rel

of old wine and told me to smile, and I understood at once t

d the King had collared, and to decide, over roast and politics, whether she was a scandal they could ignore or a wound they had to

s made sur

the hall stilled. "Truly. We have prayed for the bond to bless this line again - the Withering takes another holdfast in the east this very season, did you hear? - a

. I kept my chin level. I'd been laughed at by

t to carry. "Most men need a throne behin

- touché, and we'll see - and drank. He was better at this than I was. I knew it the way

spit. Instead, when Alaric drank, her eyes cut to him and went flat and cold, and then, briefly, to me, with a look I couldn't read and didn't trust. Not fri

ine that nea

ifted it, because my throat was dry and my hands wanted something

ht, and I watched his face go to stone in the way I was learning meant something underneath had gone to war. He set it down. Beneath the spice a

d. See the cup to my chambers. Carefully." And to the hall, rising, drawing me up with a hand at the

he couldn't keep his hands off - and a poisoned cup walking quietly out a side door as evi

haking. Just slightly. Just e

ll, in a small lamplit room hung with old maps, and then he turned

forty witnesses, under my roof, an arm's length from me." He dragged a h

ough to feel. "Scream? Faint? Give them the satisfaction?" I pressed my back to the cold stone because my knees had stopped being re

aised it to your mouth, because some part of you decided long ago that flinching costs more than dying." He came a step closer, and the anger in him had nowh

ruth of it scraped on the way out. "Look at some

ing in tha

ir - that hook behind my breastbone hauling me toward him, the heat of him, the scent of cold pine and woodsmoke and the thing beneath it tha

almost. "Telling me how alone you've been. Like it's ord

mouth for the first time.

nd I'll never touch you again, and I'll believe you, because you do not lie to spare anyone." Hi

nt to. For one reckless, ruinous moment I wanted him more than I wanted the safety o

e lamps

kin answering the want and the fear, surging up bright and cold and enormous from a place I had no name for, frost blooming across the stone at my back, the

struck bell, the frost already melting to ordinary damp on the stones - and th

rom under my fingernail

wolf - except the wolf was already looking, and the wound was the one thing in twenty-two years I had never let

what Greywater had spent my whole life trying to drown - and I understood, with a horror that finally, finally lo

was

en breathed. "

know the answer - and that he looked