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He had spent his entire life shutting himself away from everyone. But with her, somehow, he had been able to be himself. He could set down the weight of the world every night and simply exist.
After their bath, she would admonish him for sneaking Fiorakis blood while she dressed for dinner, and he would pretend he had forgotten he was not supposed to.
Sometimes she would come up with other things to scold him about.
Most recently his hair.
She had asked to trim it one day, then told him she had read in the Alarnan libraries that lightcraft could be used to cut hair.
He had told her she must have misread, because trimming hair most certainly required scissors. He had refused, told her she was not qualified, and threatened to ask one of the old Matrons to do it instead.
He did it just to see her laugh. Just to have her punch his arm so he could lift her and carry her to bed.
She would stop him at some point when words no longer mattered, and she would remind him that no Matron could do the trim. That no one could touch his hair or any other part of him except for her.
Her possessiveness always aroused him.
With the Moon Chambers, he had planned it all out. When they were finished, he would show her every room. Their dining suite. The places where they would sit with their children. He would have roast fowl prepared and a strawberry cake waiting.
His Asha Bear loved strawberry cake. She preferred that he feed it to her.
He loved that.
She had spent so much of her life being hurt. Used. Abused.
He had promised himself he would always protect her.
Yet in the end, she had been poisoned and discarded like she was nothing.
The sound that left him did not belong to anything human. He pressed the pillow harder against his face, trying to keep the walls from hearing it.
The News
DALI
Kisernia Docks
The ship had started in Gyarin. Now it was a day or two from Veynar when the messenger ran onto the dock at Kisernia.
“Queen Asharin is dead.”
Dali surfaced the moment the words landed. She would have smiled had it not offended everyone around her.
The death of Asharin made her neither happy nor sad. But it would make Maridale sad, which would make her weak. A weak Maridale meant that Dali could feed and spend time with Eravic.
If, of course, he was not displeased with her.
He had been cross with her lately, ever since the small Gyarin incident. He had been trying to get his precious Asharin to safety, to Alarna, when Dali had a terrible bout of hunger. Maridale had left Veynar almost as soon as Asharin had. King Sevrin had become unhinged. Moreover, Dali’s connections had told her that Teorin Rathmor was on the same ship as Asharin.
It seemed smartest to get as close to Alarna as possible. Gyarin was good for that.
Dali had made the decision herself. In truth, when her precious Asharin was harmed, Maridale was devastated. She had gone somewhere very quiet and very dark inside herself, and Dali had simply taken over because that was what devastation invited.
Devastation always made Dali hungry, but she did not mind. In fact, she loved to feed. She loved very few things, but Eravic was one of them. Feeding was certainly another.
He had asked both of them to look after Asharin carefully. They had failed. He was not happy about it, and his unhappiness was the one thing in the world that Dali found genuinely inconvenient.
So back to Gyarin they went. The small house along the northern shoreline. They would lay low, then return to Veynar once the king calmed down.
