“Thank you,” David said.

“Thank you,” I repeated.

She glared once at Allan and nodded her head back toward the kitchen. She led us out to a tiny little outdoor bit with a basin of water in it. “Beds are upstairs. If you want to wash, I’ll show him up,” she said to me.

I nodded, and she tossed me a cloth from the kitchen.

David glanced round, nodding once. “Would you rather I stay close, my lady?” he asked.

I shook my head.

Shutting the door behind them when they were gone, I pulled off the pants that I’d made quick work destroying, and I left the loose shirt on, pushing up my sleeves and using the cloth to clean off my skin and make a slow record of my wounds.

My shoulder were scraped and ragged from where I fell on it, with matching wounds on my hip. The soft inner bit of my other arm were cut where I’d been stepped on, but not bad. My hair were a matted mess, and I were thinner than I’d realized—I could feel my bones under my hands, sharp and raised under the thin layer of skin.

When I were done, I opened the door again, and Kate were there. “Here,” she said, handing me a pile of clothes. “Clean. It’s no lady’s dress.”

I took it. “Thank you,” I said.

She nodded once, looking me over before leading me back through the room and up a narrow stair. She showed me a little bedroom and I went over to it, staring at the bed.

She hung in the doorway, but after I didn’t move for long minutes, she started to turn. “Very well,” she said.

“Thank you,” I called. She stopped. “Thank you. It’s been—thank you.”

She looked at me, coming back to the doorway. “Where were you all this time?” she asked.

My shoulders lifted. “I don’t know. Different castles. Different prisons. He moved me often, and at night. I never knew.”

“Prince John,” she said, and her voice were low and dark.

I nodded. “You’re well informed, for an innkeep.”

She shook her head. “Inn’s my father’s,” she told me. “I’m a trader.”

“A woman trader?” I asked.

She gave me a slow, side-slung smile. “Not an entirely legal trader.”

This made me smile too. “You’re a pirate.”

“I’ve been called worse.” Her mouth tightened, and she looked down, like she were considering something. “I loot ships to feed people,” she said. “And I train the orphans to be sailors. England is falling apart, you know. With or without Richard alive.”

I stared at her.

“It isn’t just Nottingham. I wasn’t sure if anyone had ever told you that.”

My head dropped.

“Good night,” she said, shutting the door to the room.

Changing into a clean shirt were all I could bear to do before falling asleep.

Chapter 3

I slept like the dead. When I woke, it were to full, body-aching pain, but it were also to the sun. It came in through the window to lie over me like a blanket, and I didn’t move for a long while, looking at the light, feeling the heat of it on my skin. I trailed my fingers through it, wondering if I could just touch it, just hold on to it, maybe I could change everything else.

Shutting my eyes, I remembered it so clear—the feeling of waking up with Rob, his heartbeat under my cheek, making me feel that we weren’t so separate, that if we stayed like this long enough we’d melt into each other. Like somehow we could become unbreakable.

Standing from the bed, I put on the rest of the clothes that Kate had given me—boy’s pants and a thick tunic. Outside my door I found a clean pair of soft old boots, and I put those on too.

Downstairs, David and Allan were swallowing bread and bacon and hard eggs like men possessed. Kate were watching them, fair disgusted.

David saw me first. He stood from the table, and Allan swallowed a bite and did the same. David bowed his head to me, looking surprising less like a knight without his royal uniform. “Good morning, my lady.”

“Lady thief,” Allan said, mocking him a little. David scowled.

“Please don’t do that,” I told them both.

Allan sat back down, but David looked uncomfortable. “My lady, you’re a princess. I can’t—”

“And yesterday I were a prisoner,” I told him. “Please sit.”

“Yes, my lady,” he said.

“Yes, my lady,” Kate mimicked under her breath. I frowned at her, and she lifted her shoulders in innocence.

“How did the palace fare last night?” I asked, scared of the words.

Allan waved this off. “Very well. They never so much as got within the gates, and all the nobles had already fled.”

“They had?” I asked.

Allan nodded, pushing the bowl of hard eggs to me. I took one and a piece of bread. “The lot of them got out when the word about Richard first came; that’s why everyone thought he was dead.”

“So Eleanor isn’t at the palace?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She’s with most of the court at Windsor, last I heard.”

I frowned. “Could Prince John be there?”

“I don’t know, my lady. Why do you want to see the queen mother?”

I glanced at Kate. “When Prince John thought I were about to die, he told me that Richard had been captured and held for ransom—but he said that Richard would never set foot in England again.”