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welcome back.”
    “What?” Amid the milling chaos of the reunion, Imriel’s voice was lost and bewildered, rising to panic as he glanced from Amaury to me and back. “ What ?”
    I closed my eyes and bit the inside of my cheek. I hadn’t thought.
    “Phèdre.” Amaury’s hand on my arm forced me to attention. “You didn’t tell him?”
    “No.” I shook my head. “Amaury ... you can’t know what it was like.”
    “ What ?” Imriel’s demand rose, strident with fear. In his experience, the unknown was never good. This time, I daresay he was right. “Tell me what ?”
    “Imri.” I knelt before him, taking his hands in mine. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth. Lord Amaury is right. Your name, your full name, is Imriel de la Courcel, and you are a Prince of the Blood, third in line for the D’Angeline throne.”
    His face had gone bloodless. “You said ... you said my father was dead.”
    “He is,” I said steadily. “Your father was Prince Benedicte de la Courcel, the great-uncle of Queen Ysandre. She is your cousin, and she has been praying very hard for your safe return. Lord Amaury here is her emissary. He has come all this way to bring you home.”
    Imriel tore his hands out of my grasp, clenching them into fists. “You lied ,” he hissed, eyes glittering feverishly in his pale face. “You said my mother sent you!”
    “Your mother!” Amaury Trente gave a short laugh, and caught himself. “My lord prince, your mother ...” He looked at my face. “He doesn’t know.”
    “No.” Even as I spoke, Imriel spat at me and darted away, running pell-mell for the fortress.
    “I’ll go after him,” Joscelin said quietly, suiting actions to words. I sighed and straightened, wiping spittle from my cheek.
    “I’m sorry.” Lord Amaury slid his fingers through his hair.” Phèdre , I’m sorry. I assumed-”
    “I should have,” I said, cutting him off. “I know. Amaury, the boy’s spent the past half a year in the seraglio of a madman. Do you see these women? They’ve been through hell, every one of them. So have I, and so has Imriel. All of us have. So, no. I didn’t tell him. And yes, his mother sent me. Ysandre,” I said, holding his gaze, “sent you. Melisande sent me.”
    “Melisande,” Amaury repeated doubtfully.
    “Yes,” I said, weary beyond belief. “Melisande.”
    We did not stay long at Demseen Fort, only long enough to gather ourselves for the journey to Nineveh. The accommodations were rough, unprepared to handle so many refugees, and we slept crammed on pallets in the main hall. For two nights and a day, Imriel avoided me, clinging fiercely to his sense of betrayal. I let him. Joscelin, somehow exempt from his outrage, shadowed him dutifully, as did Kaneka and Uru-Azag, who had both conceived a fondness for the wayward child.
    On the morning we were to depart, Imriel was missing.
    “Phèdre.” Joscelin found me overseeing the loading of the wounded, helping arrange cushions to bolster the leg of Ursulina, an Aragonian woman whose thigh had been laid open nearly to the bone. Miraculously, it was healing clean, the layers of muscle and skin closed in neat stitches by the hand of the Caerdicci seamstress Helena.
    “Did you find him?” I asked.
    He nodded toward the far crags on which the fortress perched. “He’s up there. I think you should talk to him.”
    “How is that?” I asked Ursulina in zenyan, testing the stability of the cushions. “Better?” At her grateful nod, I turned to Joscelin. “You go. He’s angry at me, and rightly enough.”
    Joscelin’s face was haggard in the morning sunlight. “He knows about his mother,” he said, watching my expression change. “Phèdre, he was bound to ask, and bound to find someone who would tell him. It wasn’t gently done.”
    “Who told him?”
    “Nicolas Vigny,” he said, naming Amaury’s right-hand man. “And Martin de Marigot. It’s not... it’s not their fault, either. They only spoke the truth. Vigny fought at Troyes-le-Monte; he lost a brother there. He’s reason to be bitter. It was her doing, after all.”
    “So,” I said. “Why me?”
    “Because,” Joscelin said steadily. “For better or for worse, you understand Melisande Shahrizai. You’re the only one who can tell her son she loves him without gagging on the words.”
    There was so much unspoken between us.
    “All right,” I said, pushing tendrils of sweat-dampened hair from my brow. “I’ll go.”
    Hoisting the skirts