His mother regarded him with mild interest, the way she always did, as though he were a problem she had already solved and was revisiting for confirmation. "You are proud of her."
It was not a question. He did not answer it.
"How lovely," she said.
Servants brought the first course. She ate with a practiced ease, each movement considered, nothing wasted. Colsar ate because not eating would give her something to notice.
"You did not ask me here for the pleasure of my company," he said.
"I never do." She dabbed at her mouth with the linen. "And you never came for mine. We have always understood each other in that regard."
"Then say what you came to say."
She set the linen down. Folded it once. Placed it beside her plate.
"There is something you should know," she said.
He waited.
"Your wife's blood," she began, with the same pleasantness she brought to every topic that had teeth in it, "carries a particular susceptibility to feeder compelling. It is in her lineage. It does not require force. It does not require the feeder to intend it." She lifted her glass. "Proximity alone is enough. A feeder of sufficient power near her, over time, will compel without trying. And she will have no way of knowing it is happening."
The room was very quiet.
"I need more information," Colsar said. "Details."
"I do not have any for you." She held his eyes without apology. "I thought you would like to know."
A long pause.
"What are you up to?” he said.
She looked at him with something that passed for warmth. "Nothing, my son."
He held her eyes for a moment longer. She held his in return with the particular ease of someone who has nothing left to prove and knows it.
Then it hit him, Teorin’s voice cutting through the memory exactly as it had then,she is in danger, real danger, the words returning with a clarity he had not given them at the time, dismissed too easily for what they were.
This had to be what he meant. It had to be. Anything else would require a kind of failure Colsar was not willing to name, not now, not when Asharin was already somewhere within reach of it.
Asharin. Alone in the palace. Sevrin somewhere in those same corridors, in those same rooms, with his particular patience and his particular hunger, months of yearning and separation already behind him. And now this.Proximity alone is enough.
His eyes move to the clock on the mantel.
Six twenty-two.Fuck.
He pushed his chair back.
"Can you not stay for dessert?" she said. "The palace is a ten minute walk."
He moved toward the door. "Goodbye, Mother."
"Colsar."
He stopped. Did not turn.
"Give my love to your wife," she said. "She defended you at lunch once, do you remember? I found it rather charming."
He left without answering. The road back to Veynar was faster in the dark than it had any right to be.
