Fifteen
Lanthar summons me alone.
The passage the Lithenmere opens is one I haven’t walked. Narrow. Gold veins running close together, dense with light. The stone polished smooth.
The chamber at its end is small. A table of dark stone. Two chairs. No ornamentation. The walls are bare except for the gold, which runs in patterns I haven’t seen elsewhere in the palace. Tighter. Drawn closer.
Lanthar is standing at the table.
He turns when I enter. A new quiet sits in the silver eyes. Smaller than the convening’s authority.
“The alliance is sealed,” he says.
“Yes, I’m glad.”
“I have something for you,” he says. His gaze stays on mine. “It is not part of the alliance. It is not political. It is personal, and I am trusting you with it because you earned that trust.”
He reaches into his coat and produces a stone. Small. Pale. Smooth. The color of bone, fitting in his palm. The chamber responds to it, the gold in the walls brightening, the patterns tightening further. Whatever this object is, the gold answers it.
“A memory stone,” he says. “It carries the truth of why I left. Every year. Every reason. Every choice I made and what it cost.”
He pauses.
“Stone remembers. It also listens. You will understand what I mean when the time comes.”
He sets it on the table between us.
“For Mira. When she is ready.”
I look at the stone. Pale against the dark surface. Small. Luminous.
“I would tell her myself,” he says. “But some truths are better kept in stone than spoken by the mouth that caused the wound. She will look into it when she chooses. She will see what I saw. And she will decide what to do with it without my face in the room asking for forgiveness I have not earned.”
He’s handing me his confession. For me to keep until Mira decides she’s ready to hear why a king watched her grow from the other side of the world.
I pick up the stone. It is warm. Heavier than it looks. The gold dims slightly when it leaves the table.
“I’ll keep it for her,” I say.
Lanthar nods.
The Lithenmere opens a passage behind me. Dismissal in stone.
I turn toward it. Then back, one more time.
Lanthar’s head is lowered. His hands are flat on the table. He doesn’t look up.
This isn’t mine to witness.
I step through. The passage seals behind me.
We leave in the morning.
The convening is over. The alliance is sealed. We have been gone four Thessivane days, and there is no way to know what that’s been on the other side of the Veil. Seraphina has given us this one night to rest before the crossing, and Celeste has already decided how we are going to spend it.
The healing springs are deep in the Lithenmere’s roots.
Seraphina mentioned them to us before. They are ancient. Predating the palace. The water draws from a vein of deep magic that runs beneath the mountain’s foundation, and the chamber is private.
