Page 37 of The Crown’s Temptation

Teorin is in the chair beside my bed.

I think about a hooded figure standing against a wall with his arms at his sides and his head down saying nothing while the seer murmured and the door opened and the three men walked in.

He is asleep, his head dropped back, his collar loose. He looks like he has not slept in a bed in days. His hair uncombed, which I have never seen before. The circles underneath his eyes are dark.

I look at him and part of me already knows. Something happened. Something happened and I am somewhere else, and there is no version of this where Colsar would leave me unconscious in a room with Teorin Rathmor unless the choice had been taken from him entirely.

My eyes go heavy again.

I let them close.

When I open them again it is dark.

I turn my head.

Teorin is in the bed next to me.

Cold slides down my spine. I flex my fingers and bring them to my abdomen. Feel the fabric there. A nightgown. Good.

I want to move. I want to scream.

But before I can do either I fall back into nothing.

A Letter to Write

NYARA

Alarna

Lord Eskarin found her on the palace steps the following morning.

She had not slept. She did not think anyone in Alarna's court had slept. The palace had that quality, the quality of a place that had been awake all night holding something it could not put down.

He sat beside her without being asked. She appreciated that about him. He never asked.

"The letter," he said.

She looked at the city below. Alarna in the morning, the light coming in off the water, the market beginning to open despite everything. She had always found that remarkable about cities. They continued regardless.

"It did not reach him," Eskarin said.

She closed her eyes briefly. "How far did it get?"

"The southern coast. The undead in the water have multiplied significantly in the past week. His couriers could not get through." A pause. "They tried twice."

She said nothing.

"Korvis," he said carefully. "Does he know his couriers were carrying it?"

"No." She looked at her hands. "He gave me the route. He did not ask what was in the letter or where it was going. He is not the asking sort." She paused. "He is also not the sort who would take it badly if he knew. But I did not want to put that on him. Not with everything else he is carrying right now."

Eskarin nodded. "He has not heard from Jularin."

"No." She said it flatly. "He has not heard from her and he is not saying so and every time her name comes up his face does something he does not know it is doing." She looked at the water in the distance. "He has his mother's smile but none of her suspicion. He will not put it together until someone puts it together for him."

"And you?"

"I have put it together," she said. "I simply do not have proof."