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He stood and moved toward her. "You will not humiliate me. And you will call me father."

Before he reached her a soldier stepped between them. Her Soldier. Standing in front of a king in a room full of guards and power.

"Ah." Orsin looked at him. "You are supposed to risk your life for me. Not my ungrateful guests."

Dali took over.

This was not the time for Maridale.

"Leave him alone," she said.

She moved toward him. Orsin raised his hand and she stopped, frozen, his power pressing her in place. The pregnancy had weakened her more than she had accounted for. She turned to Ivanoxa.

"Please. Stop him. You are his favorite."

Ivanoxa stared straight ahead.

"You will go to the pits," Orsin said to her Soldier. "You will meet your certain death in⁠—"

"Do not send him," Dali screamed.

A surge of green and then brown hair and blue eyes and desperation. "Do not send him," Maridale begged.

She turned to Nox again. "Please. Ask him. He was not doing anything wrong. He was protecting me. Tell him⁠—"

Nox said nothing.

Dali turned to the room. Every face Yorali except one.

Teorin Rathmor stood in the corner with a goblet in his hand, watching with mild interest. He walked lazily toward Nox as her Soldier was lifted from the floor.

Her Soldier looked at her.

"Live well," he said. Quietly. Just for her.

Then he was gone.

She lunged for him. She did not decide to lunge — her body did it before anything else could happen — and she fell and as she stood she felt it. The cramping. The warmth. The certainty of something leaving that could not be called back.

Orsin looked at her and smiled. "Well. That solves that problem."

She would not let it happen in that room. She would not give him that.

She limped toward the doors, the cramping getting worse. She looked at where her Soldier had been standing and then stopped looking at it because there was nothing there.

At the door she heard them.

Teorin, leaning toward Nox, his voice low. His hand covering hers briefly.

"Good work."

"Is she alright? Tamal will kill me if she even breathes wrong."

Teorin snorted. "Just a limp."

Dali stopped.

She looked at both of them. At the ease of it. At Nox's hand under Teorin's. At two people who had just watched the only thing she had ever loved thrown into a pit and were already talking about something else.