“Looks don’t matter that way,” he said.
“Oh, so I’m hideous?” I cried.
He groaned. “I did not say that,” he said. “You know you’re beautiful. You know that. I’ve said it before. Convenient, you keep forgetting, yeah?”
“Tell me I’m not special then. Tell me I’m no different than Kitty or Lana. Tell me that I bore you, and I shall leave you alone in your eager isolation.”
“Youshouldgo, Your Highness.” His tone put an obvious distance between our words.
“Not the command I gave,” I said, regurgitating something I’d heard Father say. “Only a fool’s attempt to avoid it.”
“I have work to do; you keep interrupting that. People have noticed.” He tossed his weapon to the side. “And your Governess is not kind.”
“Kind?” I asked. “Hellveig? No, Ser. She is not kind, is she?” I scoffed anxiously, shaking my head. “She isquitemean.” A pained noise left the end of my sentence in place of where I’d intended to chuckle.
He knit his brow. “Did she hurt you again?” he asked.
I studied the ground. “No.”
“Svana.”He took my fingers in his palms and examined their knuckles for himself. “Oh, Svana,” he moaned.
I pulled them back to fold together at my skirt. “I said no.”
“You say a lot of things you do not mean,” he said.
“What accusation is that? I’m not a liar, Will.”
“You should tell His Majesty. He would–”
“He would what? What would my father do?” I asked.
“He’s the King,” he said. “He would–”
“Somanywhispers in these halls; so many bruises upon my arms, my hands, my face. I wonder if he does not already know?” I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I know what he’d say. He’d say….Iron does not shatter, Svana. You must be strong. You must endure….Yes, I’m certain that he knows.”
Willem paused. “Then the Lord Commander?” he asked. “He is of a good nature. He likes you. He would–”
“Ser Elías liked my mother, make no mistake,” I told him.
“That’s not true; he speaks so highly of you.”
“He’s my knight. He must. He was on my mother’s guard and served her in times of war. He respected her. It is his devotion to her ghost and to my father’s crown that he speaks of me now. Duty; nothing else. I’m not important like that as you so kindly said yourself.”
“That isn’t fact,” he replied. He stepped closer. “I did not say that.”
“What did you say then? That I was pretty but not as pretty as Kitty, the girl you can’t remember her name?”
“If we’re to spar words, I said you were beautiful,” he said. “I said beautiful now and before. I’ve only ever said beautiful.”
I nodded. “And what else did you say? What did youpromiseme, Ser?”
“I–”
“What did you vow? To always protect me? To be my Knight? My Sword? You act as though I am alone in the invention of these things,” I said.“Wepromised that life to each other. Both of us. We took a vow.”
“We watched the sky, and I said I thought I’d do well in the Knights’ Games.”
“You said, ‘I should like to be a knight one day; I’m very brave,’” I told him, portraying his voice. “You said, ‘I love Oreia more than any Blade. I should like t–’”
