“That was not the point.”
The silence between us stretched.
Colsar followed my gaze as it drifted toward the stains still darkening the marble floor.
A faint look of irritation crossed his face. “Short of raising her again to kill her twice, I fail to see what you expect from me.”
I said nothing.
He sighed softly. “If the sight offends you,” he added, “we can remedy that as well.”
He lifted one hand. Power rose, hot and immediate. The air tightened, light warping under it. Flame broke across the marble. Jessamy’s body caught first. Then her father. Then the guards who had fallen beside them. The fire spread swiftly and unnaturally, devouring cloth, flesh, and steel alike until the bodies collapsed into drifting ash.
Colsar lowered his hand. The flames vanished. Only faint grey powder remained scattered across the polished stone. He regarded the floor for a moment, as if confirming the task had been completed to his satisfaction.
Then he looked back at me. “There,” he said again. His voice carried the quiet certainty of someone who believed the matter had finally been settled.
But the tightness in my chest only grew. “That,” I said slowly, “was not the point either."
Colsar frowned. “What point?”
“The point,” I said, “is that you let it happen.”
“She posed no threat to you.”
“That is not what I said.”
I stepped closer. “You stood there while she undressed in front of you,” I said quietly. “After everything she did to me in Veynar. After you watched her mock me in front of half the court.”
His jaw tightened. “Her House was here to discuss alliances.”
“She was humiliating me.”
“She is dead.”
“That was after.”
Silence stretched between us.
“You keep trying to fix the aftermath,” I continued. “You keep burning the consequences.” My voice hardened. “But you refuse to understand that the problem began with you.”
Colsar stared at me. “I did nothing.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “Exactly.”
For the first time something uncertain moved across his face. "What do you want me to do?"
I held his eyes. "I want to know that no one will ever be able to humiliate me again." The words hung between us. Then I shook my head slightly. "No," I said. "That is not it."
His brow drew together.
"I want to know that I matter to you." My voice did not rise but it did not soften either. "That I am not a prize or an object or a thing. I am not something you protect. I am not something you set aside when it is convenient." I stepped closer without thinking. "I am your partner. The person you choose. The person you want to spend your time with."
He went very still.
For a moment neither of us moved, the space between us charged with everything that had been building since before we arrived here, since before the snow and the undead and the children and all the ways this life had asked more of us than either of us had known it would.
Then he crossed the distance in a single step, like he could not help it, his hands coming to me, not rough and not forcing but certain, as though touching me was the only answer he had that he trusted completely.
