Page 33 of The Crown’s Temptation

On the sixth day her breathing changed. Deeper.

On the seventh night she spoke.

"Colsar."

He sat very still.

Then, quieter: "Kiss. Ari."

He looked at the ceiling. Something in his chest pulled in a direction he did not acknowledge and eventually it stopped pulling and he looked back at her.

Her eyes partially opened on the ninth day. Her lids lifted and caught, as though the effort had cost more than she had available. She looked at him without recognition. Through him, almost.

"Colsar," she said.

"No," he said. Quietly.

She closed her eyes.

The next day she did it again.

This time her eyes opened further. This time something behind them was closer to present. He watched her process him, watched understanding arrive in pieces.

She was quiet for a long time.

Then she said, "I'm not always Ashen."

He smiled. It surprised him. He could not remember the last time one had arrived.

"No," he said. "You are not."

She closed her eyes again. The corner of her mouth had done something.

He got his strength back slowly. Walking again by the twelfth day. He still found himself lying down beside her in the evenings and he had stopped explaining that to himself.

He brushed her hair one morning because it had tangled badly and no one had addressed it. He was halfway through before he registered what he was doing. He kept going.

The healer arrived that afternoon to examine her.

"She is better," she said.

He nodded.

"However." A pause. "The poison has done damage that even your marrow cannot fully repair. She may drift like this indefinitely." She paused again. "I am sorry, Majesty."

He said nothing.

The healer left.

He sat in the chair beside the bed and looked at Asharin's face and felt something press against the back of his eyes that he had not felt since he was young enough not to know better. He did not let it go anywhere. He sat with it until it became something manageable and then he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

When he opened them there was a woman in the room.

Dark teal hair. One eyebrow raised. Looking down at him with what was either boredom or mild amusement, he could not tell which.

He sat up.

"How did you get in here?"