Page 230 of The Crown’s Temptation

A man walked along the road ahead of him, his collar edged in black, his pace unhurried.

"Why do you mourn?" Sevrin said.

The man looked up, clearly surprised. "Don't you know?" he said. "The Princess of Veynar was attacked. Poisoned, they say, though no one has confirmed it with a body." He shook his head. "We mourn and pray for her return."

Sevrin's hands went cold on the reins.

He did not move. Could not. His hands were shaking and he looked at them as though they belonged to someone else and then understood that they were his and that the shaking was real and that whatever he had been holding since he left Kelsey Castle was no longer holding.

He broke into a gallop.

The city rose around him and he did not slow down.

A Throne of Surprise

COLSAR

The marriage papers were filed before dawn.

He had done it himself, which was probably unnecessary and he knew it and did it anyway. The clerk had looked at him with an expression that said he had questions and understood better than to ask them. Confidential documents filed by a king regent were not documents a clerk asked about.

He walked back through the corridors in good spirits.

He was not a man given to good spirits but this morning he could not help it. Asharin had chosen him. Asharin was alive. Their children were alive. That was all that mattered.

He thought about dinner. Saurin was right, it was time for the children to begin eating table food. Soon, they would do their first family dinner together. There would be no meetings with his mother or distractions that could get them killed this time.

He wanted it to be the ordinary version of their life rather than something stolen from circumstance. He wanted to do it every day. He could not wait for Fiorakis to be old enough to sit at the table and steal food off his plate. He wanted Ari watching her do it and then doing it himself ten minutes later as though he had thought of it independently.

He wanted Asharin across from him.

Soon. Whatever she was doing it was almost done. He could feel it the way he felt most things that concerned her.

He turned toward the council chambers.

He had not seen Sevrin since before Asharin was poisoned. In the beginning he had assumed he was recovering somewhere. It had been long enough now that the assumption had started to feel less like patience and more like neglect. He did not truly care if Sevrin was alive, he had realized. They had never truly been close as brothers, and admittedly Colsar hated that Sevrin had been in the room with Asharin just before she was harmed. He should have been paying closer attention. He should have recognized the danger before it happened.

Colsar liked to think he would have, if he had been there.

That was the past, he reminded himself. He would begin handling things today. Sevrin’s affairs. The council. Whatever had been allowed to drift.

He pushed open the doors.

He read the room in under two seconds.

Uralish first. Standing near the far wall with his wrists bound, dampeners on both. Yorali work. Colsar recognized it immediately. His face was controlled but his jaw was tight. Syle beside him, same restraints, his expression that of cold fury.

Larafyn at the head of the table.

The Baron to his left, looking at Colsar with the expression of a man who had arranged something and was pleased with it.

Yvara beside the Baron. Her expression composed in a way that told him she had been rehearsing it.

And at the far end of the room, in a chair that had not been there yesterday, a man Colsar had never met and recognized immediately.

The King of Yorali looked at him.

"You have something that belongs to me," Orsin said. His voice was even. Calm. His skin was smooth and young. His eyes were cold and empty. He looked at Yvara. "Is that not right, daughter?"