Page 47 of Given to the Black King

I retract them.

No one comments on her using my name before the war table.

I move the next counter.

After council, I find her in the sunny gallery Orrick moved her into without permission. Tam, the cook’s boy, is teaching her a border song about a tax collector and a goat.

She gets the rude word wrong.

Tam corrects her.

She gets it wrong a different way.

I stand in the doorway and listen until she notices me.

“Your dialect contains too many uses for one goat,” she says.

“Tam.”

The boy straightens. “Majesty.”

“Kitchen.”

He runs.

Iona puts down the page. “He was helping.”

“He was teaching you to insult my quartermaster’s mother.”

“I thought it was the tax collector’s mother.”

“That is the third verse.”

She laughs.

My claws press against my fingertips. I shut the door behind me.

Her laughter fades. The scent beneath it does not.

“You left quickly last night,” she says.

“Osk arranged the bell.”

“Convenient of him.”

I cross the room.

She does not retreat.

I put one hand on the desk beside her and bend close enough to smell the mark under her dress.

“Does it hurt?”

“The one on my shoulder or the one you are pretending you cannot smell through three layers of wool?”

“Both.”

“Pleasantly.”