The walk back to the estate blurred.
Rhosyn remembered the weight of Caerwyn's arm, a steadying line at her back; the way every snapped twig made her flinch; the sticky pull of blood at her calf where the arrow had grazed her. By the time the grey stone of Ravelocke rose between the trees, the adrenaline had gone sour in her veins, leaving her cold and hollow.
Elin's gasp in the courtyard was loud enough to startle the horses.
"My Lady! You're hurt—"
"It is nothing," Rhosyn said, which was untrue, but the words came out on habit.
Her legs wobbled on the step down from the path; Caerwyn's hands closed around her waist and set her on the flagstones as if she weighed nothing at all.
"Arrow," he told Elin shortly. His jaw was clenched so tight the word almost cracked. "Graze only. Send for Master Oswin. And someone fetch the arrow from my hand before I put it through a man."
Only then did she see that he'd snapped the shaft from the trunk and carried it home with him, the broken length of wood gripped white-knuckled in his fist.
They half-guided, half-herded her inside. The familiar hall seemed too bright, the rushes too loud underfoot. Rhosyn let herself be steered to the edge of her bed in her chambers, skirts rucked inelegantly as Elin pushed them up to bare the torn stocking and the ugly red line along her calf.
"Hold still, My Lady," Elin murmured, hands already steady despite the tremor in her voice.
Master Oswin arrived with his satchel and spectacles askew, blinking as if dragged from some deep contemplation.
"Arrows now, is it?" he huffed, kneeling to peer at the wound. "Bandits grow bold these days. Or stupid. Or both."
"I'm not sure..." Rhosyn's voice came quiet, a broken thing in the large room.
"My Lady?" Oswin asked, unnerved by her.
"They seemed too coordinated," Caerwyn said. He stood by the door like a sentry, shoulder to the jamb, the broken arrow laid across his palms. "An archer in the rocky rise aiming to wound and a footman in the brush." He made a harsh tutting sound.
Rhosyn felt all three pairs of eyes shift to her: Elin's anxious, Oswin's sharp, Caerwyn's grim.
Whoever it was that sent them, they meant to capture her. Which somehow unsettled her more than the idea of them wanting her dead. It prickled across her arms. Her fingers crept, of their own accord, to the pebble still hidden in her fist.
"We shall keep our ears pressed to the ground and wait for our enemies to reveal themselves," Rhosyn said, her voice holding truer.
Oswin tied off the bandage with a firm, neat tug. "We will, where you will see to resting," he added. "No walking the forest alone. No riding without a guard. No sneaking out of your room by the servants' stairs."
"I have never—"
He raised a brow. She shut her mouth.
Rhosyn sank back against the pillows as they fussed and argued quietly over her. Outside the window, the trees of her woods swayed, their cheerful birdsong stubbornly absent.
By week's end, the bruise around the wound had turned a spectacular purple-yellow, Elin had threatened to tie her to the bed, and no answer had yet come from the north.
The silence, this time, felt like an answer of its own.
The letter arrived on a raw, grey morning, carried not by a royal courier but by a mud-splashed rider in Harrowfen colours who refused bread, beer, or gossip and left the moment his duty was done.
Rhosyn sat in her solar with her injured leg propped on a stool, skirts carefully arranged to hide the bandage. A thin fire did its best against the chill. Elin hovered by the hearth, pretending to mend linen and failing, needle pricking the same spot over and over. Caerwyn stood at his usual post by the door, arms folded. Master Oswin occupied a chair near the window, glasses low on his nose as he reviewed a ledger he clearly wasn't reading.
The seal on the letter was dark blue wax, stamped with the primed Raven of Harrowfen.
Her fingers hesitated only once before she broke it.
The parchment inside was thick and good, folded with crisp economy. There was no unnecessary flourish, no flowery address. Just a line written in that plain, uncompromising hand she knew from the earlier exchanges she pretended not to reread.
This was ours. It will not repeat.
Leoric Karsyn
Duke of Harrowfen
That was all.
No apology written out in full, no explanation, no plea that she believe him. Not even a formal greeting. As if he refused to pad the truth with anything that looked like comfort.
Rhosyn read the words once, then again. This was ours. Her eyes lingered on that word, circling it like a finger around a bruise.
"He admits it," Elin breathed, having drifted near enough to see. "He admits it was him—"
"No," Caerwyn said at once. He pushed off from the door and came closer, frown deepening as he glanced down at the page. "He admits the man was his. One of his. That is not the same as ordering it."
"Then why not say it wasn't him?" Elin demanded. "Why not write, 'I swear I knew nothing of this'? Why not—"
"Because he doesn't waste ink," Rhosyn murmured.
They both looked at her.
She kept her gaze on the letter, unwilling to let them see the heat creeping up her throat. Because he doesn't lie in his hand. Because you have never seen him do it. Duke Karsyn had written to her as an adversary with more honesty than most allies managed. It was, she suspected, one of the reasons she found him so infuriating. But what did it truly mean?
"My Lady?" Elin's voice was quiet as she leaned in.
Thoughts soured inside her mind and Rhosyn shook her head to clear it.
Rhosyn's fingers tightened around the edge of the parchment until it crackled. A part of her wanted to fling it into the fire. Another part, colder and more treacherous, wanted to fold it carefully and keep it with the others.
Karsyn had given her another gripping puzzle to solve, but it was too personal. Before, all this time, they'd dueled with her anonymity intact. How much did he truly know and could she trust his word?
If he hadn't sent those men, then who did? But if he did send those men—why?
"I'll get you some tea," Elin twittered, nerves curling inside her and she needed to keep herself busy—Rhosyn knew the feeling.
She folded the letter along its existing crease and set it down, very neatly, on the table beside her. Not on the fire. Not in the drawer where she kept Edrien's correspondence. Between them, as if it belonged in neither place.
"Maybe we should inform Crown Prince Edrien, My Lady—he should be back from his Hartwell tour," Caerwyn offered, concern laced in his words. But she wasn't sure what Edrien would do—could do—about such an event.
Who was Karsyn really? Whenever she thought she knew, he'd do something so wildly peculiar that she had to rationalise the motive.
Outside, unseen beyond the stone walls, the forest shifted in the wind. Somewhere in its depths lay trampled leaves, broken twigs, and the memory of a fear she'd thought she drowned. But it seemed her fear could swim.
Rhosyn lifted the letter again and read it a third time.
The north, it seemed, had finally spoken—not with the words she wanted to hear, but with something that felt like a threat and a call for peace all at once. And she still didn't know where the colours truly lay.