Wyfkeep had never been so loud.
It had held a thousand ceremonies, funerals and coronations and the signing of a hundred cold treaties, but never anything like this. Servants raced through the corridors with armfuls of black roses. Footmen carried tables across the lawn in teams of six. Somewhere in the kitchens a head cook was shouting that if one more person asked whether the honeyed pears were ready, he would personally put them in a pie. The great gardens of Wyfgrove had been cleared and strung with lanterns, and the Great Hall had been hung with so much black silk and white candlelight that the old stewards walked through it with their hats in their hands, whispering that it did not look like the same room.
And presiding over all of it, in a coat the color of a bruised plum, with a list in one hand and a ceremonial sash slung carelessly across his chest, was the newest Crown Prince of Wyfn-Garde.
