Niccola ran into Verde midway up the stairs, just as he was coming down again.

He stopped, stunned. "Niccola? What are you doing here?"

"We're both here."

She could see from the way his expression sobered that he knew who she was talking about. Their "courting" must have been the talk of the town since they'd started it. Nothing could make Niccola feel more out of touch with the lowlands, an uncomfortable feeling she wasn't quite prepared for.

"Finally got him out, did you?" said Verde quietly. He glanced over her shoulder towards the kitchen, then beckoned her upstairs. "Hope you two don't mind sharing a bedroom; Judith's just moved out, so we've got a spare with one bed and one with two. I imagine you'll be wanting the two-bed. Unless..."

He paused on the staircase and gave her an incisive look from beneath furrowed, bushy brows. Niccola could not resist a smile, nor letting a touch of smugness leak into it. They had indeed shared a bed already.

Verde huffed. "Knew there was a reason he was so smitten with you."

"Not in the manner most people would think."

"'Course not. We practically raised the boy; we know."

"Then you might as well know that I am the same way." Niccola followed him the rest of the way up the stairs. "Two beds would be ideal, though. I do not know if I could pull off last night again."

Verde grunted. "Get locked up in the palace, did you?"

It was telling that that was his first guess, rather than her staying voluntarily. It made Niccola wonder just how long Isaiah had been stuck beneath his mother's thumb—and just how much she still didn't know. She didn't answer, but Verde didn't seem to need a reply. He took her to a linens cupboard, loaded a change of sheets unceremoniously into her arms, and took a second load himself. They set about preparing the room together.

"I don't suppose you came to find me for no reason," said Verde without looking over when Niccola shut the door.

Niccola grinned. "That would be out of character, now, wouldn't it?" The jest drew a small smile from Verde, but it dropped as Niccola's did. "First of all, why are the townsfolk on edge?"

"There's been another body found. Same as the last."

Niccola's skin crawled. If Dinah was no longer taking care to hide this carnage, she must be nearing her end game.

"I take it you know more than you're telling me," said Verde.

"I don't know how much is safe to tell."

"Then best not to tell it." He tucked a sheet-corner with crisp finality. "I trust you to keep a level head on such matters. More so than most Calisian folk. Or common folk in general."

Niccola froze, half-cased pillow in hand.

"Isaiah told us who you were," said Verde, shooting her a raised eyebrow. He went back to making the bed. "Put my mind at ease, if I'm honest with you. Diversity of thought makes for a stronger partnership, and you match his authority besides—you know politics. I might not know what's lurking in that there Talakova, but I suspect it's something you'll want that sort of teamwork on."

There was an assuredness in his words that Niccola often heard from long-married people. Verde and Margaret's partnership stood at forty-three years, he'd been proud to tell Niccola the first time they'd met. The mention of teamwork in this case, though, struck oddly. Verde spoke like he expected the two of them to stay together, though Niccola's plans ran so differently. Those plans were under question, but had by no means conclusively changed.

"Was that all your questions?" said Verde, with a tone that said he suspected otherwise.

"No. My second one was whether you know anyone in Calis with knowledge of what went down during the Catastrophe."

"What level of knowledge are you looking for here?"

"As detailed as possible. Particularly regarding... the person at the heart of it all."

"Then you'll be wanting old Erelah in the Talakova's edge. Don't know if she still has a cabin somewhere, or just ground-camps in the forest. She's seen a turn of years, and the forest's at least partly to blame for it. Knows that place like the back of her hand, though; I doubt she'd have gone without seeing what went down in that isolation cabin where they kept Dinah when they thought she'd been reformed."

Niccola remained silent. Gratefulness for his honesty did not stop a leaden weight from forming in her gut as he confirmed what she'd long heard about how the Calisian royals had handled Dinah.

"There," said Verde, tucking in a last blanket-corner with a neat flick. Niccola finished hers near-simultaneously. "Are you wanting to lay claim to one of these right away? Methinks you did not sleep much last night."

Niccola's head whipped up in protest, only to find Verde chuckling at her.

"You tease better than Isaiah does," he said. "But I'd be blind as my wife not to see those shadows beneath your eyes. Clean up and rest. Isaiah likely won't be up to join you for a while yet anyway."

The urge to sneak out and find the old woman in the forest on her own died slowly in Niccola's chest. In all that had happened since finding the portrait, she had not yet told Isaiah who their enemy was. Doing so was a courtesy he deserved, at minimum. More than that, she really did want to scheme this out with someone she trusted—especially when so many pieces of this puzzle were still missing.

Verde left her alone with a parting offer to leave her clothing over the railing outside if she wanted it washed before she woke. Only then did exhaustion hit. She had not slept a wink the night before, and poorly the night before that as well. Whatever her desire to solve this mystery as soon as possible, she would get nowhere in this state. Mind blurry, Niccola scarcely bothered to wash up properly and change into the nightclothes Verde had left her before collapsing into bed.

Isaiah was in the room's other bed when Niccola awoke again. He too was awake, just lying beneath the covers, head turned towards the window and one hand fiddling idly with the edge of his blanket. He looked over when she shifted.

Niccola pushed herself up, limbs leaden with her body's protests at the odd hours of sleep. "How are you feeling?"

He shrugged and looked back at the window, like he didn't want to talk about it. That was fair.

Niccola groaned as she sat up properly, taking her weight off her arms. She could sleep for another day yet, but that was time they could not longer spend frivolously. "We need to talk about that portrait."

Isaiah stopped fiddling. He pulled the blankets about him and sat up, displacing Pekea and forming a cocoon about his shoulders as he shifted to the base of his bed. The dragon sat on the bare mattress with an expression that was equal parts bewildered and irate, then crept after him. She wedged her nose through a gap in the blanket and disappeared onto his hidden lap. Niccola wrapped a blanket about her own shoulders and took the spot Pekea had vacated.

"It's Dinah, isn't it?" said Isaiah.

So he'd guessed. No surprise, really; he'd have heard her draw aside the curtain on the portrait and then respond to what she found. Niccola searched his face for his sentiments on the matter. He looked tired. The kind of harried, bone-deep tired that came from being saddled with too much for too long, with too little support. Had she not been here, he would have had to deal with this alone.

Niccola's breath escaped her in a deflating sigh. "It's Dinah."

"I wonder if my parents know," murmured Isaiah.

It hit her in the heart. How awful it must feel, to not be able to trust his own parents with things that could seal the deaths of people in his realm. People he knew and loved—likely more than his mother loved him.

"Do you think they would have kept it a secret a second time?"

Isaiah nodded.

"But if the City Guard was aware, surely at least one would defect once they got wind that your parents had no intention of acting, and tell you? They've struck me as conscientious."

He sat silent at that. "That assumes they trust me over my parents," he said at last.

"You've said yourself that they do."

"This isn't something she would tell them anyway. Not if she thought they might tell me."

"Alright," said Niccola, "then that changes things. If Dinah escaped two generations ago, I do wonder if your parents know. That seems like the kind of secret your family would pass down just to keep it from breaking loose. I'd bet your mother knows, and is hiding it from you—likely because she sees you as a threat to her cover-up plans."

"She doesn't see me as competent enough to be a threat."

"No, she treats you as incompetent because you're competent enough to be a threat to her way of doing things."

"And if that way of doing things is the right one?"

"Then we have another Catastrophe on our hands."

Isaiah went silent at that. Hoping the point had finally got through to him, Niccola returned to the initial topic she'd broached. "Anyway. This is Dinah, which means she's almost certainly going for a repeat of the Catastrophe, which would explain why my sister went missing. Dinah's trying to bring down my family. What we don't know is how she survived this long." Niccola tipped her head to the side as the realization hit her. "Although..."

"The forest," they said simultaneously, and then just stared at one another.

"She's a barrower," said Niccola. "So the Talaks wouldn't attack her."

"If she went deep enough, she could take advantage of the time distortion. To her, it might only have been a decade since she disappeared."

It was such an obvious solution, but one that, for many reasons, had never crossed Niccola's mind. People simply didn't return from venturing too far into the Talakova. When they did, terrible things happened to them, like the world moving on without them... but if that was exactly what Dinah wanted, then it wouldn't matter anyway. The only question, then, was how she had managed to survive in a place with only forage-food and plenty of non-Talak beasts. That might explain the sacrifices, though Niccola had a sneaking suspicion Dinah was much more intelligent and resourceful than her family had ever given her credit for. The generational pattern on that made Niccola wince.

"Well, that's one question answered, then," she said, as more questions presented themselves in the absence of the one she'd just struck off. "So now we need to know why she's kidnapping people, and what actually happened two generations ago. I don't imagine your family has anything about that in the palace archives?"

Isaiah gave a short, mirthless laugh. "We're talking about a family that burned a book on Varnic history after an archivist found it and read me excerpts as a child. And then fired the archivist and told me she was a Varnic spy out to manipulate me."

"The more I hear about your parents, the more I would love to give your mother a one-on-one chat with a Talak on a Crow Moon. I feel like that would solve all our problems."

"Except with Madeira and Drevo."

"Honestly? Madeira and Drevo can go chat with a Talak too for all I care. Also, the moment your parents get ousted and you take the throne, we're allying. Agreed?"

"My mother would sooner adopt a street child who actually followed in her footsteps than hand off the crown to me."

"You know, I wonder about that. I really do think you scare her, and the more you talk about her, the more I believe it. She's scared because whatever she does, you have the backing of the Calisian people and the most legitimate claim to the throne. Her days in power are numbered. She wants to twist you into thinking you don't deserve to be her successor, because if you believe that, she gets to punt that terrifying day further down the road. And buy herself time to hopefully turn you into someone who will follow in her footsteps in the meantime. If even that is ever enough for her."

Isaiah didn't respond to that immediately. Then he said, "What do you mean?"

"About what part?"

"That never being enough for her."

Niccola didn't mince words. "Your mother only cares about herself and the Calisian political image—also known as herself. Nothing you do will ever be enough for her, because she only cares about you inasmuch as you're useful to her. Hence the whole, 'public face of the royal family' load of steaming, self-centered, rancid chicken shit. Pardon my language." She paused. "Actually, don't, because I am not at all sorry for dragging every word about you that comes out of your mother's mouth. Like I said. One-on-one chat with the Talaks on a Crow Moon. I'd pay entry just to watch."

Isaiah was wearing a very peculiar expression, like he'd never heard his mother being slandered in this way—or had at least never believed it—and was enjoying it more than he thought he would.

"I'd years sooner put my sixteen-year-old sister on the Calisian throne than your mother," said Niccola. The cathartic satisfaction of the insults was only compounded by Isaiah's reaction to them. "And I'd years sooner put you there than my sister. I wouldn't put your mother in charge or a chicken coop. She'd make all the birds believe they had to pluck their own feathers and build their nests backwards just to please her, threaten them with butchery day, but never actually intend to butcher them because she knows they'd fight back if they had nothing left to lose."

She'd brought a real smile to the corners of Isaiah's mouth now, though he was trying to hide it. "She would have you hanged for that. And execution has been banned here for generations."

Niccola gave him a wildcat's grin. "Then it's a good thing I'm functionally the queen of another realm, now, isn't it? Just imagine how terrible that would look on the political stage."

"We need to solve Dinah first, though."

"I happen to have our next lead on just that."

"If it involves talking to my mother, I can't." Isaiah shrank down, an involuntary response that made Pekea—hidden on his lap beneath the blankets—give a muffled chirp of concern.

"It involves talking, but not to your mother. We need to find an old woman named Erelah."