Page 192 of The Crown's Awakening
"You look well," he adds, studying me.
"I am."
He nods once, satisfied. "Good."
We walk together without needing to decide where we are going. He meets the children easily, Kiss taking to him faster than I expect, Ari watching him with quiet interest in that way that already feels like something more than observation.
"They are perfect," Enovar says.
"They are."
He spends longer with them than he intends to, I think. Or perhaps exactly as long as he intends to. We talk after that, not strategy and not plans, only the small details he has gathered since arriving. What he has seen. What he has heard. The way the palace has moved since our arrival. Who is watching whom. Which guards have changed their patterns. It is nothing and it is everything, and by the time the day begins to fade I feel clearer, more like myself.
"Dinner?" he asks as the light shifts.
I hesitate. "I am going to eat with Colsar."
He nods once, no reaction beyond that. "Of course."
We part easily.
As I walk back through the corridor the thought moves through me quietly. Colsar had said yesterday that today we would do dinner, just us. I find myself looking forward to it more than I expected, not for strategy and not for Veynar, but simply to benear him. The thought sits low in my chest, quiet and a little unwelcome.
I do not push it away.
CHAPTER 56
The Duke of Larafyn
Isit at the smaller table, my hands resting lightly against the wood, looking at the empty chair across from me. Colsar said he would be late. That has become normal. My attention lingers there longer than it should.
He has likely not eaten. I could wait. I have waited before. The thought does not sit well tonight.
My eyes move around the room, the prepared table, the untouched food, the space held open for something that has not arrived. Then I think of what the Sovereign said to me not long after we arrived."I dine at the same time every evening. You are always welcome, with or without Colsar."
There are things I need to discuss. Veynar. What comes next when we leave this place behind. I look at the empty chair once more, then stand carefully. The movement pulls low through my abdomen but it no longer stops me. I will go to the Sovereign first. Then I will have something sent up for Colsar and find him after.
The hidden corridors are quiet, sound softened and held close. I move through them without thinking now, past doorways I have not entered, past intersections that open briefly onto places that exist and do not at once.
Ahead, the throne room comes into view, courtiers crossing with purposeful motion, voices carrying faintly. None of them turn.
The air changes as I step through. The sound follows, voices clearer, everything pressing fully into place around me. No one reacts. I move through as though I had always been here, servants passing with lowered heads, guards along the walls, their attention brushing over me and away again.
The larger dining hall is lit when I reach it and that surprises me. I pause just outside the doors and listen. Voices, more than one, the full rhythm of something already established.
I push the doors open. Long tables stretch through the room, the high windows holding the last of the evening light. The Sovereign sits at the head. Across from him, a man I place almost immediately. Colsar had mentioned the Duke of Larafyn to me once, briefly, the way he mentioned things he considered important without elaborating. He looked exactly as that suggested, broad through the shoulders, the bearing of someone who had never needed to prove his strength to anyone.
And beside Colsar, close and angled toward the table with a map spread between them, her hand resting near its edge as she speaks in a voice low and precise and already part of a conversation that has been unfolding long before I arrived.
Jessamy.
I should not be surprised, it was no secret that she was the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Larafyn. She was his onlychild, due to some type of affliction he carried. She looks beautiful, unsurprisingly, in a gown of burgundy, her rich brown curls piled high on her head.
I look as I feel. Tired and not quite like the version of myself that existed before the children.
The anger moves through me before I can stop it and I let it move without letting it show. I remember the last time we stood in the same space, the balcony at Rathmor, the way she had leaned close with that cruel smile of hers. “If you’re wondering, the prince tastes absolutely divine,”she had said.
The words had struck exactly where she meant them to. I had walked away and said nothing and hated myself for it, and I have not forgotten a single syllable of it since.
