Page 53 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

Another noble daughter—the girl who’d asked for a bit of wine before—steps forward from the line, little card in hand. She stumbles slightly, tripping over her gown. She’s still just a girl, this noble who risked a smile at me moments ago. She looks up at the older woman she’d called Gran, and the woman’s eyes narrow, nudging her forward with clear impatience.

A tiny knot unfurls somewhere in the vicinity of my heart.

Is it possible some of these girls have as little power over their own lives as I do?

I almost laugh.

As much as I despise the way Talon dismissed the peasant girl’s death in the dungeon as a necessary sacrifice, I can’t deny that every one of these girls has to be exactly that if I’m going to walk out of this alive. Every single one of them needs to die before I do, so I can live long enough to kill the king—then escape, or find that loophole and leave, if I do win.

Because the survivor of the Assay will marry Prince Cashel.

And there’s no way Wolf can think I wouldever…

The guard calls out the young girl’s name. “Caitria, heir to the Decourcey estates and daughter of the Duke of Mide.”

Mide—I know the name from Keeva. Her favorite strain of water hemlock comes from the rainy forests clinging to the southern hills there—and she’s mentioned the estate won’t let Cymreans dock at its port.

Could she be an ally for me? Someone who might side with the Whisperers?

Movement flickers at the edge of my sight as the line of nobledaughters shifts, jostling for position. A sharp blow slams into my ribs and cheers echo from the crowd beyond.

I double over from the pain, radiating out from my ribs, leaving me wheezing as the line inches closer to the hanging curtain. But even as the blow makes my side seize, there’s no wet heat of blood spilling from me, no sear of a fresh wound. No knife lodged in my side.

Not yet, at least.

I fight to breathe past the pain clenching my muscles, eyes flying over the four girls left in line ahead of me. It was one of them, an elbow jabbed into my side, surely. One of them who just made their first move against me—but which?

“Saraid of Askeaton Abbey and Connacht,” the guard calls out proudly then, and another noble daughter, with golden hair, steps forward. Even through the pain, I have to look twice. I recognize her—she’s the one from the carriage on the King’s Road, the one who threw coins when the crowd balanced on a knife’s edge.

She glances back at me, just for a heartbeat. Her topaz gaze is unreadable before she turns and glides past the curtain.

A deafening cheer goes up from whoever waits for us in the room past the curtain and the staircase beyond, far louder than for the others so far.

“Neve of the High Valley Hills,” the guard reads out for a noble daughter in layers of silver and white silk.

Then, again to smaller cheers, “Aisling, daughter of the Sea Snake, lord of the Inis Peninsula!”

I recognize that name at least. The Inis Peninsula is on the east coast of Eireann, home to the sea urchins whose poison Keeva taught me to milk and catch in delicate glass vials.

One drop can cure a headache, if mixed with a small cup of goat’s milk.

Alone, the briny poison can make you bleed from every orifice you possess.

I wouldn’t mind a drop right now—but not for me.

The noble daughter with hair as dark as a raven—Oona of House Dunluce—has the audacity to rub her elbow, as if I’m the one who slammed my ribs intoher, and scowl back at me.

“Welcome to the Assay, rat,” she hisses down her sharp nose.

She practically floats over to the curtain. As if she knows this is her contest to win.

Or to lose.

She doesn’t even deign to give the cursory faint smile or polite nod the other noble daughters offered to the guard who reads her name as she steps through.

The soft murmur of the crowd, gasps of breath, words likeserene beauty, and the loudest cheers we’ve heard so far—they all drift back through the curtain and make it past the faint hum beginning to haze the edges of my mind. Apparently, Talon was right about the wine.

The guard who nodded to Talon takes one look at me, a knowing look sharpening her hard eyes. “Name?” she asks warily.