Page 212 of The Crown’s Temptation

She looked at him. She considered it briefly and decided against it. A bad feed from an unknown creature was dangerous. She did not know what he was and did not have time to find out.

She turned and walked back down the corridor.

She was nearly at her chambers when she heard it.

Laughter.

A man and a woman. Coming from somewhere below, carrying through the way sound carried in Morrath, distorted, arriving from the wrong direction.

She stopped.

The smell hit her a second later.

She stood in the corridor and did not move and felt something happen in her chest that she had not felt in a very long time and had no name for and did not want.

She followed it.

Down the stairs. Through the northern passage. Out through the gate and into the courtyard where the night air was cold and the gardens were nothing but thorns and strange greenery she could not identify in the dark.

The voices were clearer out here. The woman's laugh. A man responding, low and amused.

She moved toward them.

They were sitting on a bench with their backs to her. The woman she placed immediately. Fiersa, Asharin’s little bird, she thought with a snicker. She had a drink in her hand, her feet tucked underneath her. She looked nothing like the loyal servant she usually walked around Darkway pretending to be.

The man beside her had his back to her. The smell was overwhelming. She knew exactly who it was.

Maridale forced her way out. "Turn around," she said, voice gentle.

"No.” Dali forced her way back, the teal returning.

Her hands were shaking. She looked at them and could not make herself look away and could not make herself go forward and stood in the dark of the garden with her hands shaking and told herself it was not possible and understood that it was.

"You," she breathed.

Fiersa turned. Frowned. Started to say something.

He turned around slowly.

He looked at her with an expression that was impossible to read. Surprise, yes, but not the joyful kind. It was also not the horrified kind.

"Dali," he said.

"I thought you were dead," she whispered.

Fiersa's eyes went wide. She looked at her brother. "Oh shit." A pause. "This is her?"

He nodded slowly.

Dali looked at his face. All of it. The years in it. The life she had not been part of. "All these years," she said. "All of it. The planning. The revenge. All of it was—" She stopped. Drew in a breath. "You were thrown into the pits. How did you survive?"

She looked at Fiersa then, her eyes narrowing. "And who is she to you?"

Iavis stood slowly. "I survived because of what I am." He held her eyes. "Fiersa is my sister. We share the same blood. I came back to see her and to retrieve some items."

Dali looked down.

At his hands. At what sat in his lap.