I crossed the remaining distance and sat on the log beside her. Not touching but close enough to touch if she chose.
She didn’t.
The third channel between us remained sealed. Percy’s warmth and Solomon’s depth flowed freely through the bond network, but the space where my frequency should have lived sat cold and quiet. A locked room in a house that was slowly filling with light.
“Your feet,” I said.
“What about them?”
“You’ve walked the drainage tunnels a lot these days. Eight miles each direction. The terrain is uneven and the concrete grade shifts twice near the eastern junction.”
“Are you tracking my steps?”
“I’m observing the result of them.” My gaze dropped to her boots. Worn at the heel, the sole separating at the toe seam, sized for a woman who wasn’t carrying additional weight that shifted her center of gravity with every step. “Those boots are cheap.”
“Why thank you, Your Royal Highness. But these boots are the only ones I have.”
“Which is why I’m addressing the issue.”
She turned her head and studied me. The mismatched eyes carried the residue of whatever confrontation had driven her to this log, but beneath that, the particular attention she reserved for moments when she was deciding whether to argue or allow.
“Lucian, if you’re about to lecture me about footwear, I’ve had a very long morning and I will throw this log at you.”
“I’m not going to lecture you.” I stood. Moved in front of her and knelt.
She’s the only person who will have me on my knees.
The position put my face level with her knees and my hands near her boots. Kneeling before anyone was a posture I hadn’t adopted in centuries as a king.
I unlaced her left boot carefully.
“Lucian, what are you...”
“Quiet.”
Mira was rendered silent. Probably because she finally realized the sight of a king on his knees unlacing her boots and had temporarily suspended her capacity for commentary.
It came off. The sock beneath it was damp, worn thin at the ball of her foot. I removed it and the damage underneath confirmed what I’d suspected.
Blisters on both heels, the right one broken and raw. Calluses that had formed and split from repeated friction against concrete. The arch was swollen from compensating for the pregnancy’s shifted weight distribution. She’d been walking on this for days without mentioning it to anyone.
“How long?” I asked.
“It’s not that bad.”
“Mira. How long?”
“Since the second rotation. Three days, maybe four.”
Three days.
She’d been walking sixteen-mile round trips through drainage tunnels on feet that belonged in a field medic’s training manual. Just for this operation to free my kingdom despite my sin to her. All of it on blistered feet she’d wrapped in inadequate socks and boots that were falling apart.
My chest ached somewhere between fury and reverence.
I reached for the medical supplies I’d been carrying in my jacket for two days.
“You planned this,” she said, watching me lay out the antiseptic and gauze.
