What they said

My father is sitting up when I walk in and that is the first thing I look for. Sitting, not lying down. Eyes open, watching the door.

I ran the whole corridor. My breath is still uneven when I step inside.

The physician passes me on his way out with a small nod that tells me nothing I want to hear and nothing that breaks me either. The attendants file after him. My father says "Out" with the voice he reserves for when he is still a king even when being a king costs him something, and the room empties.

Just us.

"You ran," he says.

"The whole corridor," I say. I sit across from him and I look at his face and I try not to let him see what looking at his face does to me. The thinness. The effort underneath the straight back. He is holding himself upright right now by deciding to, and it shows, and I love him so much it is hard to be in the room.

"It was a spell," he says. "They pass. I have had them before."

"How often."

"Aelara."

"How often are the spells."

My father holds my eyes. "Often enough. That is why we are having this conversation." He sets both hands flat on his knees. "I need the betrothal settled formally. Not for the court and not for the kingdom. For me. I need to see it done while I can still be the one who sees it."

I hear what he is not saying, which is that he is frightened. My father has never been able to say that word directly. He says what he needs instead, and I have learned over twenty-one years that it means the same thing.

"I spoke to Riven today," I say. "After the ceremony."

"Already."

"At the gate. He said he will come to the wedding. He gave me his word."

My father looks at me. "That is not the same as a man who stays."

"No," I say. "But Riven has been staying my whole life without being asked to. Without anyone knowing he was doing it. Without asking for a single thing back." I look at my father's hands on his knees. "I think that tells me more about whether he will stay than any promise could."

My father is quiet. He looks out the window at the last of the afternoon light crossing the courtyard, at the banners still going in the wind. He looks like a man measuring something.

"I trust you," he says.

Three times today. Three different people handing me some version of those words like the heaviest thing they own. I am going to be worthy of every one of them.

I stay with him until his eyes close. It does not take long. I pull the blanket up over his lap and I stand there and look at him for a moment, this man who has spent his whole life being a king and is still doing it, and then I go before I cannot make myself leave.

* * *

The palace is quiet by the time I reach the east wing corridor.

Late. Hall lights turned low. Most of the staff gone to their rooms. My footsteps are the only sound for long stretches and I am not going anywhere with a destination. I cannot sleep and I cannot sit still, so I am walking, the way I have always walked through this palace when my head is too full and my chest is too tight and I need my body to do something useful while my mind works.

I am not looking for anything.

Then a door opens. Not a loud sound. The opposite. The slow, deliberate pull of someone closing a door who does not want it to be heard closing.

I stop.

I press back against the wall between two wall sconces and I go completely still.

Two sets of footsteps just inside the door. Voices low and close.

Then Lysa: "She is not the same as she was this morning. I know you felt it too. I saw your face when you spoke to her in the corridor."

Caelan: "She surprised me. That is not the same as a problem."

Lysa: "She looked at me in the courtyard like she already knew what I was. Not wondering. Not suspicious. Like she had already decided and was only looking to confirm it."

A silence. Long. I count my own heartbeats in it. One. Two. Three. Four.

Caelan: "Then we cannot take three years."

Lysa, quieter: "How long do we have?"

Caelan: "Enough to be careful. Not enough to wait. We move when the moment is right and not before, and we do not make errors."

Footsteps separating. Two doors. Silence.

I stand in the dark corridor and I do not move for a long time.

In the first life, they waited three years. Patient and invisible and careful, and I never once suspected, not even close. I walked into the ballroom on our anniversary thinking I was happy. I died thinking I was loved.

Three years.

That was the plan before I changed something today. Before I said a different name and before Caelan looked at my face in the corridor and saw a woman who was not the one he remembered. Whatever I did, I moved their timeline. They are not waiting three years. They are already planning.

I came back to this morning thinking I had the advantage. Thinking I knew the shape of what was coming. I walked into this day with a dead woman's memories and told myself I was ahead of them.

The shape just changed.

I start walking. Not toward my rooms. I know I am not going to sleep and I know what sitting alone with this in my chest will do to me by morning.

I need one person in this palace I can trust. Not with everything. Not yet. But with enough. Enough to not be doing this alone in the dark.

I walk toward Riven's rooms.

He said he needed time. He said he would come to the wedding as a starting place, not a decision. And I am about to knock on his door at an hour that is not reasonable and tell him that starting places are all we have right now because time just became something I do not have enough of.

He will either open the door or he will not. He will either help or he will not. But Riven has opened every door I ever needed, even the ones I did not know I was standing in front of, and I have to believe that does not change just because I am finally asking.

I reach his corridor.

I walk to his door.

I raise my hand to knock.

The door opens before my knuckles touch the wood.

He is already awake. Already dressed, coat on, like a man who has been up for a while and is not surprised to have company. He looks at me standing in his doorway and he does not look surprised at all.

"I heard them," he says. "Come in."