Page 7 of The Crown’s Temptation

"She is not dead, Arabar," Colsar roars.

His hands are trembling.

Teorin cannot speak. He looks at her face. At the closed eyes. At the blue at her lips and thinks about the last time he saw her as she entered Alarna, looking back at him with an expression he had catalogued and kept and has not been able to stop returning to since.

He wants to kill Colsar.

For not listening when Teorin tried to warn him. For being here and being alive and holding her while she is not. For being the one she chose, the one she always chose, the one she called her family when Teorin could not make himself be enough to be that.

He cannot bring himself to.

Because all he can think about is her. None of this matters without her. The ships, the Threns, the Morraks circling above the palace, the careful years of planning that have delivered him to this exact moment. None of it has any meaning in a world she is not in.

He draws a breath that does not come easily.

"We must try to save her," he says.

Colsar looks at him for the first time.

"I have tried everything." His voice breaks on it. "The Fyrekin say she cannot awaken." He looks back down at her. "Our children. My Asharin. My Asha Bear. The one person in this world created just for me."

No, dog. Just for me, Teorin thinks.

He does not say it.

He exhales. "There may be a way."

Arabar clears his throat. "Her Majesty has been gone for quite some time now. Her body has firmed. It is unlikely that⁠—"

"There may still be a way," Teorin says. He does not look at Arabar.

"Speak," Colsar says. The word comes out like a command but Teorin can see the thing underneath it, the small desperate glimmer of something that has not yet given up.

"There is one place in the Thronelands where a human can be brought back to life. And there is one type of magic that can achieve it." He pauses. "Morrath."

The room is very quiet.

"The only humans that survive in Morrath are made to be deathmages that can never leave there," Colsar says.

"Yes. She may never leave."

"And she may still not awaken," Arabar interjects.

"But she is not just any human," Teorin continues. "She gave birth to a feeder, did she not?” He can smell it even now, though the smell of her blood was slowly fading away, he could detect, faintly, the scent of a feeder. Her blood has already changed. He pauses. "Morrath favors what the blood calls."

Colsar looks at him. "She has no blood that calls to her in Morrath."

Teorin watches his face slowly change. He can see, quietly, that Colsar has remembered something.

"She has probably mentioned as much to you," Teorin guesses.

Colsar says nothing, which is answer enough.

Teorin thinks of what he himself felt in the ground near the gate, that pull, that frequency that did not belong to anything there and yet was recognized by everything there.

"I have reason to believe she has blood relatives in Morrath," Teorin says. "Perhaps more than one."

"You lie so much," Colsar says. "Who could trust you?"