LOGINXAHEN.Three ships sat in the water below the watchtower, two flanking one, all being loaded with men and supplies in the particular organized chaos that preceded any departure from my kingdom. I stood at the stairs and watched it come together.The arrangement was simple. The main ship would carry Binny across the river to Duskmire's shore. The two flanking it would follow at distance, watch him cross the border, and once they did, my guards would abandon ship and make their way back. Binny would stay bound in silver for the entire crossing, wrists and ankles, until he hit Duskmire's shore and someone there had the decency to cut him loose. I was leaving them the ship. I had no interest in it coming back across the river onto my land. Let Duskmire keep it.My councilors had materialized on the shore below in clusters, none of them with any official reason to be there.Base and Hale had positioned themselves near the waterline. Base had his arms crossed and was watching the loading pr
THEODOSA.Nala didn't say anything until we were outside.She walked beside me down the corridor and through the side doors and out into the grey afternoon, and she didn't say a word the whole way, which meant she was either thinking very hard or giving me space to, and with Nala it was usually both at the same time.We were halfway across the grounds before she spoke."How are you feeling.""Fine.""Theo.""I knew he wasn't letting me go." I kept walking, eyes forward. "I've known that for a while. It's not a surprise.""That doesn't mean it doesn't land."I didn't say anything to that.The grounds were quiet at this hour, that particular afternoon stillness where the kingdom had finished its morning and hadn't started its evening yet. The grey sky sat low over everything. Somewhere on the other side of the grounds someone was hammering — probably the crew still working on Nala's ceiling."Binny's going home," I said."He is.""That's what matters."Nala was quiet for a moment. "It's
THEODOSA.Afnie's spare room had a window that faced east and let the morning in whether you wanted it or not.I'd been awake for an hour before the light came through, lying on my back staring at the ceiling and thinking about nothing I wanted to be thinking about. The reconstruction on Nala's cabin had started two days ago and the noise was doing things to everyone's patience, so Nala had relocated us both to Afnie's without much discussion about it, and Afnie had put us in the two spare rooms with the efficiency of someone who had been solving problems for a living long enough that other people's crises barely registered as inconvenient.I liked Afnie's house. It was tidier than Nala's and smelled like cedar and something herbal and the kitchen was better stocked and nobody had put a hole in the ceiling recently.I sat up and pushed my hair back and listened to the house.Quiet. Afnie was already gone, probably to the palace. Nala's door was still closed, which meant she was either
XAHEN. The kingdom was fully awake by the time I came back through it. Markets open, people moving, the ordinary machinery of Obsidian running itself the way it always did. I walked through it without stopping anywhere and thought about nothing useful the entire way back, which was irritating because I had plenty of useful things to think about and my brain had decided Binny Fane’s face was more interesting than all of them. She does things she thinks she has to do. I’d been turning that over since the moment it left his mouth and I was still turning it over now and I was annoyed at myself for it. I cut across the east grounds toward my cabin because I needed a drink and a change of clothes and something to do with my hands that wasn’t this. The morning was grey and cold and the grounds were mostly empty this far from the main path, just the occasional groundskeeper and the birds doing whatever birds did in trees. I heard Kane before I saw him. Not his footsteps. Not his voice.
XAHEN.The ship was nothing impressive.A mid-sized transport vessel, the kind we used for moving cargo between the northern kingdoms. It sat low in the water at the eastern dock with two of my guards already on board and two more waiting on the pier, and it would get Binny Fane back to Duskmire in two days if the current cooperated and in three if it didn’t.I stood at the top of the dock steps with my hands behind my back and watched them bring him up from the cells.He walked without being dragged, which was either cooperation or pride. With Binny it was probably both. The silver shackle was gone from his ankle — I’d had it removed this morning — and he moved like someone reminding himself that his legs still worked the way he remembered. He was thinner than when he’d arrived. Not dangerously so, but enough that I noticed it.He saw me before he reached the steps and his jaw tightened and he kept walking.Good. Very good. I didn’t need the conversation.He stopped anyway.Of course
THEODOSA.Afnie was leaning against the wall outside the throne room doors when I came out, her arms crossed and her eyes moving to my face the second she heard the doors open.She looked at me for a moment.I looked back at her and kept walking.She fell into step beside me without asking anything, which was either courtesy or the particular patience of someone who knew they’d get the information eventually and had decided not to waste energy pushing for it. With Afnie it was probably both.We walked the length of the corridor in silence. My footsteps sounded too loud in it. Everything felt slightly off, the way things felt after something significant happened and the world hadn’t caught up yet. The walls were the same walls. The torches were the same torches. The palace looked exactly as it had twenty minutes ago when I’d been standing outside those doors with my hands twisted together and my heart going too fast.Twenty minutes ago I hadn’t said yes yet.“Do you want to go back to
XAHEN.“Search the western wing again. Every closet, every crawl space. If a mouse moves, I want to know about it.”My voice seemed to bite into the walls of the throne room. The guard didn't even look up. He simply bowed, his shoulders hunched in fear, and scrambled away. I watched his retreating
XAHEN.Nala sighed, watching me wrestle with it. "You can still kill her in the end, you know. But you can wait a little longer." She lifted her brows. "You've waited this long anyway. What's a bit more time?"I stared past her, toward the dark forest, my jaw working.I didn't want this happening a
XAHEN.I opened the cell door and stepped inside.Every step toward her was torture.My muscles rippled beneath my skin, and it wasn't from exertion. It was awareness. Every single cell in my body knew it was drawing closer to every single cell of hers, and they were all screaming about it.The mate
THEODOSA The heavy door to the dungeon clicked shut, and the silence that followed felt heavy, like a physical weight pressing against my chest. I was back in my cell. Nala had brought me here moments after coming back into her cabin and telling me Xahen was gone. Now she was gone too.







