Prologue
NOX
Brinette, daughter of the Duke of Opithin, is going to die before the tea cools.
Nox clocks it before the cup is even poured, which is almost unfair, considering the woman hasn’t technically done anything wrong yet.
Thisis who Asharin kept close?
The same Asharin that Sevrin Rathmor has gone half-mad over?
The same Asharin that Teorin Rathmor is heading to Alarna with?
Making Sevrin the perfect target, and Brinette, in all her dullness, a necessary stepping stone.
Brinette pours the tea herself, every movement precise without looking forced, like she has been trained since birth to make even the smallest things feel intentional. She’s poised, composed, and irritatingly competent. She has clearly spent her life practicing how to be tolerable, which is, in its own way, offensive.
Asharin was a poor judge of character. A decent princess would have fed Brinette to the undead ages ago. Though even the undead would need to be ravenous to tolerate such dullness. A horde, perhaps. Alarna was known for those.
Alarna, Alarna.A lovely place, by all accounts. Divine artwork. An impressive theater. A worthwhile visit.
If you can get past the undead at its wards.
Why must all good things be inconvenient?
Teorin better not fuck this up.
Brinette watches her with careful attention. “It’s important to hold the cup like this,” she says, demonstrating with two fingers and a slight tilt, everything technically correct and still somehow lacking.
Nox shifts the veil a fraction and drinks. “Like this?” she asks, angling her head just enough to appear uncertain.
“Yes. Exactly.” Brinette smiles encouragingly.
Nox smiles. Inside, she is already calculating how much longer she intends to endure this. She sits here veiled as a bastard daughter from Gyarin, a distant branch of Brinette’s extended family, sent off under the polite fiction of refinement. It is a thin story, but thin things hold in places like Veynar, where no one wants to press too hard on anything that arrives properly introduced.
Brinette had accepted it with only a brief pause. That had been promising. This is not.
Larkin is an idiot, and this time she may actually kill him for it, because of all the possible marks he could have suggested, allthe women with real influence or at least the illusion of it, he has given herthis.And now she must sit here and listen to this woman explain how to hold a cup.
Brinette leans forward slightly, still composed, still entirely convinced that this matters. “If you’re to remain at court, you’ll need to understand these things. Presentation matters. Especially here.”
Especially here.
Nox nearly laughs at that, because if this is what passes for presentation in Veynar, then the entire kingdom is built on things that almost succeed and never quite arrive.
“Yes,” she says lightly, setting the cup down with deliberate care, already better at this than the woman instructing her and finding that fact more irritating than satisfying. “I’ll be sure to remember that.”
“Tell me,” she continues, as though the thought has only just occurred to her, “is it always so quiet here?”
Brinette hesitates, and the hesitation is small but real, which at least gives Nox something to pay attention to.
“Lately, it has been.”
Nox lets her expression shift just enough, curiosity layered with something softer, something that invites explanation without demanding it. “Why?”
“You haven’t heard?” Brinette asks, lowering her voice, though there is no one close enough to overhear.
Nox shakes her head. “I’ve been traveling.”
