Page 9 of The Crown’s Temptation

The Broken Window

TEORIN

The Morrak comes through the broken window first. It lands on the sill with its red wings folding back and deposits the man it is carrying with considerably less care than the situation warrants, and Tamal stumbles forward into the room looking disheveled and furious, one hand going to his collar.

“There are other ways to request my pres⁠—”

He stops. He looks at Asharin. Then at Colsar. Then at Teorin, who watched patiently as understanding dawned over him.

“No,” he says vehemently.

“You do not have a choice,” Colsar says. His voice is calm. Lethal.

Tamal straightens. “It is too much magic. Moreover, should my father find out it will put all of us in more danger than is needed.” He looks at Teorin. “And the way the creatures are in Morrath, she will have little chance of survival anyway⁠—”

The air in the room compresses.

Tamal hits the far wall before he finishes the sentence, Colsar’s power carrying him there with the particular efficiency of someone who has stopped caring about restraint. Tamal slides down it and coughs and the air tightens further, pressing inward around his lungs.

“You will do it,” Colsar says.

Tamal coughs again. His eyes are watering.

He looks between Colsar and Teorin as though expecting them to disagree, for one of them to see reason. Then he understands that the brothers are aligned. That he cannot beat both of them, that both are unhinged, crazed with grief in a way that means he will not walk out of here alive if he does not comply.

“Fine.” He holds up a hand. “Under one condition.”

“What?” Teorin says coldly.

“Yvara Dyvarin.” He looks between them. “You give her to me after this.”

“Why would you—” Teorin begins.

“Done,” Colsar says immediately.

Tamal looks at Asharin. Something moves through his expression that is not quite readable. “She may not awaken as she was. For that I am not responsi⁠—”

“Do it,” Colsar says.

Tamal crosses the room and crouches beside Asharin. He is quiet for a moment, his eyes darkening, and then they rolled back and gray smoke began to drift from his nose and mouth, slowly moving toward her, then over her lips like something being breathed into her.

A small rise in her chest. Barely visible. Her lips lose some of their pallor.

Tamal stops. Turns. Vomits onto the floor.

He stays there, braced on one hand. “What the hell did this to her?” he says.

“What?” Teorin says.

“The poison.” Tamal straightens slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I have never encountered anything like it.”

“The soldiers are searching for whoever is responsible," Colsar says in a way that Teorin recognizes means the killer will pay, just not now. Not until this is fixed somehow.

Teorin steps closer. “Like nothing you have ever seen?”

Tamal looks at him. “Truly. This is not Yorali poison.”

Teorin and Colsar look at each other. Tamal turns back to Asharin and tries again. Then again. Each attempt costs him something visible. His face going paler, his hands beginning to tremble, his breathing coming harder between each pass. He does not stop. He goes again and again until finally she coughs, a small broken sound, and the gray at her lips recedes to white and her skin moves from the color of ash to something closer to living, though her eyelids do not move and the tips of her fingers have begun to gray at the edges.