Aye. There’s time enough between battles to knit a dozen scarves and a hundred stockings, as well I know.” He gave a little bark of laughter. “I thought soldiers spent their idle time dicing and wenching.” She gave a surprisingly girlish giggle.

The Castle would never let anything bad happen to you. You could jump out one of these windows and the Castle would probably conjure up a hundred feather beds to break your fall.” “Don’t test that!

Uncle Bran lied,” she told the griffin in a stage whisper. “But it’s all right, because you’re such a good boy!

Oh, my queen, you are being the most very!” King Kurlath laughed. “But” – he held u p a cautionary finger – “she is also saying a truth. Even still do the insides of me go to and fro, as they went to and fro this yesterday at the river!” He shook his head. “Were they to go to and fro at this harbor, there would soon be to, and never fro!

The queen always smelled like strawberries, and everyone said that she was as beautiful at forty as she had been when the king had married her. Tall and slender and stately, with her long dark hair pinned up with gold combs, she wore a travel dress of soft green that set off her eyes.

Why should anyone be rewarded for defeating a dragon by being saddled with a dowryless, freckled wife and well over a dozen daft and impoverished in-laws? No.

The wardrobe? It was so full of gowns that he didn’t think he could cram himself inside. Besides, it would be awkward if the maid came in to lay out a gown for dinner and grabbed Oliver instead of the blue silk with lace sleeves.

And so they lived for many a long year, as happy and lighthearted as the birds in the trees and the flowers on the hill in spring.

You know,” Rolf said, “you read stories when you’re little, and you think it would be so amazing to have adventures happen to you. Then you actually go on one, and find out that it’s awful. Nothing but bad food, sleeping cold on the hard ground, and treachery.

My first letter to Rolian had opened a floodgate, however, and the Roulaini king had begun writing me other letters, rather admiring ones. Marta and Alle, our assistant, were teasing me about having a second royal suitor. But.