CHAPTER 83
Six Thirty-One
At six o'clock, a knock comes at the door. Edrin stands in the corridor, composed and slightly flushed the way he always is. "Your Highness. The palace staff wanted you to know the harpist has arrived to the great hall. Available for entertainment whenever you are ready."
"Is everything else prepared according to plan?"
"Yes, Highness. All of it."
I smile. "Thank you, Edrin."
He bows and goes.
I decide there is no reason to sit alone in my chambers when there is music waiting. I take my wrap and head down.
I find Wyn before I reach the hall.
“Stay with them tonight,” I tell her. “Do not leave the children.”
Her brows draw together slightly. “Majesty?”
I meet her eyes. “Colsar and I will dine privately.”
A brief pause. Then, quieter, “I will feel safer knowing you are with them.”
“Kentan convinced the palace seamstress to make them miniature guard cloaks,” Wyn says. “He intends to bring them later tonight.”
I exhale softly. “They are infants.”
“He appears unconcerned by that fact,” Wyn says dryly. “Nevertheless, they will not be alone. No one will pass that door beyond Kentan.”
“Good,” I say.
The great hall is dim when I arrive, the candles lit but low, the table laid out exactly as I asked. The harpist sits in the far corner, barely visible in the soft light, and the sound that fills the room is unhurried and clean, the kind of music that does not demand anything of you.
I sit and I listen and I let myself enjoy it.
It was my idea, all of it. The kitchen, the candles, the arrangement, the harpist. I had wanted something that felt like an occasion rather than an obligation, something that belonged only to us.
Dinner is not until seven. I have time.
Something reaches me before the door does. My awareness moves outward without thought.
What answers is not clean. I am still looking at the harpist's hands, at the particular pallor of his face, the gray at the tips of his fingers where they rest, too still against the strings. Something cold moves through me.
My eyes lift to the clock above him. Six thirty one. Not quite seven, but Colsar will be early. He always is.
The door opens, and something in my chest eases.
He is here. I wait for his steps crossing to me, for his voice, for the familiar sound of him.
Instead I hear a chair pull out across the table.
Then—
"Indulge me."
The sound that follows is wet and final.
