Kate looked over at her friend, grinning. But it means anyone not born to the islands.” “Garro?” Kate said, leaning forward to shoo a fly off Firedancer’s neck. “My mother says there are two ways to always get a garro to talk. Corwin had been busy the last two days with high council business, and Kate enlisted Signe’s help in taking the horses out for a much-needed hack in the countryside. “How would you do it?” Kate asked Signe while they were out riding one morning. Still, there must be some solution she just needed to find it. Not a day went by that she didn’t hear whispers of Traitor Kate following her at every turn. Besides, even if she did, she was too recognizable. She didn’t have any of the skills such an establishment would require. She was sure that she wouldn’t seem as natural as the women she saw frequenting the place, and Kate doubted she would be able to score a job. She’d spent enough time these last few weeks observing the comings and goings outside the brothel to know that she would stand out like a mule in a herd of warhorses. And going inside to snoop wasn’t going to be easy either. It wasn’t like she could just march into the Sacred Sword and demand they tell her. She needed to uncover her father’s secrets soon, before Norgard became too much like home again-and before she once more set her heart on someone who could never be hers. The disappointment she felt afterward bothered her even now. And just yesterday, it even seemed for a moment that he was about to kiss her. She savored every time he touched her, which he did often, always finding some excuse to place his fingers on her shoulder or back or to tug at her hand. Instead, she found herself longing to see him. Even worse, she felt her instinct to stay away from him weakening each day. He kept showing up at her door with sweet rolls and an invitation to ride or sometimes just to walk in the gardens or along the ramparts. In the two weeks since the first trial, Kate had spent nearly every morning with him. Still, the temptation to tell him kept getting stronger. But of the two, Corwin’s image had been clearer somehow, almost brighter. Watching the two princes inside that unnatural mist had been strange, almost like watching a dream-their shapes and those they battled, indistinct and confused. Although there was no clear winner in the first uror trial, he had done well. The risk of what Corwin would do-what he would be compelled to do-if he learned the truth about her seemed greater than ever, now that he might finally become the next king. She’d never experienced such open hatred for wilders before. She didn’t see how she could ever tell him she was a wilder, especially not now with the growing threat of the Rising. She longed to tell Corwin, but couldn’t find a way to do so without revealing her secret. Not like at night, when it vanished completely, but as if there was something standing between her and it. The moment Kate stepped through the trees, she felt cut off from her magic. There’d been something wrong in the Wandering Woods that day when they’d returned to search for the drakes. She never wanted to be taken away from her father by those masked people.īut what happens when not telling the truth might put them in more danger than telling them? Kate wondered. “Yes, Daddy.” Kate believed him completely, especially once he explained the consequences of being discovered a wilder. Not telling them is a sacrifice we must make for them. “It’s not a lie when the truth would hurt the ones we love. “Isn’t that a lie?” Kate wrinkled her nose. “Does Mother know?” a seven-year-old Kate had asked him. Keeping her wilder abilities a secret was normal, expected, a promise she’d made to her father from the first moment she was old enough to understand that she was different. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN her life, Kate regretted not being able to tell Corwin the truth about her magic.
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