Hours or minutes or days passed, I could not tell. The fever climbed higher, dragging everything with it. Sweat soaked through my hair, my skin burning while a tremor moved through me in uneven waves, leaving me weak and unsteady even lying still.
At some point, the door opened. Nyara’s voice cut through the haze, distant but familiar. “Fuck, she looks terrible.”
“She’ll live,” he said.
I tried to open my eyes, but the effort felt too heavy to complete. The sound of their voices blurred together, rising and falling without meaning, slipping past me before I could hold onto any of it.
“She needs rest,” he said again, quieter now.
Nyara said something in return, softer this time, but I couldn’t follow it. The door closed.
He stayed, I knew that much. Even when I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I could still feel him there, constant in a way that should have bothered me more than it did. The last thought I managed to hold onto before everything slipped under again was that he still hadn’t finished explaining.
And I still wanted the answer.
The Patience Room
SEVRIN
Rathmor Palace
The summons arrived at Yvara's rooms at the third hour after dinner. Sevrin had sent it without explanation. He rarely offered any.
He was already in the Patience Room when she descended, installed in the high-backed chair near the wall, one leg crossed over the other, a glass resting untouched against his knee. He had lit the candles along the upper tier only, leaving the room in low amber that softened nothing. He did not look up when she entered.
The healer's words had not left him since they were spoken.Not pregnant.The lie had been complete, offered without hesitation and accepted just as easily. It was not the worst of what she had done. It was only the easiest place to begin.
Yvara smoothed her robe and smiled. "Majesty. I came as quickly as I could." She moved to the center of the room, arranging herself with practiced ease. "I hope I have not kept you."
He said nothing.
She waited. Then tried again. "The weather has been terrible. I do not know how the servants manage the upper gardens in this cold. Though I suppose they do not have much choice." A light laugh. "I asked for extra blankets last week and they brought me wool. Wool, as though I were?—"
"Sit down," he said.
She sat.
He looked at her then. Not with anger, not with heat, only with the particular quality of a man who has finished deciding something and has moved past the point of feeling anything about it. His eyes moved over her face with the unhurried attention of someone taking inventory.
She smiled again, smaller this time. "Majesty, do you wish me to entertain you this evening? Perhaps I should, before the child gets bigger and it becomes too much."
He did not answer.
"Are there any lords available?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
He called for his attendant without raising his voice, the man appearing within moments. “Bring the lords invited to the Ivory this evening.”
The attendant bowed and withdrew.
Sevrin looked at the candles along the upper wall. "It has been a long day," he said. "I wish for darkness."
He rose and extinguished everything himself, moving through the room with unhurried precision, pinching each wick between his fingers until only a single candle remained, the one on the low table beside his chair. Then he returned to his seat and picked up his glass and did not speak again.
Yvara waited in the dimness. Then, smoothly, she reached for the clasp at her shoulder and let her robe fall. She moved to the bed and arranged herself against the pillows with the ease of someone who has performed this many times and has long since stopped thinking about it.
The door opened. She looked up.
