Page 47 of The Crown’s Temptation

The room comes into focus slowly. Dark walls, unfamiliar light, the smell of something medicinal and something ancient that I cannot name. I push myself upright and my arms shake with the effort and I look at every corner of the room and Colsar is not in any of them.

Teorin is.

He is standing near the window. When he sees my eyes open he goes very still.

"Where is Colsar?" My voice comes out wrong. Too thin. "What happened to him? Where is he?"

Something crosses Teorin's face that I do not know how to read.

"He is in Veynar," he says. "He is alive."

I stare at him. "Then why are you here and not him?"

He is quiet for a while. He still looks, I realize, terrible. Pale, dark circles, his collar loose and his hair uncombed in a way I have never seen. He looks like someone who has not slept properly in days.

"Do you remember what happened?" he says.

I try.

Dinner. The Great Hall. Candles. The clock reading six thirty-one. A harpist playing in the corner. I remember the music.

"I remember dinner," I say. "A harpist."

He nods slowly. He pulls the chair closer to the bed and sits in it and looks at me and I can see him deciding how to say whatever he is about to say.

He tells me.

All of it. The poison. Colsar finding me. The healer. The Fyrekin council. Tamal. The word he keeps not quite saying but circling around until I say it for him.

"I died."

"Technically."

"And now I am in Morrath."

"Yes."

"And I cannot go back."

He is quiet.

"And my husband and children are on the other side of something I cannot cross."

"For now⁠—"

"And you brought me here." My voice is very calm. I am aware of that. I am aware that the calm is not real and will not stay like this for long. "You brought me to this place and now I am trapped here and Colsar does not know if I am alive and my children⁠—"

I stop.

"Then why not just let me die in peace?" The words come out flat. "If this is the alternative. Just kill me. Let me go."

"That," says a voice from the doorway, "will not be necessary. As there may be a solution."

I turn.

A woman stands in the entrance. Dark teal hair, teal eyes, beautiful but dangerous looking.

I look at Teorin for an explanation but he says nothing.