Shortly after dinner Timoth and I walked back to our rooms. Mine was closer, yet when I arrived he did not continue on to his own chambers. He followed me into my room, and closed the door behind me.

Daegwin was inside, running a needle and thread through my riding trousers where they had been loosened by being rubbed against Lilac's saddle for days on end. Timoth seemed not to notice her presence as he spoke.

'You have disgraced yourself this night,' he said harshly. I sensed that there was more to his words than my actions during dinner, but I was more than happy for this conversation to include past wrongs.

'The Dukes knew that the Dreadwood Forest was a dangerous road to take, yet you deigned to lead us through it. It is not I who has disgraced our family, but you!' I shouted. I kicked my shoes off angrily, letting the cold stone floor freeze the soles of my feet.

'Do not change the subject, Saemara. I thought you had paid at least some attention to your education, but it seems that you know little more than a peasant.' I sensed that he was about to elaborate, so I chose not to respond while he regathered his breath before continuing, his voice suddenly a whisper. 'The Duchess, Wiseria's husband and Wilbern's mother… She killed herself.’'

'Oh…' I breathed. No wonder everyone had stiffened so visibly when I’d asked about her. I felt sorry for Wilbern: scarcely out of boyhood and already without his mother.

Timoth was not done speaking.

'She killed herself,' he said, 'because of Duke Wiseria's penchant for young women. He is said to have had affair after affair, until the Duchess could bear it no more and cast herself from the top of the Helmfirth keep. It was a major scandal among the Dukes and Princes of the realm. They bade Wiseria never to remarry out of fear that his bastards would complicate the legitimacy of Wilbern’s ascension.'

'Wiseria kept mistresses?' I asked, shocked. He had seemed so kind and statesmanlike. Despite the fact that the common folk constantly spoke of suspected adultery among the nobles, it was heavily discouraged. Not only for the problems concerning inheritance, but it was seen as angering Cha by some, and endangering Yoru's eventual return.

'That is correct, and something you would have known had you paid attention in your studies,' Timoth said.

I was suddenly fearful that my lack of knowledge would create similar problems for me in Hollowhold. Conversely, I did not feel that the Dukes had been greatly offended by my words.

I said as much, as Timoth replied, 'but what if they had been?'

'But they weren't,' I replied dismissively.

Timoth would have none of it.

'Khad was offended by your foul and obvious lie,' he said. 'You can't keep taking chances like this! Finish your studies, and for Yoru's sake speak the truth!'

I was cowed again, this time by his knowledge of my lie. Had I been that transparent?

'I was trying to salvage the situation; he wouldn't accept anything else.'

'He saw through your lie,' Timoth said. 'As did I. Your words gave a poor reputation to the men of the Reach, men who have died on this journey protecting you.'

'It was you who sent Khad awway! And those men died because of your decision to enter the Dreadwood Forest!' I shouted, suddenly furious.

Timoth looked at me sadly, his voice suddenly at a conversational volume. 'Actually, it was you who caused Gentleman Wargwa's death.'

I screamed unintelligibly, and tried to push him out of the room with my bare hands. I was no match for the strength of his core. He didn’t even need to raise his arms.

I stood back, frustrated, ashamed.

‘If not for me, you’d all be dead anyway!’ I shouted, squeezing tears out of my eyes. ‘Your souls sucked or your skin flayed by the nymphs… I never knew you had a thing for blue-haired girls.'

For a moment, I thought I had broken Timoth's resolve as he had broken mine. He stood as a statue, and I feared he might strike me.

He had more restraint than I. He spoke simply.

‘Be ready to leave at dawn. And do try to keep Wilbern's fingers off of you.'

I scowled, but he was already gone. He closed the door behind him, softly so as not to alert the rest of the castle to our altercation. I doubted the door had masked our voice as well as he thought.

I paced the room in a rage, and Daegwin was smart enough to avoid angering me. She finished her stitching, and I threw off my dress and jewellery.

Clad only in my chemise, I asked her, 'what do you know of the Dukes, Daegwin?'

'Only what was said in this room, my lady,' she replied.

Timoth had been right: I knew as little as a servant.

Gweada would have offered advice, but Daegwin was silent. I lamented my inability to secure Gweada's accompaniment on this journey.

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'Perhaps I should be careful with Wilbern,' I mused, mostly to myself, knowing that the matters of which I spoke were likely well above Daegwin's level of comprehension. 'He's had a bad role model, and losing his mother can't have been easy.'

'It seems to me,' Daegwin said, when it was obvious that I had finished speaking, 'that you’ve two years before you are able to wed, in any case. You might take the time to get to know him, and entertain other suitors for comparison. You needn’t make a decision before you come of age, my lady.'

I sighed, knowing she was right. It wasn't as if I had to decide on Wilbern's suitability for marriage right away.

In fact, I felt as if I should focus on my relationship with Timoth instead. I was beginning to fear that it might not be as resilient as I’d previously thought. The trials of the road had isolated us, but in truth our divergence had begun as early as the guard tower back in Haelling Cove. No doubt Timoth had been angered that I’d threatened one of his precious toy soldiers and refused to make amends.

Let him live with it, I thought. There was no way that he would ever get over the embarrassment of being seduced by a forest nymph.

Just as there was no way that I would ever get over having ordered Wargwa to his death.

Either my thoughts sent a fire through my body, or Helmfirth's inland location retained heat at night better than Haelling Cove, for I found myself overheating in my bed. I kicked off my blankets and blew out the candles that illuminated the room. Not for the first night in recent times sleep was slow to take me.

In sixteen years at Haelling Cove, nothing had ever changed for me. Not really. Yet in the past week, everything had changed for me. In just the last few hours, I’d gained an admirer and realised the changing nature of my relationship with Timoth. It was all I could do to steady myself against the tide. I didn’t have the ability to flow with the current of change.

The sun rose and Daegwin stirred me from my irritatingly brief slumber. I put on my riding outfit – for which I’d begun to feel little more than disgust – and had the soldiers carry my chests to the carriage. Wilbern appeared at the head of a column of six men clad in the green and black of Trent. Lilac was brought to me by a stablehand and I mounted her as expertly as I could, lest Wilbern think less of me.

'Good morning, Countess,' he said to me, and I returned his greeting with all the optimism I could muster.

Timoth soon had us underway. Daegwin sat steadily on her gelding, which was the most obvious evidence of how much all of us had been changed by the journey. We could not arrive too soon, I decided, knowing that only a few days separated us from the Halivaaran capital.

As we made our way out of the sprawling town and beyond the neighbouring hills, the sky parted and I caught my first glimpse of the mountains.

The first sign of our destination.

The countryside was much as it had been since we’d come through the Dreadwood Forest. Roadside towns dotted the landscape. We spent our nights at these as we had before, though there was no opportunity to be discreet. We now numbered fourteen, our party being comprised of three Reach soldiers, the carriage master, myself, Timoth, Daegwin, Wilbern, and a number of Ducal guards.

Wilbern wore the emerald-capped circlet that signified him as the heir to the Duchy of Trent. Ebonreach had no such symbol for its heir, perhaps because it was a mere county. While other travellers gave way to us upon sighting the Duke, it also made us a target for highwaymen. Wilbern said that they would be our biggest danger for the rest of the journey, as he would not take us on any roads threatened by strange creatures.

Thankfully, such danger never eventuated. The road became increasingly hilly as we continued, and we had to take more frequent stops to breathe the horses.

To my surprise, Wilbern spoke to me little on the journey. Sometimes I caught him looking at me, but his words were few. He always offered me the best sleeping locations and fireside seating, but in terms of actual conversation we were all but strangers.

Perhaps he’d spent more time thinking about my age, and had come to consider it an obstacle. I doubted that he wanted to spend two years at Hollowhold waiting for me to come of age, though if he wanted to journey backwards and forwards between the capital and Helmfirth the distance was not so great.

On one occasion, while we were setting up camp for the evening, he did speak to me.

'Do forgive my distance, Saemara,' I flinched when he used my name instead of my title, but said nothing as his was superior to mine. It still felt awkward: we weren't yet close enough for him to use my first name so casually.

He carried a sizable rock to his place beside the campfire and sat upon it. 'It is difficult for a man such as myself to spend all hours in your company without becoming… distracted.'

His words confused me and made me uncomfortable. I think Wilbern had intended a compliment, but his manner denoted something other than flattery. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but resolved to maintain a neutral tone in my response.

'I'm distracting?' I asked innocently.

'Your appearance can set a man's imagination to work, Saemara,' he clarified.

My body shook with an involuntary tremor. Perhaps it was the strain of days spent in a party of mostly men and only two women, but his words seemed less than gentlemanly. I didn’t want to consider what role I played in the tales told by his imagination. Even thinking about it made me shudder again, and it was all I could do to excuse myself before I walked away.

He didn’t seem like a bad man, the Duke, but as I’d suspected, there was more to him. His upbringing had not benefited from exposure to his father's adulterous ways, and I began to consider that Wilbern may have been poisoned with a poor attitude towards women. It would certainly explain why he remained unwed, though he was not so old yet that it was controversial.

Four or five days after our departure from Helmfirth, the mountains loomed on all sides. The road stopped rising and falling, and simply rose. Travellers abounded on the slopes, making their way from the capital to the rest of the kingdom. After a few hours of steep ascent, the horses were tired and my back hurt even more than normal.

The road widened, but its edges became cliffsides. Occasionally we were forced to move to one side to allow merchant caravans to pass us, and I constantly feared that the dirt that Lilac trod underfoot would give way under our combined weight. Thankfully, this never occurred, and after almost a full day on the mountain road we finally sighted the great stone gates of Hollowhold.

The gates stood open, and from their gargantuan size I wondered if they were ever closed, as the undertaking would have been most taxing. The entrance appeared to us as a great archway, carved of stone that towered perhaps a hundred feet in the sky above us. As we passed the threshold, I could see that the archway was not smooth, but in fact comprised of a number of individually carved statues. The detail upon them was immaculate, and they illustrated everything from battle to lovemaking.

I truly felt as if I was in another world now, and through the archway milled more people than had ever graced the town of Haelling Cove. For a town was what Haelling Cove was; I saw that now more clearly than ever. Any pretenses it made at being a city were rendered laughable by the scale of the Halivaaran capital, caved as it was into the side of the mountain.

We had overcome our trials, and arrived in Hollowhold. Now it was time for life to begin again.