I turn.
Sevrin is slumped forward across the table, a blade driven straight through his chest, pinning him there. His goblet rolls slowly toward the edge.
A man stands behind him, pale pink eyes threaded with gold, maroon hair cut through with muted streaks of mauve. He moves like someone who has never once been told no, already reaching across the table for my wine with the ease of someone who decided it was his the second he entered. He lifts it. Takes a slow sip. Considers it.
He looks back at me then, his attention dragging over the careful arrangement of the evening as though he finds the whole thing entertaining. The candles. The gown. The music. Me. Then he leans against the table, my wine still in his hand, taking his time.“I’m Avaneer,” he says lightly. “I do prefer proper introductions, but your husband is absent, and your king is…indisposed, so this will have to do.”
The harp continues softly in the corner, but the cold beneath it changes, as though Avaneer’s arrival has interrupted something else entirely.
Another sip. “I expected worse,” he says. “Veynar usually disappoints me.”
I do not know whether the insult is meant for the wine, the motionless king across the table, or me.
“You survived all those undead,” he says. “Your…lightlift abilities must be impressive.”
“Lightcraft,” I correct automatically.
He waves the distinction away as though it means nothing to him. Then he pulls a handkerchief from his coat and dabs at his mouth. “Did you know, golden princess, that you have been lied to?"
He glances at Sevrin with something that almost resembles sympathy.
"The Rathmor men tend to do that," he says pleasantly. "Nasty little habit of theirs."
I pull the light forward, the heat already gathering at my fingertips?—
“Two lefts,” he says mildly. “Northeast corridor.”
He adjusts the blade still embedded in Sevrin’s chest, almost absently.
Then his eyes lift to mine. “Correct?”
I lower my hands, but the light remains, burning beneath my skin.
“Two nannies.” He smiles. “But only one guard.”
I think of Aunt Petunis.A queen does not freeze. She lets her enemies decide she has.
He swirls the wine. "I hope you don't mind," he adds, eyes drifting to the clock behind me.
"Your husband won't be on time for dinner."
Epilogue
JUNIS
The coastline comes into view slowly. Smoke threads upward from what used to be homes, thin and pale against the sky. The docks have half-collapsed into the water, debris drifting outward in slow circles that the tide has not yet decided what to do with. Gyarin looks like something the sea is still deciding whether to take.
The ship sits heavy in the water, its decks crowded in a way they were not when it arrived. The dead have been driven back. The living have been gathered. The work of it shows on everyone still moving.
Behind them people fill every available space rather than soldiers, wrapped in blankets that belong to someone else, sitting close together because space stopped mattering sometime in the night. The children are quiet in a way that has nothing to do with peace. The adults stare outward, bodies present and minds still back on the shore, still in it.
Junis moves through them slowly, stepping over outstretched legs, adjusting a blanket here, pressing a waterskin into someone’s hands there. He does it quietly, his attention movingfrom one person to the next without pausing long enough to be thanked. Whatever this is now, it has been worn into him by too many nights like this one to feel like anything other than habit.
Eravic stands at the rail watching the shoreline.
“It will take time,” Junis says, coming to stand beside him.
Eravic does not look away from the water. “Everything does.”
