Page 91 of The Crown’s Temptation

"And you agreed?"

Her expression barely changed. "He asked."

Somehow, that explained more than anything else could have.

She walked me as far as she could before stopping at a narrow archway cut into a low wall.

"Through there," she says. "You will hear the water before you see it."

I look at the archway. "Will I be able to get back?"

"Yes." A pause. "But do not go past the water's edge. Do not test the current."

I nod. She puts her hand briefly on my arm. Then she goes back the way we came and I go through the archway alone.

She is right. There is a low sound, constant and slow, like something very large breathing in its sleep. The path narrows and the walls give way and then there is the shoreline. Something pulls tight behind my ribs on the last few steps, gone as fast as it came.

Dark water, still at the surface, moving somewhere underneath in a way I feel more than see. The sky above it, if it is sky, is the color of a bruise that has not finished forming.

He is standing at the edge of it.

He turns before I reach him. He looks at me and something crosses his face that he does not try to hide and does not try to name. It is the same way he looked at me at my wedding. As though something has happened to me that he cannot control and that he cannot fix because I am out of reach.

"You look terrible," he says.

I laugh. It comes out rough. "I know."

"You're alive."

"Technically."

He exhales. One short breath, like something he has been holding for a while finally had somewhere to go. He does not cross to me. He stays at the water's edge and I stay where I am and the distance between us is exactly what it needs to be.

"How long have you been here?" I say.

"Long enough." He looks at the water briefly, then looks back at me. "How much do you know about where you are?"

"Enough to know I cannot leave."

He nods. He does not say anything to soften that.

I look at him. “I have heard that you have healers with treatments for the poison even if they do not have the antidote.”

Something shifts in his expression. Not much, but enough.

"That is what you heard?” he replies carefully.

“Yes. But if you do not have any of it, I am still⁠—”

I stopped because I did not know how to finish the sentence.

“I am still grateful that you have not forgotten about me,” I finally added.

He does not answer. His eyes move to the water and back to me.

"There is something," he says. "It is not healers or antidotes. It is something else entirely and I cannot explain it here. Not now. Not fully." He pauses. "But it may be able to free you. If you are ready for it when the time comes."

I stare at him. "What is it?"