Why Did I Feel Her?

(Xaden's POV)

I expected a bow or perhaps tears from the girl. I did not expect her to let out a breathless sound halfway between a laugh and a sob and run straight at me.

She crashed into my chest with both arms flung around my ribs, dirt and dried blood and all, and the whole hall went silent. Two guards took a step forward. I lifted one finger, and they stopped.

"I'm alive," she said into my coat, in a trembling voice that was clearly meant for no one but herself. "It wasn't tiger. It was deer, and I'm alive."

She smelled of sweat, crushed apples and wet forest earth. Her braid had come half undone and was scratching my chin, and in her excitement her right hand slid down my forearm and closed over the back of my hand.

I stopped.

I felt a chill, a sudden cold that rolled up my arm and across my shoulders, like the first rush of blood into a limb that had been numb for years.

I felt her fingers. Small, warm, trembling, rough with the blisters a bowstring leaves. I felt the pulse in her wrist against my knuckles and her cheek against my chest through the wool of my coat.

I had lived in a ghost world for years, where the iron of the throne and the steel of my sword and the hands of healers were things I could see but never feel.

And this slip of a girl, with dirt on her face and a pin hanging from her shoulder had touched me and I felt it.

"Thank goodness I didn't die," she mumbled again, softer.

Die?

"Gwen!" Rhea's voice cracked across the hall like a whip.

The girl flinched, and I watched understanding arrive on her face one piece at a time: her arms, my coat, the dozens of eyes.

She let go as if she'd been burned and dropped to her knees on the stone. "Your Majesty! I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking, I was just so relieved, I swear I didn't mean to touch you."

"Stand," I said.

"I— yes." She wobbled to her feet, gripping her sleeve. "I'm sorry. Truly. I'll never do it again."

My hand was still tingling. I flexed it, and the sensation drained out of my hand like water through sand, and then there was nothing, the same dull, empty silence I'd carried for as long as I could remember.

I heard a whisper from the line, low and venomous, pitched for the girl's back. "Filthy little leech. Throwing herself at him like a street girl."

"Who said that?" My voice carried to every corner of the hall.

No one answered.

"I will ask once."

The tall blonde with the bison stepped forward, pale as chalk. "Your Majesty, I only meant— She embarrassed all of us. Hugging you like that, in front of everyone, I just—"

"You called her a leech."

"I was angry, I didn't think—"

"You passed one test and failed another." I turned my head. "Rhea."

Rhea bowed. "Your Majesty."

"Escort her to the gates. She leaves today."

"Please!" The blonde's voice cracked. "Your Majesty, my father is an Alpha, he'll be humiliated, please, I'll apologize to her, I'll do anything—"

"Your father may be told that his daughter could not control her tongue." I looked at her without any particular feeling. "Take her."

She was weeping before she reached the door. Two guards flanked her, and the sound of her sobs faded down the corridor until the doors closed and the hall was silent again.

I looked at the six who were left.

They stood perfectly still with their chin up and hands folded, and that stillness interested me more than any of their tears.

"Listen carefully, because I will say this once. I do not tolerate cruelty in my house. If I ever notice a bully among you, I will torment that girl myself. Do not mistake a pretty smile for innocence. I notice a great deal more than you think."

"Yes, Your Majesty," they said, in a ragged chorus.

"Good."

I turned, and the smallest of them was standing exactly where I'd told her, still tugging at her sleeve, her gloved left hand pressed to her stomach as if she were holding something in. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she was trying very hard not to let me see it.

"You."

"Y-yes, Your Majesty?"

"You should learn to control your emotions."

She almost bowed. "I know. I'm sorry. I really am, I just—"

"The next time you put your hands on me without permission, you will join the others in the cells, and I will not be gentle about it." I let that sit. "Is that understood?"

Her throat bobbed. "Understood."

"Good."

I walked past her, and the whole hall parted. Behind me, Rhea fell into step at my shoulder, and the doors swung shut behind us with a heavy sound.

"Your Majesty," she said quietly, when we were halfway down the corridor. "Shall I discipline the girl?"

"No.”

"She touched you without leave."

"I'm aware."

"Then why—"

"Find out where she's from, Rhea." I didn't slow my stride. "Her family, her village, anyone she's ever spoken to. I want it by tonight."

A beat of silence. "As you wish."

She peeled away at the next corner, and I kept walking, alone, my boots ringing on the stone.

I could hear everything. The scrape of the guards' armor behind the doors. The creak of the banners in the draft. The faint sobbing of a girl being led out of my house. I could see the torches flaring on the walls and the faint glint of light on my own rings.

But I felt nothing. I never did. The stone under my boots might have been air. The coat on my shoulders weighed nothing at all.

I stopped at the window at the end of the hall and looked down at my hand, the one she'd held.

It looked exactly the same, pale, scarred across the knuckles, and perfectly still.

“Then why, ”I thought, closing my fingers slowly into a fist, “did I feel her?’