Xavien exhaled hard. His hands stilled.
“I know that look,” he murmured softly as he glanced at her from over his shoulder.
Amerei sat very still on the settee’s edge, fingers pressed where Viktor’s knife had once lain, chest aching at the emptiness.
Xavien’s gaze lingered there, then rose.
“My children look as you do… when they have much they wish to say.”
He offered his hand, and though she did not take it, he kept it open.
“Come.”
His voice was quiet command as he drew her through the inner door. The parlor shimmered with onyx silks, shadows and lamplight colliding. He guided her toward the basin, setting the comb on its shelf with careful grace.
“Whatever you need,” he said—and then, with a sun-warmed smile: “I do feel wicked sending Lady Inara off. Still, six daughters gave me practice. I could manage a braid, if you were feeling brave.”
His laugh was soft, practiced self-mockery.
She glanced at the comb, then away.
“Have you ever killed a man, Xavien?”
The words burst out of her, quiet but fierce, cutting the air like steel drawn bare.
Xavien straightened, hands folding neatly at his back. The silence before his reply stretched until it throbbed.
“No,” he said at last. “Elvish princes do not tread battlefields. Not unless the war has ended.”
Her gaze did not waver.
“I have,” she breathed, heart sinking.
“One with Viktor’s sling. One with… Viktor’s knife.”
Something flickered in Xavien’s eyes.
His fingers twitched, reached—then drew back.
All at once he clasped her upper arms, easing her to sit against a bench. A woolen blanket waited. He swept it over her shoulders as though sealing the words away.
“Then your hands have known what most queens are spared.” He lowered himself to her eyes. “And that is precisely why you should never need to use them again.”
He glanced toward the door—toward the bolts he’d counted—then back.
“You have been at war so long, Amerei. You’ve forgotten what peace feels like.”
And he wasn’t wrong. From the moment her mother died, she had been in exile. Then came Zeporah’s house, where distance was a cage. And since the Vykenraven—every night a different bed, every day closer to war.
“Elarien,” he said at last, voice dangerous in its promise. “You’re safe here.”
He crossed to a cabinet, drawing out a dark silk robe.
“Suffer the gown a little longer—for the Queen Mother’s theater.”
A wry tilt of his mouth.
“When we return, there will be a bath waiting. Rosewater if you wish. Or plain—the way soldiers prefer.”
