Saurin and I exchange a glance.
"It is not," I say.
He puts it back and digs deeper, eventually producing a warm wool dress, which he brings over without comment. He passes Ari to Saurin and comes to the edge of the bed.
"Are you ready to sit up properly?"
"No," I say.
He helps me anyway, his arm behind my back, and the wound announces itself with a force that pulls a howl from me, the place where the magic had torn through my abdomen remaking itself known as I shift upright. It is terrible and slow and Colsar is patient through all of it, dressing me with a care that belongs to someone who understands exactly what each movement costs. When he finishes he crouches down and puts my boots on, lacing them without being asked.
He reaches into the pack again and pulls out a brush. He works through my hair until the tangles give, though it is still far from clean, and when he finishes I pull it into a quick braid and look at him.
"Do I look like I just had a baby?"
He pauses. “I do not know how to answer that.”
Saurin's voice carries across the room without hesitation. “Do not, Majesty. Simply say she looks beautiful."
Colsar turns back to me. "You look beautiful."
I raise an eyebrow at him. "I want the soldiers to respect me. I do not want them to think me weak."
"When they see the bodies outside," he says, "no one will think you weak."
I consider that for a moment. "My staff."
He frowns, then goes upstairs and comes back with it. "It was on the floor."
I take it and attach it at my hip. "What else?"
"My cloak," I say. "And my circlet.”
He nods, drapes the cloak around my shoulders, then reaches into the bottom of the pack and produces a gold circlet, the one Aunt Petunis had given me. He places it carefully and steps back and looks at me with something in his expression that he does not bother to conceal.
"My queen," he says.
I smile, and then wince as another wave of pain moves through me.
"Two healers travel with them," he says quietly. "You will feel better soon.”
I nod and hold my hand out to him.
He takes it, but instead of pulling me to my feet, he draws me forward and lifts me with care, one arm braced beneath me, mindful of the strain in my body as though he knows exactly where it hurts.
“You’re not walking,” he says.
I don’t argue.
Colsar shifts his hold, then glances back. “Arabar will get the packs.”
He takes the steps without slowing. At the top, I press my hand lightly against his chest. “Put me down.”
He understands immediately and sets me on my feet. I straighten despite the pull through my body. Saurin follows carefully behind us with the children, and then we are through the door.
The flag of Alarna moves in the wind above the assembled troops, gold and the pale green of early spring, a color that looksgentle from a distance but carries something else entirely up close, the kind that belongs on a standard rather than a garden. The soldiers are well dressed and well armored, their lines straight, their attention fixed.
Colsar offers his hand, and I take it. The first step hurts. The second is worse. By the third, I understand exactly what my body is doing, and I understand that Saurin was right. It is the change that breaks me, the moment between one position and the next. That is where the pain lives. Once I am upright and holding there it does not disappear, but it moves deeper, becomes something I can breathe through instead of something that pulls me under.
