CHAPTER FOUR — THE WOMAN WHO MAKES HIM LOOK TWICE

POV: RHAZEK

I sent her a dress.

I told myself it was practical. She had been dragged through a broken square in bloodstained clothes, and she was going to sit at my table in front of my council, and the council would read every tear in her sleeve like a weakness in me. So I sent her a dress the way I would send a uniform to a new captain.

That was what I told myself.

I sent it with three servants and a message that she was expected at dinner.

Then I spent the next hour in the throne room doing nothing at all.

"Your Majesty."

I looked up. Maelor Veyne stood at the foot of the dais with a stack of reports in his arms, waiting the way he always waited, patient as stone.

"Yes." I answered 

"The border reports," he said. "Three settlements have sent riders. The creatures are moving west."

"Then move the eastern garrison west." I said

"And the girl?" He asked

I did not like the way he said it. Careful, almost gentle. The way a man said a word he wanted to watch me react to.

"She stays in the palace." I stated

"Indefinitely?" He asked 

"Until I say otherwise." I replied 

Maelor nodded slowly, and something flickered behind his eyes that I did not have the patience to chase.

"Of course," he said.

The council was already seated when I entered the dining hall.

Twelve men and two women, all of them from bloodlines that had been groveling at my family's feet for four generations. They stood when I entered, the way they always did, and sat when I did, and started talking before I had touched my wine.

"The northern trade routes must be reopened," one of them said.

"The northern trade routes are crawling with corrupted beasts," another said.

"Then we send soldiers." One replied 

"With what? The eastern garrison is half its numbers." Another asked 

I let them talk.

I was not listening, I was watching the door.

I had been watching the door since the moment I sat down, and I hated myself for it, and I kept doing it anyway. Every time a servant moved in the corner of my eye, my head turned. Every time the doors creaked, my chest tightened.

She was late.

"Your Majesty," someone said. "Your Majesty, the northern routes."

"Yes," I said. "Reopen them."

The council went quiet for a moment, surprised to have an answer at all. Then they started arguing about how, and I went back to watching the door.

It opened and I forgot what I had been thinking about.

She had worn the dress.

That was the first thing I noticed. She had worn it, and then she had ruined it, tearing the sleeves and the skirt so that it hung differently on her than it had on the mannequin. 

Loose, uneven and entirely her own. Her hair was down, falling past her shoulders in a mess she had clearly not bothered to tame. She was holding a small ornamental dagger in her right hand.

She looked like a woman who had dressed herself on purpose.

Every man at the table turned to look at her.

I felt something hot move through my chest and settle behind my ribs, and I did not examine it.

"You are late," I said.

"I was getting dressed." She walked toward the table without bowing. "You sent me a dress. I wore it."

"You tore it." I growled 

"I improved it." She insisted 

Someone at the far end of the table made a small sound, half laugh, half gasp. I did not look to see who.

"Sit," I said.

She looked at the empty chair beside me, then at me, then back at the chair. "I would rather stand."

"It was not a request." I said 

She sat.

She did it slowly, deliberately, the way she did everything, and when she settled into the chair beside mine I could smell her. Herbs. Smoke. Something underneath that was just skin.

My beast rolled over inside me and did not go back to sleep.

"Reopen the northern routes," one of the councillors said again, because they had all noticed that I was no longer paying attention and were trying to drag me back.

I reached for my wine and then she spoke to someone else. "Captain."

I turned my head. She was looking past me, down the length of the table, at the guard posted along the western wall. Young, dark hair, green eyes and good jaw. I had chosen him for the eastern colonnade myself because he was competent and quiet.

He straightened. "My lady."

"I am not a lady." She smiled at him. Actually smiled. "What is your name?"

"Captain Darian." He said 

"Captain Darian." She said it slowly, like she was tasting it. "Tell me, do you enjoy being a soldier?"

The council had stopped talking.

"I do, my lady."

"Do you enjoy being handsome?" She asked 

The hall went silent.

I heard my own glass crack before I felt it. Wine spilled over my fingers. I set the glass down carefully, and turned to look at her, and she was still smiling at the guard, and the guard was staring at her like a man who had just realized he was about to die.

"Veyra," I said.

She turned to me with that same smile. And I knew exactly what she was doing.

She wanted me to react. She wanted me to prove something to her, or to myself, or to the room. She was poking at me like a child poking a sleeping animal, seeing how far she could get before it woke up.

"Come here," I said.

"I am already here." She replied 

"Closer." I growled 

I did not wait for her. I reached out, took hold of her chair, and dragged it across the stone until it was flush against mine, close enough that her shoulder nearly touched my arm. Then I caught her chin the way I had in the corridor and turned her face to mine.

"You will sit beside me," I said quietly. "You will not flirt with my guards and you will not make a spectacle of yourself at my table."

"And if I refuse?" She asked 

I looked at her mouth.

"You will not refuse," I said.

I let her go, turned back to the council, and resumed a conversation I had not been listening to in the first place.

Under the table, my hand found hers.

I did not plan it. I did not decide to do it. My fingers simply moved, the way they had moved in the square, and came to rest against the back of her hand.

She went still, did not pull away and I did not pull away.

Neither of us looked at each other for the rest of the meal. We talked about trade routes and border patrols and grain stores, and the whole time her knuckles stayed pressed against mine under the table. Warm and small and absolutely the only thing I could think about.

When the meal ended, I did not let go and she did not let go.

The council filed out, one by one. The servants cleared the plates. The torches burned low in their brackets.

And still I sat there with my hand against hers, in the dark of the hall, and I told myself that tomorrow I would put her in a room on the other side of the palace and forget this afternoon had ever happened.

I did not believe it.

She turned her head and looked at me, and I watched her decide whether to say something, and I watched her decide against it. Then she pulled her hand back, slowly, so slowly that for a moment I thought she was going to change her mind.

She stood.

"Goodnight, Your Majesty," she said.

"Goodnight, healer." I said

She walked out of the hall without looking back.

I sat there alone for a long time, in the dark, with my hand still flat against the table where hers had been.

And I understood, for the first time in years, that I was in trouble.