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with unexpected strength, pulling him utterly off balance. He fell forward into a darkness that smelled of dank stone and moldering linen and Taireasa’s perfume, which had lilacs in it. His face was mashed into the soft wool covering her shoulder. The princess, apparently not as embarrassed as he was by this unintended familiarity, grunted, then got a better grip on him and hauled hard. His knee scraped over a sharp lip of stone as he came sliding all the way inside.
    “Close the door!”
    He turned around as best he could without outright sitting on her and pushed at what turned out to be a very heavy block of wood with a veneer of stone on the outside. It swung shut in total silence. Taireasa scrambled out from under him, elbowing him in the neck in the process, and stood. The brisk rustle of cloth suggested she was brushing herself off, but it was pitch black and he couldn’t see even the faintest outline of her. He sat for another moment, hearing the distant rise and fall of voices outside the wall.
    Gods, it sounded like they were a league away in a cave, not within arm’s reach.
    Her hand closed over his collar and tugged, then moved to his sleeve as he stood. He followed her silent direction through a series of turns, one hand out to feel the crumbly smoothness of very, very old stone.
    “So this is where you two hare off to,” he murmured. He felt Taireasa’s fingers clench over his wrist and was sorry: she still went wet-eyed and hard-jawed whenever Kyali’s name was mentioned.
    “They go all over the castle,” she said shortly, not bothering to keep her voice down now, and she let him go to fumble after something in the dark. A moment later there was a scrape and a rattle, then flame blossomed between them, casting their shadows hugely onto walls of pale, small, close-fitted stones and crumbling mortar. She shut the lantern’s door and lifted it up between them, making Devin wince at the sudden light. “We’ll be near the kitchens if we keep going this way."
    She knew her way around these odd tunnels very well, it seemed.
    Afraid to say anything else that might upset her, he brushed at his clothes, giving her a moment to collect herself. His anger was fading, though slowly. Taireasa swept something from his shoulder and then turned, arms folding and shoulders hunching, to stare at a wall.
    “ Hared ,” she said, her voice low and unhappy.
    “She’ll come back, Taireasa. It’s not forever.”
    “It’s years, though, isn’t it?”
    He’d been trying not to think of it that way. “Yes,” he said, sighing. “It is. Can you say it’s not necessary?”
    One shoulder drew up in a shrug. She didn’t turn to face him. “Of course it was necessary,” she muttered. “That doesn’t make it fair. Who were you running from this time?” she asked, just as he was opening his mouth to say something sympathetic and probably irritating.
    “Oh, Emayn.”
    “He found out about the song?”
    “He heard it,” Devin said mournfully and Taireasa snorted, scrubbed at her face, and finally turned around. In the uneven light of the lantern, her face looked older, and tired, and... puffy, as though she had been weeping.
    “Taireasa... why are you in here?”
    “Baron Brisham proposed,” she said, sounding more defeated than he’d ever heard her before. It hurt him, hearing that tone from Taireasa.
    She had been in his life ever since she and Kyali had met, nearly a decade ago. They had been instantly inseparable, and Taireasa had become a familiar presence at the Corwynall estate: a jumble of thin limbs, messy curls, strong opinions, and mischief, her easy laugh and brash daring the complete opposite of (and perfect match for) his quiet, arrogant, serious little sister. The two of them had been his playmates, and opponents; the victims of his pranks, and his occasional tormentors. Taireasa was like a second sister to him, and seeing her like this made him want to go back to the cul-de-sac so he could, in