He stood there alone in the hall for some moments, still overcome by the unexpected appearance of his daughter. Only puddles of melted snow and the saddlebags remained as evidence that Karigan had really come through the door. He thought to pinch himself to make sure it was not some dream. She’d felt real enough in his arms ... Usually she sent word ahead if she planned a visit. Either advance word had not arrived for some reason, or she was here on business.

It was hard enough to know what his daughter was up to all the way in Sacor City, and she hardly ever wrote, and when she did, it was often a reassurance that all was well and that the king kept her busy.

He did not doubt her duties were demanding, but vague reassurances about all being well only served to rouse his suspicions.

He decided to make himself useful and grabbed Karigan’s saddlebags. He carried them upstairs and left them outside her bedchamber. From within came the voices of his sisters rising and falling in good-natured scolding. Stevic smiled. His sisters were a force to be reckoned with, and it was no surprise that under their supervision Karigan had grown up to be the spirited and rather hardheaded young woman she was.

Stevic headed back downstairs to his office. He’d pass the time there until Karigan sought him out, as she always did, as soon as she was able to escape her aunts.

Stevic tried to engross himself in the Treatise of Commerce while he awaited Karigan, but he repeatedly set it aside to pace, the wind howling without. He was anxious to see her and discover what, precisely, brought her home.

And, as he often did, he wondered why she had to be a Green Rider when a relatively safe and prosperous life as a merchant was ready and waiting for her here at home with her clan. She’d explained the calling to him, the magical compulsion that made her a Green Rider, but it only further appalled Stevic to know his daughter was snared in some spell that forced her to serve the king. Well, maybe force was not the right word, but one could not trust magic. He’d thought all remnants vanquished long ago and was content in that belief, but oh, no, there was just enough to take his daughter away from him.

He hated worrying about her, that she might fall prey to brigands along the road, or tumble from her horse, or foolishly freeze to death in a blizzard. He ground his teeth, then paused his pacing to gaze upon the portrait of his wife behind his desk. Kariny was gone so many years now. The light was dim in his office, but even so, she looked out from the canvas luminous and breathtaking, almost as if she were about to step through the gilded frame and be there with him alive and laughing, chiding him for worrying so much.

To a casual viewer, her countenance appeared as serious as that of any portrait subject, but he saw the hidden smile, the glint of humor in blue eyes. Eyes the artist captured so well. She’d been amused when he commissioned the portrait, and during the sitting, she teased him it was too much of an indulgence to hire such an artist of renown to paint a wife as “unworthy” as she.

Never unworthy, he thought.

She died within a year of the portrait’s completion, and Stevic was grateful he’d commissioned it. Otherwise, he feared losing the details of her features in his memory. Whenever he wished, he had but to look at the painting and Kariny came back to life for him in some small measure, the living, breathing woman, her touch and mannerisms, her chiming laugh, the feel of her hair flowing between his fingers.

And there was his daughter, who so strongly resembled her mother. Karigan was now about the age her mother had been when this portrait was painted. So young.

Stevic would never see Kariny grow old. He knew she would have done so with grace, her beauty only refining, not fading, as the years passed. Instead, she was stopped in time, captured forever in youthful potential.

He shook his head. In a sense, he too, was stopped in time. Stopped in time when Kariny, along with their unborn child, died from fever. It made him determined that their first child would go on to live the long, fruitful life denied Kariny. But now that Karigan had grown up, it was impossible to protect her. It did not help that she worked in the king’s service, in a profession that was dangerous.

Stevic tore his gaze from the portrait of his wife, and his restlessness led him out into the main hall. He was met with the aroma of roasting goose. His stomach rumbled and he decided to brave the kitchen. There he discovered not only his sisters, but Karigan, gossiping over tarts and tea. Cook stood at the hearth turning a goose on its spit. As one they looked up at his entrance.

Why hadn’t Karigan come to see him first? He found himself a little hurt that she had not.

“It’s about time you decided to join us, Stevic,” Stace said.

“I was awaiting Karigan.”

“What? And you expected us to allow her into that ice shed you call an office with her hair still wet? She’d catch her death of cold. She’s been drying her hair in here, where it’s warm.”

Stevic glanced at Karigan, bundled in civilian clothes and woolens, and saw that her hair was indeed still damp. And he let out a sigh of relief. He’d had a fleeting notion that maybe she was avoiding him for some reason, but that was preposterous. What cause had she? Still, he wondered why no one bothered to at least inform him she was done with her bath. “Well, I didn’t know I was invited.”

“Oh, for heavens’ sake,” Brini said. “As if this weren’t your house.”

“Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

Brini made a sound of disgust and fetched him a teacup, but did not pour for him. He half-smiled and pulled a chair up to the table. All his sisters were older than he, Stace being the eldest; all unmarried and showing little inclination for it. And why should they when he supported them in relative luxury?