Page 102 of The Crown’s Temptation

She tilted her head. “I suppose if she is not entirely dead they aren’t truly killers, necessarily.”

Colsar looked up sharply.

After a moment’s thought, she added, “I imagine you’ve already realized someone wanted your wife dead.”

He nodded slowly.

“There is danger. Not just where you are, but in Morrath too.”

Silence pressed between them.

Then Aviaryn spoke again. “She may never leave here.” She looks at him, studying him the way she might study something she found mildly interesting and not at all urgent. "The blood in this place remembers itself. Hers included." A small shrug. "It might not let her go so easily."

Colsar closed his eyes.

He expected those words to destroy him. Instead…

They didn’t. If Asharin truly could never leave, then he would wait here. Every day and every night. For as long as it took.

The children would grow and one day they would no longer need him every hour of every day. They would reach adulthood. They would reunite.

Until then, if it was truly impossible for her to come home, then he would spend the rest of his life beside this tunnel if it meant seeing her.

Aviaryn turned to leave. “Oh.” She looked back over one shoulder.

“She said she’ll be here soon.”

Then she disappeared into the darkness.

What He Believed

COLSAR

The stairs down to the dungeons were narrower than he remembered, or perhaps he simply remembered them less often than he should have. Torches burned low along the walls, the air turning damp and mineral the further he descended, and by the time he reached the last landing the sound of the palace above him had disappeared entirely.

The guard at the bottom straightened. "Majesty."

"Leave us."

The guard hesitated only a moment before he went.

Colsar found Edrin curled against the far wall of the cell, knees drawn up, exactly where the guards had left him days ago.

"Where is my father?” Edrin said. Not a question by then. He'd stopped asking it like one.

Colsar did not sit. "Tell me what you did."

"They took him." Edrin's voice was flat, worn down to nothing after days alone with it. "Yorali. They told me I would have him back once I finished what they asked. Give her something to make her sleep."

"You knew it might kill her."

Edrin did not flinch. "I knew."

"And you did it anyway."

"You left her for a year. Sevrin mistreated her the whole time you were gone. I decided that whatever happened to her, sleeping or dying, it would be better than the life she was already living." His eyes were dry, still. "I still believe that."

Colsar's hands curled at his sides. "Where is your father now?”