“You will not ruin this country?—”
The light leaves his hand before most of the room understands what is happening, but I am already there, my hand lifting as the power reaches me. I take hold of it as it arrives, not meeting it with force but closing around it, containing it, redirecting it before it can land. It strains against me, then falters, its direction breaking under my control until it dissipates into nothing.
The room goes silent. He stares at me as though something essential has been taken from him. He tries to move again, but I am already in front of him, the light answering cleanly now as I draw it forward and close it around him in a controlled hold that leaves him unable to act without tearing himself apart in the attempt.
“Who else?” I ask.
He does not answer. I do not repeat the question. The pressure changes, narrowing, moving inward through the place where resistance gathers and holds, pressing until it fractures. I feel it as it gives, not as words but as direction, as the shape of what he intended and where it leads.
“Where?” I say.
This time the answer comes. Names form beneath the strain, locations following them, pieces of something that had not yet been set into motion but had already begun.
I release him. He collapses to the floor, whatever strength he carried into this room stripped from him by the effort of holding it.
I look to the guards. “Find them.”
They move at once.
One remains, watching me with careful attention. “Your Grace, the dungeons?”
I look down at the man at my feet, at the space he occupies now that his purpose has been removed from him.
“Dungeons?” I say, and shake my head. “Kill him. Dead men cannot plan assassinations.”
The guard holds my gaze for a fraction longer than necessary, then nods. “Yes, Your Grace.”
He does not hesitate again. I glance toward Petunis and see the briefest change in her expression, something that does not linger long enough to be named before it disappears. The man is dragged out screaming.
The Herald enters again. "Sir Talen of Sunwall."
The name sounds familiar. A figure stumbles through and I recognize him instantly as the man on the ship with us, the man Nyara had spent her evenings with. The only other Alarnan on the ship during our journey from Veynar to Alarna.
He makes eye contact with me, then rushes to his knees.
“I saw how you fought on the ship,” Talen says as he steps forward, dropping to one knee with practiced precision. “It would be my honor to serve as your prime protector. You ensured that all others crossed the wards before you yourself did. Now that there are rumors you are with child, you will require?—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up.” The words enter the room without force and yet carry through it completely.
I angle my head toward the door. The man at the entrance stands as though he has never considered the possibility that he might not be allowed there, his presence cutting through the space in a way that shifts it without effort. His hair is threaded with white, his face marked by something that reads less as age than as disregard, a flask loose in his hand as though it has always been there. Beside him stands a boy, quiet and watchful, his attention moving through the room with a focus that does not match his years.
The man looks toward the dais. “Petunis, you cunt,” he says, as though the room exists only to carry the insult to her. “She just came through the wards and you have her working already?”
He spits onto the floor, the sound landing where silence had only just settled. “And you’ve got groveling pieces of shit on their knees in her throne room?”
Talen does not rise.
I do. “Talen was offering a kindness,” I say, keeping my voice even. “He was offering to?—”
The man’s answer was immediate. “Then you’re more stupid than your mother,” he says without hesitation, “if such a thing were possible.” He delivers the words casually, without embellishment, and the room suddenly feels too small to hold them.
He gestures toward Talen as though dismissing something already beneath his notice. “Get him the fuck out.”
Much to my shock, the guards rush to obey and Talen is removed before I can even shoot him an apologetic glance.
I look to Petunis. “Who is he?”
She does not answer immediately, and with her hesitation I understand that whatever this man is, he does not belong to the rules I have been trying to learn.
