“Brother,” he said.
His voice had thinned by a degree.
“You will not approach her.” Pride said it very quietly. “You will not look at her again with the calculation you have been looking at her with. You will not put a question to me about her bond in her hearing. You will not, brother, come to my citadel uninvited. You have come once. I will permit it once. I will not permit it twice.”
He had not raised his voice. He had not moved. He stood in front of me with the white light bleeding from him, and the air around him burned.
Envy lifted his hands. A small gesture. Surrender, or its imitation.
“Brother.”
“You will leave my hall.”
“I will leave your hall,” Envy said. “I will leave it gladly.” He looked, one last time, around the columns, at the throne, at me.The pale flat eyes settled on me again for half a beat. "I will tell the brothers what I have seen. They will draw their own conclusions — they always do." A pause. "I will tell you this much before I go, brother, as a kindness you will not believe is one. You do not have the long age you imagine. They have spent it waiting to learn whether your bond would ignite at all — hoping, on the whole, that it would not. Now they know. They know you believe the Throne is yours. They mean to see that it never is."
He turned and walked the long marble floor toward the high arched door at the far end, and the matte dark of his coat ate the light of Pride’s cracks until he left the hall.
The door closed behind him.
Pride did not move.
The fissures of light at his jaw, at his hand, at his temple, sealed one by one.
It was effortful. The closing took him. He stood, still, in the middle of the long marble floor, with his back to me, and he did the work of putting himself back together, and the work made the air in the hall thin.
He turned.
When he turned, his face was immaculate.
The fissure at the jaw was gone. The fissure at the back of the hand was gone. The fissure at the temple was gone. He was perfect, once again.
“Maria. Will you permit me to return you to your chamber.”
I nodded.
He bowed. A small precise bow. He had not bowed to me before.
He gestured me toward the door.
The walk back to the chamber was long. He went ahead of me by half a pace and to my right, and his hands stayed at his sides, and his gaze stayed ahead. He was too proud?
We reached the arched door of the silk chamber.
He stopped two paces short.
“You will rest,” he said. “You will be brought whatever you wish. There will be a guard at the foot of this passage. He is mine. He will allow no one near this door. I will return when I have — “
There was a small pause.
“ — settled certain matters. You will not be disturbed.”
Without touching the latch, he stepped back another pace, made the small precise bow again, and turned.
He walked away.
I stood at the door and I watched him go down the long marble passage, the white-and-gold of him moving cleanly into the deeper marble at the far end, and he continued without looking back, and the bond on my wrist dwindled to a banked ember.
I closed the door behind me.
