They gave her arm and hair reassuring pats, happy to have solved her problem so easily. Karin shook her head. She had come hoping the faeys might have some ancient wisdom to offer, but years of visiting them should have made her know better.

“The king here would like me to stay, I think,” she said.

“There! What did we tell you? You know you wouldn’t want to move away from us!”

“But he will want me to marry his son, rather than Roric, the man I love.”

For a reason she could not understand, there was immediately further consternation among the faeys. They jumped up, knocking over their bowls, and several darted off down the tunnels while others started making little piles of pebbles in the dim green light.

“What’s happening?” she asked in a minute when no one seemed about to tell her.

One looked up from a pile of pebbles that kept falling over every time he tried to balance another on top. “Is your Roric- Is he sometimes known as Roric No-man’s son?”

“That’s right,” she said with a frown. “He was found at the castle gates when he was a baby, no more than three months old. The queen had pity on him, especially since she had no children of her own yet-or so I’ve always heard. He was brought up as King Hadros’s foster-son and became one of his warriors, but he is a man without family.”

“Should we tell her? You tell her. Don’t you think she’ll be upset if we tell her? We don’t want to upset Karin. But queens have to deal with upsetting things every day.”

“What’s going to upset me?” she almost shouted.

“Oh, nothing!” the faeys cried together. “Nothing at all! Just something we heard, but it must have been another Roric altogether. Nothing to do with you!”

She rose to her knees, as high as she could go in the cramped space. “If you do not tell me at once,” she said resolutely, “I shall leave here and never visit you again.”

There was a horrified silence, then several spoke up, although hesitantly. “Well, it’s probably nothing serious. But maybe it’s better if- We may have been mistaken, of course…”