I step back instinctively, the absence of his presence as jarring as the contact had been, my hand empty, my pulse still racing, and when I look up again, the shape of the moment has changed entirely.
Kholara is no longer smiling.
The royal no longer looks certain.
And Verr?—
Verr looks first at the body, then at Kholara, something silent and unmistakable passing between them, something that settles into place with a weight that makes everything else fall into alignment.
That wasn’t chance.
That wasn’t uncontrolled.
That was deliberate.
Just not the way it was supposed to happen.
His gaze flicks back to me briefly, and even that small acknowledgment is enough to make something tighten in my chest, because he knows exactly what I did.
I don’t wait to see what happens next.
I turn, letting the movement of the crowd swallow me as I step back, then further, folding myself into the edges of thegathering where I belong, forcing myself to disappear again before anyone has the chance to decide I shouldn’t.
My breathing is too fast. My pulse too loud.
I press my hand against the edge of a table, grounding myself in something solid as the reality of what just happened begins to settle in.
I shouldn’t have done that.
I know it.
Every instinct I have is screaming it now.
But if I hadn’t?—
I close my eyes briefly, steadying myself before opening them again.
There’s no undoing it.
Only surviving what comes next.
6
VERR
The silence does not shatter so much as it fractures along invisible lines, breaking unevenly across the court as realization ripples outward—not in a single wave, but in staggered pulses of comprehension, each mind arriving at the same conclusion by different paths, too late to prevent what has already been done and too quickly to ignore its implications. The body lies where it fell, its shape already beginning to lose identity as the room decides what it must become, and I remain standing over it with the weight of the moment settling not upon me, but around me, bending itself toward whatever meaning I choose to give it, because that is the difference—not the act, but the interpretation.
“Guards—”
“An attack?—”
“Who let?—”
The voices rise without direction or authority, scattering like sparks that fail to catch because no one has yet decided where the fire is meant to burn, and I allow them that brief, disordered moment before I intervene, because timing matters as much asaction. When I finally speak, I do not raise my voice; I do not need to.
“There.”
The word cuts through the noise—not louder, but sharper—and I step forward as I say it, placing my boot against the fallen wrist with deliberate precision, pressing just enough to turn it so that what was hidden is no longer so, the blade slipping free of concealment and catching the light in a thin, undeniable line. The reaction is immediate, not silence but alignment, the scattered voices drawing together as understanding begins to coalesce.
