Rhosyn sighed, stretching out her aching limbs. She couldn't sleep, too many thoughts drifting on a current she couldn't control. It plagued her until she'd given up altogether. She needed a plan—a real plan.
Edrien was lovely and meant well, but for a man who had all the power, he didn't choose to wield any of it.
Maybe it was one of those psalms warning people of the dangers of greed and power. Edrien had always been concerned by those sermons—seeing too much of the nobility and his father in them.
No. Rhosyn would have to solve this issue by herself.
Shifting through the documents on her desk, she pushed aside the Northern Speeches of Equality transcript. She'd let curiosity get the better of her and asked Master Oswin to procure information about Karsyn. Apparently, he made speeches, some for the commoners as well as the nobles—how peculiar.
Though she'd try to read through the hastily copied words, some short snatches missing as the scribe fell behind, she couldn't concentrate. Her mind kept slipping back to Edrien and last night.
Rhosyn's hand absentmindedly drifted to the edge of her desk, fingers brushing against varnished wood and she glanced up to spy the box her fingers sought—her jewellery box. Pulling it into the centre of the tabletop, she traced the ornate markings for a moment before opening the lid. It was a music box, though the song had died long ago, the song a tune her mother used to hum.
Nestled amongst the gleaming jewels and necklaces, was the blue pebble. Surprisingly, one of her more precious hordes. All memories of that day had all but vanished. Just the vague sense of longing connected her to a shore she no longer knew what it looked like, or the way the stones must've cut into her legs. His voice no longer existed either... What a sad concept.
Everything left her in the end—everything that loved her, died.
In the silence, the box ticked. Turning the small box over, Rhosyn flipped the latch, opening the chamber where the mechanisms slept; she slipped in a finger in search of the problem. Her mind had been so busy after her uncle's passing, that she hadn't explored the reason her box stopped singing.
Her finger hooked on something foreign and she tugged it out. A silver key skittering across her desk and Rhosyn picked it up, curious.
She thumbed the initials engraved in the stem of iron, 'H.V.' and her mind went to only one place—uncle's safe. Her breath caught in her throat.
Of course it was him.
She had searched for that key for months after his death—pulled apart drawers, emptied jars, even upended the carpets once when everyone was at chapel, convinced she'd simply misplaced it. She'd told herself it was lost. Mislaid. Stolen, maybe.
Not hidden.
Uncle Halvar was always clever. Clever enough to know that whatever sat inside his safe was precious kindling, but that she might need the ammunition one day. Clever enough to hide the key somewhere only she would ever find it.
Maybe he'd been worried someone else would come snooping. If she wasn't mistaken, Master Oswin had his hands full most days trying to keep staff from poking around where they weren't supposed to be.
The realisation sat heavy and bright in her palm.
"A key and a code," she murmured to the empty room. The safe was a dual lock—it always had been. She'd watched her uncle spin the dial a hundred times and still never caught the pattern. A key alone wouldn't be enough.
Her mind churned, sorting through half-remembered details until something peculiar surfaced. Uncle, on her fourteenth birthday, pressing a slim, ribbon-marked Bible into her hands. A pretty little thing with gossamer pages and gold on the edges. She'd thanked him politely, then quietly kept using her mother's instead.
She couldn't get up fast enough.
Crossing the bedroom floor in three quick strides, she tugged open the drawer of her nightstand. The small Bible lay where she'd left it years ago, winking up at her from among old ribbons and forgotten hairpins. For a heartbeat she hesitated, feeling foolish. Then she scooped it up.
"Come on, uncle," she muttered. "Be clever for me one more time."
She opened the delicate cover. The paper felt almost unreal under her fingers—thin and whisper-soft, probably the most holy thing her uncle ever handled with any regularity.
She didn't know exactly what she was looking for, or if there would be anything to find at all. But she was digging for treasure, and sometimes you had to clutch at straw to find the gold.
The sheer pages almost tore as she flicked through them, her thumb skimming headings and dense columns of text. Then something caught her eye.
It was small, almost a blip curled in the corner, tucked by the margin beside a psalm heading. But she recognised it at once. She remembered long nights working beside her uncle, him leaning over ledgers and marking pages of significance with his favourite flourish—a fancy-looking "P" with an extra horizontal line scored through its stem.
Her finger glossed over the fine ink marking, a ghost of a man who lingered. It felt, absurdly, like his voice had been breathed onto the page.
Psalms 12.
The words blurred a little until she forced herself to focus. It was the story of a boy who refused to pick a side in an argument until he was left with no home at all, both factions turning him away. Its moral was loyalty—better to stand with something than be washed away with nothing. Uncle would have scoffed at the sermon, she was sure, but he'd always prized loyalty itself. He'd once told her that if he didn't pledge himself sure enough, they'd lose their master's support.
Maybe he'd meant the king. Maybe he'd meant something else.
She turned the pages more carefully now, hunting for that same odd little flourish. When she found the next, her chest tightened.
Psalms 33.
This one told of a river captain, too stubborn to turn back when the currents grew treacherous. He sailed on in blind obedience to old charts and older orders and went down with his ship for it. The tale warned against following commands without thinking—against letting duty drown sense.
She could almost hear her uncle's dry snort at the pulpit that day.
By the time she was searching for the third, she already knew it would be there. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth despite herself. How she missed his wit.
Psalms 42.
The psalm spoke of a stray hound taken in by a man who had nothing. The poor man shared what little food, water and shelter he had with the animal, and their days were full of more pain than joy—but the comfort they gave each other was real. When evil came knocking at the man's door, the dog threw itself at the intruder, teeth bared, buying the man's life with its own. Love and devotion, simple and pure.
The three stories together was Uncle Halvar. The boy who chose his side, the captain who refused to drown for anyone else's folly, the loyal hound who would fight to his last breath for the man he loved.
Loyal River Hound.
Her uncle's old moniker rolled through her mind and settled there, right alongside the numbers she now saw neatly arrayed before her: 12. 33. 42. Psalm numbers. Safe numbers.
Rhosyn sat back, key still warm in her fist, Bible open on her lap, and let out a slow breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding.
She had the key. She had the code. She had, at last, a way into the metal beast on Uncle Halvar's wall—the one even Edrien had never managed to crack.
Power was knowledge, her uncle used to say.
And now, for the first time since his death, she had the chance to take some of that power back. A plan forming, in mismatched pieces—it was a start.
By morning, the world outside her windows had turned white.
Rhosyn stood with one hand braced on the stone sill, watching the snow fall in slow, lazy sheets over the Ravelocke grounds. The gardens, the training yard, the old apple tree where she'd once hidden from Uncle Halvar's tutors—everything looked softened, muffled, almost pretty.
She still hated it.
The cold had a way of pressing through even the thickest wool, seeping into bone until she felt eight years old again, small and shivering and furious with the crown. Snow meant numb fingers and wet hems and a weakness she could never quite forgive herself for.
Behind her, footsteps padded over the rug. She didn't have to turn to know it was Edrien.
"So it's true," he said, coming to stand beside her. Their reflections hovered faintly together in the wavy glass. "Hemsgate sent a raven. They say the roads are passable—for now."
"For now," she echoed, eyes following a flake as it traced down the pane and vanished against the sill. "It's early for this much snow."
He made a small noise of agreement. For a moment, they simply watched it fall.
"It is pretty from behind glass, though," she admitted at last.
"That's what people say about you," Edrien replied, tone so casual she almost missed the weight under it.
She snorted, but the words landed too neatly. People did think that, didn't they? That she was fine to look at—Lady Valewyn, loyal as marble, sharp as ice—but far less pleasant when up close and arguing over ledgers and law. Pretty from a distance. Trouble in person.
"Are you afraid I'll bite, Ed?" she asked, tilting him a sidelong look.
"Not me—promise." He held his hands up in mock surrender.
She rolled her eyes, but her mouth twitched. "I only tease."
"She says, flashing teeth," he murmured, and she realised she was half-smiling at the glass.
The smile faded as another gust of wind drove the snow sideways. The old saying rose up unbidden from some hearth-side memory: with snow, the north would come.
She'd always thought it an old women's superstition, something muttered into firelight along with aches and weather complaints. This year it felt different. The frost had come earlier, the snow settled heavier. And somewhere beyond that white horizon was a duke with a raven on his crest and a letter that still lay between her other correspondence, neither burned nor filed away.
Karsyn stood out in her mind more than she liked. For once, she caught herself wondering what he might actually sound like in person—or whether, like so many other things, he'd only disappoint her.
But that'll never happen, because the north never came south.
"You're doing that look again," Edrien said quietly.
"What look?" She didn't take her eyes from the snow.
"The one where you're three steps ahead of everyone else on the board and already annoyed we haven't caught up." His shoulder brushed hers as he leaned a little closer. "Tell me what's in that head, Rhos."
She thought of the key hidden now in her drawer, of the Bible with its marked psalms, of Merrow's request and her uncle's safe and the way her life seemed to be funnelling toward some narrow point she couldn't yet see.
"Only that winter's come early," she said. "And that the north won't stay quiet much longer."
He huffed a breath, fogging the glass. "Then we'd better get to Hemsgate before the roads vanish."
Rhosyn straightened from the window, pulling the weight of her thoughts back under her ribs where they belonged. Outside, the snow kept falling, smoothing the scars from the land.
"Come on then, Your Highness," she said, masking the tightness in her chest with briskness. "Let's go smile for your father's courtiers and pretend we're not freezing."
Edrien offered her his arm with an overdone flourish. "Anything to spend a few days locked in a palace with you, my Lady."
She took it, because she always did.