Page 22 of The Crown's Awakening
I fight back tears, wishing for Colsar, yet questioning whether Teorin was right...what if he did not come?
What if he had forgotten me?
My thoughts drift back to the words Brinette had told me. That Jessamy, the woman from his past, had returned to Shalvar after the ball. That Jessamy was a beast of some kind, like him. He had gone to Shalvar borders to fight the undead, perhaps he had decided to return there. Perhaps he had decided they were more compatible.
I try to shake off the thought.Focus on what you can control.
I cannot change any of it. I cannot make Colsar appear. I cannot make Teorin be reasonable. I cannot make my child live.
When I open my eyes again, the panic has burned itself out, leaving something colder in its place.
Resolve.
Maps
SEVRIN
The map chamber overlooks the water below. Sevrin sits at the long table, the route spread before him. The line runs clean along the coast, narrowing as it moves south, tightening at a point ahead where no real alternatives exist.
A goblet rests at his right. A fork rests inside it. Not his. He placed it there after the meal, the remnants of what she ate from it dried into the metal. He did not have it cleaned.
"The ship is cloaked," Corfaris says from the doorway. "It is unclear whether they have altered course."
Sevrin does not look up.
"Any word from Prince Tamal regarding the Blind Gate?"
"No, Your Majesty. Nothing."
It did not matter. Tamal had always been an option, not an opportunity. In the end, this was a king’s game, and Tamal was only a prince.
Sevrin reaches for the goblet. He takes the fork out, turns it once in his hand, then brings it to his mouth and runs his tonguealong the prongs, slow and unhurried. The fowl. Weeks old now, dried into the metal, and still he tastes it. He remembers the way she had licked the juices from her lips, delicate about it, as though she had not wanted to be caught wanting more.
He lowers the fork and sets it back inside in the same position.
“Will you have the Morraks attempt to locate the ship?”
"No."
The servant stills.
"Eravic Vaelor is neither immortal nor stupid." Sevrin's eyes moved to the narrowing in the route, to the point where the path closes in and the undead are already gathered along its edges, still and waiting in the way that only things with nothing left to lose can wait. "He will see the hordes of undead that await him.”
The servant says nothing. There is nothing useful to say.
"When he does," Sevrin continues, his tone carrying no urgency because urgency would suggest uncertainty, "he will turn."
“Yes, Majesty.” He hesitates, then?—
"If you don't mind, Majesty… what is it about her Highness that pulls you so?"
Sevrin does not answer immediately.
"She reminds me of someone," he says at last.
"From where?"
"A long time ago."
