“Then they toasted smoke,” I said. “It wasn’t my fire.”
That earned me a glance over her shoulder – sharp, assessing, but not surprised.
“You never cared for appearances,” she said after a moment. “But even a blade must gleam if it wants to be noticed.”
“I’m not here to be noticed.”
“No,” she said, her gaze narrowing. “But they notice you, or your absence, all the same.”
I didn’t answer her – there was nothing to add; we both knew it was true.
Moving toward the far end of the table, I lifted a silver lid to reveal half a pheasant, its skin roasted to a deep gold, surrounded by black figs and roasted onions. I pulled a leg free with the knife in my pocket and sat without asking; the chair was cold through my armour.
For a time, neither of us spoke. The fire murmured in the hearth, its glow sharpening the angles of her face, while somewhere deep in the keep, music drifted faintly – a harp, played softly, as if someone were practising alone. The air between us stretched, taut and waiting, until at last I broke the silence.
“Do you remember where I got this?”
My Mother turned again, this time more fully, her brow arching slightly. “Got what?”
“This dagger.” I lifted the knife in my hand to meet her eyes and paused. “I’ve had it since I was a child. But I don’t remember who gave it to me.”
She studied me for a moment. Not harshly, but curiously, as if trying to determine whether I was being sincere or clever. “That thing?” she said at last. “You’ve carried it for years.”
“I know.”
She stepped toward the hearth, swirling the wine in her goblet. “It was probably from the barracks. Or something a soldier left behind. You were always dragging useless things into your quarters.”
I held my tongue and watched her, measuring every small, deliberate movement as if it might betray more than her words would.
She looked into the fire for a moment longer, then added, too casually, “I never understood why you kept it. It isn’t even sharp. You’d do better to throw it away.”
Something in her voice pulled at me – too light, too rehearsed. Like someone nudging a stone to see what might crawl out from beneath.
My shoulder flared, not a searing pain but a slow, insistent throb that curled inward like a warning. It pulsed beneath the skin just at the curve of my shoulder blade, a heat that wasn’t sharp but aware, like something stirring after too long asleep. I shifted in my seat, almost unconsciously, rolling the shoulder back as if to shrug it away, but the motion only deepened it. My breath hitched before I could stop it.
And the Queen noticed.
Her gaze, which had wandered back toward the hearth, snapped to mine like an arrow finding its mark. The softness – if there had ever been any – evaporated. Her eyes were a firelight now, deep and burning and impossible to meet without feeling consumed.
“The broth didn’t help after all?” she asked, though it was not quite a question. There was already accusation in the space between the words.
I hesitated – only for a breath, but enough for her to notice – and forced the words out. “It did,” I said then, steady and unconvincing even to my own ears.
The silence that followed was not empty. It was brittle as frost just before it snaps beneath a boot. The kind of silence that doesn’t wait for words so much as dare them. Mowgara’s mouth thinned to a line. She placed her goblet down slowly, deliberately, as though even the sound of silver on wood should obey her mood.
“But not enough, then?”
I didn’t say anything, didn’t move. The fire cracked behind her. Somewhere in the far corridors of the keep, a door opened and closed, the sound muffled and distant, like something happening in another world. Her fingers twitched once at her side. I watched her inhale through her nose, the motion small but sharp, as if she were drawing the breath needed to keep from burning me where I sat. She moved in a single, deliberate step – too fast to seem calm, too slow to seem furious. Just precise.
“I see,” she said at last, and her voice had lost its edge. “Then I’ll have to prepare something stronger to make sure it takes properly. A charm, perhaps. Or a compound – something stouter than blackroot. Come to my chambers first thing in the morning.”
I didn’t answer – nor did she expect me to. She had already shifted away, her attention folding back into the hearth light, the moment already dissolving behind her like smoke pulled through a grate. Her silhouette flickered against the stones, tall and composed and utterly immovable, and she did not turn when I left.
The doors, tall and carved with the history of conquests no one remembered anymore, gave a slow creak as they closed behind me, their weight muffled by the thick runner beneath my feet. Beyond them, the corridor was wide and silent, lit only by the last of the ceremonial torches guttering in their sconces. Their flames, robbed now of purpose, fluttered as if uncertain whether to burn or retreat, casting long, tremulous shadows across the polished stone walls and catching in the silver trim of faded banners that lined the upper reaches of the vaulted ceiling. My steps rang soft against the stone, the rhythm muffled by fatigue and the lingering heat in my shoulder that pulsed now in slow, deliberate intervals, as though something beneath my skin had begun to keep time with a drum I could not hear.
The dagger’s hilt knocked lightly against the inside of my cloak, a presence I was trying not to acknowledge, and yet I could feel it more keenly than before. I had thought, when I picked it up, that it would sit beside the other and fade into the same quiet obscurity I had granted its twin for years—forgotten except in passing thought, remembered only by weight of routine. But it hadn’t faded. It had settled in like a held breath, like a thought waiting to be finished.
By the time I reached my door, the ache in my shoulder was pulsing again, a pressure beneath the skin that refused to fade. It had become constant now – not pain, precisely, but a presence, as thoughsomething had taken root there and grown bold enough to test its edges. I pressed a hand against the small of my neck, but it did nothing. The warmth lingered, steady and unreadable. I paused only long enough to draw a deeper breath, to push the weariness down into my heels, and then stepped inside.
