He looks at her then, properly, and something in him shifts.
"Yes," he says.
He speaks at length. The arrangement, the pacing, the way she followed the structure he imposed. He speaks of her posture, the angle of her hand, the moments she resisted and the moments she did not, each detail treated as though repetition might preserve it.
Nox listens without interrupting. Without guiding. She lets him speak. When he finishes, the room holds the absence of his voice briefly.
“I found this soothing," he says.
"I am glad, Majesty."
She curtsies and withdraws, leaving him with the gowns and the version of Asharin that exists only in his mind.
The corridor outside is empty.
Larkin falls into step beside her, his presence folding into her pace without drawing attention. He bows his head slightly. "How was it?"
"He is deliciously unwell," she says.
Larkin says nothing.
"He must be furious." A trace of amusement surfaces. "Nothing he touches is her."
Her thoughts shift then to Yvara, Asharin’s half sister. The King’s favored bedmate, if the rumors were true, the one he intended to crown. And yet she had seen no sign of her. Not a glimpse, not a name spoken aloud. Even the absence carried through the palace strangely, avoided rather than forgotten, as though it had been agreed upon rather than explained.
Nox lets the thought rest without comment.
They walk on, the palace closing around them once more.
CHAPTER 14
The Light
The light hits first.
It presses into my vision with a force that feels almost physical, bright enough to make me narrow my eyes. Beyond the wards there had been only bodies and the hollow black of things that did not die. Color had ceased to exist.
Here it returns all at once.
I blink, trying to orient myself. There are soldiers. A line of them, more than I expected, positioned along the boundary with a quiet readiness that does not waver. Alarna keeps its wards guarded from the inside.
A figure breaks from the line and walks toward me, unhurried.
"Your Highness," he says, lowering his head. "We will escort you to the palace."
I do not know how he knows who I am. I look like something dragged off a ship that was never meant to make it, which is exactly what I am. My clothing hangs in torn pieces, stiff where blood has dried into it. The bruises left by Mysin and his menhave faded but remain visible, impossible to mistake. The fever broke days ago but my body still carries the exhaustion of it, and the lightcraft took whatever was left. I am upright through will alone.
And yet no one turns away. No one falters. They look at me as though they already knew exactly who would come through those wards and simply waited for it to happen.
I do not know where I am supposed to go. The escort is the only direction I have, and I take it.
"Brother."
The voice comes from somewhere to my left. Talen turns toward it before I can follow the sound, already moving, already gone.
Nyara falls into step beside me without being asked. The three of us are what made it through.
The walk to the palace is longer than I expect. The people we pass are unhurried, their clothing soft and loose in muted colors that seem to belong to the light rather than interrupt it. There is something undeniably free in the way they exist here. A place sealed behind wards should not feel like this. Nothing about how they carry themselves suggests bracing or guarding. The palace grows clearer as we approach, wide openings stretching along its length, gold threading through the structure without excess. It does not hold the light so much as let it pass through. Nothing about it feels heavy or closed. Rathmor rises in my mind without prompting, all shadow and weight and containment. This is none of that.
