Another letter had come for Mordrid from his mother. In this one she didn’t ask him to come. She told him about court, and about the things happening here and there, and asked on his health and his father’s health. He was puzzling out a response to the letter over tea in his room, at a table set for ten. Lethe was nowhere to be found. Mordrid was sitting at the head of the little crowded table, on his knees. It looked like a coffee table.

I was spying on him from the servant’s entrance to his room. Well, I was spying as much as anyone could spy on someone like Mordrid. I found typically that in a storm it was best to sit at the epicenter, where the eye shielded you from all but the rouge blast of wind when you neared the end of the eye. Since Mordrid wouldn’t let me in, Lethe couldn’t very well keep me company, and I couldn’t very well go hunting with Tannon and the Duke, I either had to entertain myself (which I was very bad at) or spy on Mordrid from the servant’s entrance.

Of course he knew I was there. He had put a cup of tea and a little pot of water on a little wooden chair at the mouth of the passage way.

It was a very peculiar thing to watch. Mordrid would look this way and that, sipping tea. Sometimes he would nod, and sometimes his expression would shift very slightly, but he never spoke, except to excuse himself from the table for a moment to shut the window or take the fresh tray of tea from a servant (usually standing right behind me in the passage so that he would have to reach right over me. He usually pretended not to notice me there.).

Each of the settings was set with tea and a little spoon to stir in milk or honey or sugar with. Mordrid himself seemed to enjoy experimenting with the things he put in his tea. Some days it would be honey, others he’d request something strange of the servants, like pepper or a shot of brandy wine. Occasionally one of the other nine cups would tip over or hesitantly quiver. At his desk before he would sit down to the table he kept a tightly bound book. He would write nine things in the book, names, I figured, pausing between each one, and bind it up tight. Only then would he sit down and silently take his tea. These strange tea parties would take place three or four times a day.

I liked to watch them, even if I couldn’t see his strange guests or hear their words. I knew they were there. My cousin wasn’t crazy. Just very unlucky.

Luciel, who would become our longest guest in anyone’s memory, would arrive in another week. But I’ll get to her later. A lot happened in that week before she came. For one thing, another letter came from the mainland, this time calling the Duke away for some matter of banking business that had to be attended to personally. He left the next morning, bestowing the duty of keeping the peace to Tannon, with a secret, very specific glance in Lethe’s general direction. We all knew (except Tannon, who was puffed up with pride) who would really make sure that the household stayed in order.

When ever I say secret, by the way, I really mean to say that everyone in the house except for Tannon knows what’s going on. Most things tend to shoot right over his head. Or he just doesn’t care about what’s going on. I’ve never really taken the moment or two required to distinguish between the two things. The important thing to realize is that Tannon is in the dark about the little things transpiring in the castle, and he more or less enjoys things that way. The same might be said of the Duke and absent Duchess, but I would say they ignore certain aspects of everyday life more out of compassion, and also for the general sake of their sanities.

The second thing of note that happened in that week was that Tannon got lost in the woods, and we had to spend the night alone in the castle. Mordrid had sent a handful of servants out into the woods to hunt down the wandering hunter.

It was strange to be with Mordrid alone, even though I frequently walked with him between meals, and sat in the servant’s passage to his room almost daily. He was always a tender, quiet person, but all the same, I found myself at a loss of what to do in his presence when I was required to talk.

Luckily, he had remembered all of his medications that day, and was fairly lucid. He was even a little bit more talkative than usual, asking politely about the things I was wearing in my ash blonde hair, the color I had painted my nails, and making sure that I was comfortable sitting in the snug parlor late that night, waiting for Tannon or the cavalcade of servants combing the grounds for him to reappear. Lethe was nowhere to be seen.

We played checkers, and had the velvet curtains half-closed to keep in as much of the heat as we could—it was a cold night. My cousin, in his button-down black jacket and white button-down shirt underneath, breathing so slightly that his chest didn’t seem to move, looked worried as we sat in that little parlor alcove, watching for a torch light to rise over the hill in the cold, dark night. At least I think he was worried. It may have just been the way the torch light cast dim, shivering shadows and highlights on his unremarkable face that gave that impression of forthwith emotion. He let me win. We got through four full games before I became too tired to continue, and he offered me a book to read instead.

I don’t remember much of that book, except that I was on page fifty before I suddenly felt myself moving through the halls of the house with the peculiar knowledge that my feet were not moving me.

I recall realizing belatedly that Mordrid was carrying me, and very lightly grazing one of the buttons on his coat with my hand. He tucked me into bed fully dressed, carefully unbound my hair with his gentle, soft hands, and kissed my forehead very, very lightly. Though I think I imagined that part, I distinctly remember shutting my eyes on the words, “Sleep well, cousin,” and hearing the door shut, if very, very quietly.

The next morning I found him curled up in that same alcove, watching the forest anxiously, great bags under his eyes. He hadn’t slept. Finally around noon his uncle returned, leaning gratefully on a pair of older servants, sopping wet. It seemed as if Tannon had fallen off of a precipice into the water waiting far below. He wasn’t badly injured, but he was badly scared. He retired immediately to his chambers, and Mordrid, his worry abated, took his medications from Lethe (whom I hadn’t seen or heard approach) and also disappeared. There were no tea parties that day.

I never was sure where he went that day. It wasn’t to his own room, for when I went to check at meal time, he was not there. I tried not to worry, but the castle seemed all the bigger, all the colder, and all the stranger that day. Around noon I went to my room and buried myself up to my nose in bed.

The last thing of real import that happened that week was that I received a letter from my mother, informing me that she planned to have me moved away from the Midnight Isles posthaste. She had a hunch that my father had figured out where I was. She wanted to move me before it was too late.

I responded, of course, that I didn’t want to leave. Things were usually very quiet when there were no guests shipwrecked or otherwise obliged to remain with us on the Isles.

Of lesser import was the fact that Mordrid got a head cold, and was confined to his room for the rest of the week, with Lethe glued to his bedside. This left Tannon, myself, and the rest of the household in relative anarchy. And that was how Luciel found it when she arrived.