"Quite well, Majesty, although typical bickering seems to exist between Korakar and Slurvina."
"And the Umbrelai?"
"They keep mostly to themselves, although their princess allegedly has a taste for death and punishment." She pauses. "But Umbrelai is forever aligned with Korakar, Majesty, and together they are too strong for Slurvina to start a civil war against."
"Very well. See that you visit Korakar in person again soon. Axar is the most reasonable of them all. I will not have Asharin here amongst unrest."
"Yes, Majesty," Ivernet responds with a respectful nod.
Servants approach, careful and controlled. One drapes his furs over his shoulders. Another opens the case. He selects one of his utensils, places it between his teeth, and closes his eyes.
When he opens them again the sky is waiting.
"She is mine," he says quietly. "And yet she has disappeared." A breath, something almost like amusement in it. "When she returns, she will never leave."
The Morraks begin to rise, one by one and then all at once, filling the sky in a storm of red and black. Sevrin watches them go with the particular satisfaction of a man who has never had to ask for anything twice.
"She will be your queen."
Ivernet smiles. "I look forward to it, Majesty."
He is almost to the gate when it happens.
A pull. Low and certain, moving through the ground beneath him the way a sound moves through water, felt before it is heard. He goes still. He has stood in Morrath a hundred times and felt nothing like this. This is not the Morraks. This is notthe gate responding to his blood. This is something else entirely, a frequency that does not belong to anything here and yet is unmistakably recognized by everything here.
Ivernet appears at his shoulder. "Majesty?"
"This place calls to her," he says.
A pause. "Majesty, that is not possible. She is not a feeder. The gate would not recognize her."
He does not answer immediately. The pull moves through him again, faint and certain.
"Unless—" Ivernet begins.
"Blood calls to blood," he says. "If someone here is of her bloodline, she would be allowed in."
Ivernet goes very still beside him.
He looks out at the red sky, at the Morraks still rising in their hundreds, and something in him that has been waiting a very long time goes quiet in a way that feels like arrival.
He does not know whose blood it is. He does not need to know yet.
He only knows the gate already recognizes her. Perhaps he will not need Yorali at all.
Everything he has built is waiting.
CHAPTER 38
The Dinner Surprise
By the third night of absence, the palace has begun to take note. The invitation to dinner arrives without apology, written in a hand that assumes obedience rather than requesting it. I turn it once between my fingers before setting it aside, already aware of what it represents. Three nights without court, three nights without being seen, three nights in which decisions have continued to unfold in rooms I did not enter.
I stand before the wardrobe and look at the rows of dresses without reaching for any of them. “You choose,” I say, glancing back at Colsar. “I hated when Sevrin did it. I love when you do.”
He watches me for a moment as though weighing the words, then crosses the room with an ease that feels newly his. Since returning, something in him has shifted into a kind of quiet confidence that does not need to prove itself. He selects a dress without hesitation and brings it to me, his fingers brushing mine as he passes it over.
I take it, then let my eyes move over him more fully. The deep ruby of his robes is threaded with gold, the fabric heavy and rich, yet worn open without any effort to conceal what lies beneath.
