Mouse sunk into the chair across from her table, relieved at last to find herself within the sanctuary of her own chambers.

  The castle had become a bed of activity; lords and knights pouring in from all over the country, and with them they brought noise and mayhem. It was too many people all at once trying to fit themselves in. Squires and servants and footmen and grooms all had to be accounted for, and the line of wagons outside the city gates was now at least a mile long.

  In the middle of it all, Mouse had found herself overwhelmed, both by the sudden change in the habitat to which she was accustomed and by the meetings she had had that day.

  She looked into the glass at the weary face that peered back at her, one by one, pulling the pins from her hair and allowing the long, dark strands to tumble down to her shoulders.

  The face staring back at her from the other side of the glass was a girl tired and broken, and more than that, she was lonely.

  Mouse had never known her parents, but she had always felt the nature of her circumstance unremarkable; she was a child of the court, and as such, had been raised, like the majority of her peers, by nurses, by maids, by tutors. And though she seldom bothered to dwell on this fact, she had never felt more like an orphan than when she had sat in Ludger’s rooms feeling frightened and lost and hopeless and humiliated, seeking some sort of reassurance, some reminder of who she was and what she might be capable of, and receiving nothing but a cruel dismissal.

  She lowered her gaze, unable to face her own despondency. Had she always been this fragile, she wondered? Had there never been a time when she had been brave?

  She thought of the golden chain of mallows that Ludger had given her. She was not afraid of the truth. She was not afraid of whatever it might mean to know that she was the Empress’s sister. No, what frightened her was the idea that she might have the makings of greatness within her butting up against the knowledge that she would never be great.

  Her gaze traveled across the table and fell on a small wooden box. It was the one she had been given by the maid at Pothes Mar. She had been looking for it these past days but had been unable to find it.

  She reached over and took it up, opening it to admire the little glass vial within. The liquid was dark and shimmering in the low light, mesmerizing and beautiful. Carefully, Mouse wedged out the stopper, bringing the vial to her nose and inhaling the musky scent before dabbing it onto her fingertip and rubbing it onto her cheeks.

  She watched her reflection in the glass, to see if it had any effect, but the only change Mouse noticed was that brought on by the flickering light of candle and flame. A fire blazed in the hearth, lit to drive out the damp in the air brought on by a late summer rain, and the image before her now danced in the firelight, bending and distorting with every lick of the flames.

  Who are you? Mouse asked the girl in the glass. Who are you, and what do you want?

  But the girl could give her no answer.

  Mouse closed her eyes and listened to the crackle of the flames for a few moments longer before reluctantly rising crossing to the basin. She splashed her face, the water cool and refreshing on her cheeks, before loosening the sleeves of her tunic and beginning to wiggle her way free.

  Mouse was glad to be without a maid tonight, even if it meant undressing herself, for she had no wish to converse. In fact, she had no wish to think or do anything apart from fall into her feathers and be swallowed up by the sweet embrace of sleep.

  She took her tunic by the hem and pulled it over her head, but as just she did so, she noticed something fall to the ground. It was a square of parchment, she saw as she lay her clothes aside to retrieve the dropped object, the letter that Ludger had given her which she had folded up and tucked into her sleeve.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Mouse crossed to the bed with the letter in hand, the fact that she had managed to forget about it a testament to her exhaustion. But as she began now to unfold it, her heart pounded with curiosity, quickening until she had unfolded it entirely. With trembling hands, she spread it out onto her lap, and though she did not recognize the hand, she knew the sender at once.

  Warm tears welled in Mouse’s eyes as they danced across the page. She pressed a hand to her lips, scarce able to believe the words she was reading, even as they stood there before her.

  “Jewel of Aros,” the letter began, “bender of bows, thief of hearts.”

  Mouse’s face broke into a smile.

  “As I write this letter, I am visited by a funny little black bird, the same one who greets me every morning. I think you would call her Cherith, but I have another name for her, for she begins to appear familiar to me…

  “Can it be that you have missed your Foilunder so much that you have borrowed wings from some old heks?”

  A laugh escaped Mouse’s lips, the tears threatening to blur her vision. It was as though she could hear the words being spoken in the Foilunder’s thick northern accent.

  “Our host here at Puente Qalina is an interesting person,” the Foilunder went on, “different from the other southerners I have met, and full of conviction. But this is a good quality, I think, for a man to have. For if a man can follow his heart, he will never be lost.”

  Mouse brushed the tears away from her eyes, her hands trembling as she continued to read.

  “I do not yet know when I will return home to Foilund. Perhaps today, or perhaps not for many days to come. I am a man who follows orders, and the one who gives them keeps his lips closed for now. I wonder if you will be waiting there for me when I arrive. Do you know, I often see you in dream, standing there in the middle of Kingfishers’ Bridge. I watch you from the window, waiting for you to come inside. But why do you hesitate?”

  Mouse lifted a hand to wipe again at the tears in her eyes, a strange, bittersweet sensation tugging at her heart. He writes that he dreams of me standing on Kingfishers’ Bridge, she thought to herself as she read the words back. Can it really be so, that we share the same dream?

  The letter went on a few lines more, before being signed, “Torben, writer of letters and keeper of solemn promises.”

  Mouse wept freely now, tears of joy racing down her cheeks. There was nothing in that moment that could possibly brought her any greater happiness than if the Foilunder himself had been there before her. She pressed the parchment to her chest, holding it against her heart, before opening it and reading it over again.

  She wanted to sing, to dance, to cry out. The Foilunder had not forgotten her, much as she had feared he would; he had remembered her, and not only that, he had written to her, sweet, sweet words scrawled upon the page to be cherished every day of her life hereafter.

  Mouse climbed into her feathers and pulled the blankets up to her chin as she continued to pore over the letter. Over and over again she read it, hanging on every word. Each time she found something else to seize upon, something new to wonder over.

  As she lay in bed, letter in hand, her eyes at last began to grow heavy, but still, she refused to extinguish the candle and draw the bed curtains closed. For what would happen if she woke in the night, desirous of reading the letter again, and lacked the light by which to do so?

  This single piece of parchment with lines creased into it from where it had been folded was now the most precious thing in Mouse’s possession, dearer to her still than even the little wooden archer the Foilunder had carved for her. Every word was a prayer answered, a wish granted, a promise that even in darkness, things were not so hopeless as they seemed.

  All the reassurance she had sought elsewhere had been found in the Foilunder’s words. You are the jewel of Aros, Mouse thought to herself, and you are not alone. It was more than she had even thought to hope for.

  That night, Mouse went to bed with a smile upon her lips and a heart full to brimming. The sadness and hopelessness, the pain and humiliation, it had all faded away, erased by the knowledge that she was loved. And when at last she drifted off to sleep, the letter still clutched tightly in her fingers, she dreamed of Kingfishers’ Bridge and the mighty Manau that flowed beneath it, of the great stone house that stood at the far end, the one with the half-moon painted on the door. She dreamed of a strange song drifting out on the breeze as smoke rose from the chimney. And this time, as she turned to face the house that stood waiting for her at the end of the bridge, she did not hesitate.