters, then I don’t.
He’d come into the conversation fully expecting to rule his baby sister out, but shewashiding something. Not just from their mother but from him.Addy. Please.
Addy chucked a potato across the room. It slammed into one of the doors with a wet thud.Either you trust me or you do not. But I don’t have your silly letters!
She leaped off the stool and shoved past him, knocking him sideways as she burst into the tavern proper.
Ana rushed through the village, head down. She knew everyone she passed but didn’t greet a soul. Her illusion would require all of her focus soon, and her thoughts were so scattered, so utterly disarrayed, she’d considered canceling on Tyreste. If she hadn’t felt so certain it was the last time she’d ever see him, she would have.
She’d ignored Magda’s summons.Meet me at the observatory at dusk,the koldyna had commanded, though it wasn’t boldness but cowardice at the source of Ana’s disobedience. If Magda wanted her at the observatory, it had to mean her need of Varradyn was waning. Ana could neither save the raven nor participate in his demise.
She would pay later for her insubordination. Perhaps dearly.
As she brushed tears away from her face, she prayed her hood was enough to hide them.
“Hej! Ana!”
Ana kept walking, pushing her pace. She felt someone coming up fast behind her, and she quickened further, but then an arm landed on her shoulder.
It was Evert Penhallow.
