Then what was it?
“Your Majesty?” Sister Merin squeaks, jolting me out of my ramblings. “Someone mentioned firewood when they announced your visit.”
“Right, um…” Closing my eyes for a second, I call my focus back. “We allocated some for the orphanage to be brought in regular intervals.”
“Nobody can afford it anymore with how the woods are starting to rot now,” she says. “Once the snow comes, we’ll have no choice but to throw the pallets into the fires.”
“I know you’re doing the most of what you can with the little you have at your disposal. Trust that you have my support.” I gather my skirts, and turn toward the small doorway. “If you’ll excuse me.”
The hallway beyond is narrow and reeks of damp stone, the commotion of the main hall soon replaced by the faint, muffled sound of voices. What’s this?
I round the corner toward another room, which holds only a ragged rug, a few battered stools, and shelves lined with worn blocks. Where did he go? Why did he?—
I stop dead in the doorway.
Vale sits there on a low wooden stool that looks ridiculously small beneath him. His long black coat puddles on the floor around his boots.
Standing in front of him is a girl, no older than nine. A mess of curly red hair. Smudges of dirt on her cheek. She holds something up to him, her expression serious.
“It broke.”
Vale leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he examines the wooden toy. “Everything breaks, little one.” His voice is something I’ve rarely witnessed, soft and gently cadenced, letting a strange warmth rise in my chest. “It’s the nature of things.”
“Can you fix it?” she asks, undeterred by his philosophy, and lowers a wooden bird into his hand, one of its wings snapped off.
“I don’t fix things,” Vale murmurs, yet he turns the toy in his long-fingered hand. “I’m usually the one who takes them away when they’re broken.”
“Oh…” The girl frowns, putting her small, chubby hands on his knees. “So can you fix it?”
“Why would I?” Vale asks, not unkindly, but there’s a certain weariness in his tone. “Even if I mend it, little one, the wood is old. It has cracks. One drop, and it’s broken forever.”
“I know,” she says simply. “I still want you to try.”
Vale frowns. “If you know it will end in pieces, then why does it matter?”
The girl looks at him, throwing her hands up as if severely offended. “Because I want to play with it some morenow. Sister Merin always says…she says”—a dramatic punctuation with her little hands—“now is all we’re ever given.”
Vale stares at her, his lips parting in a silent exhale while mine curls with a smile. He looks nothing like a god in that moment. More like a man humbled by a girl. Or a father schooled by his daughter?
The thought sends an unexpected pang through my chest, a quiet but warm kind of inkling. If there was a time when he longed for a wife, did he ever long for a child? Family? Does Death ever get lonely?
My knee gives a little crack.
The girl’s gaze turns to me, her eyes widening until they nearly swallow her face. Her mouth drops open in a perfect little ‘O’ as she points a grubby finger toward my head.
“You have a real crown!”
Vale stiffens. The muscles in his back seize as he realizes his audience has grown by one. But before he can retreat behind his walls of ice and indifference, I step fully into the room, crouching down until my skirts pool on the dusty floorboards, bringing me eye-level with the two of them.
“It’s heavy and scratches terribly,” I whisper conspiratorially, offering the girl a smile.
“You’re the queen,” she breathes, looking as if she might vibrate out of her skin. She looks back at Vale, her earlier demand for a fix forgotten in the face of royalty. “Are you the king?”
Vale scoffs. “God, no.”
“Not yet,” I correct him. “But I’ll crown him my consort soon.”
He turns partially toward me, the ghost of that earlier softness still clinging to the corners of his eyes while his mouth twitches a little. “Never.”
