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The Queen sighed at him. “She is a child, and she is nothing without her allies. But fear not: I’ve set things in motion. I have not forgotten the danger of Corayne an-Amarat.” She took another breath, steadying herself as she would during any council meeting.“But it will be just as dangerous to leave Rouleine and split our forces. You may know Spindle lore, but you know nothing of warfare, Priest.”
Ronin jumped to his feet, his robes falling around him in a crimson curtain. “Your war is in service to What Waits, Your Majesty,” he said hotly. “Not the other way around.”
“But she isn’t wrong.”
Taristan’s voice was low but unyielding, his face stern.
The wizard cast up his hands in frustration. But to the Queen’s great relief, Ronin did not argue. He stalked from the tent, muttering to himself in a strange language Erida could not place. In that moment, she hardly cared. Sieges were a tiresome business, and she had little energy left to fight with the wizard tonight.
Part of her wanted to crawl into bed and sleep. A stronger part kept her rooted in her seat, unmoving and silent. A mirror to Taristan’s own brooding form, his shadow stretching behind him like a cloak. She expected him to follow the wizard and return to their own tent nearby. Instead he crossed the carpets and lowered himself into Ronin’s chair.
Erida watched him as she would a great tiger. Her consort was a handsome man. She knew that since the first moment she saw him, half covered in mud, carrying only a jeweled sword and his own ambition. Even the lines down his cheek, the scratches wretched Corayne left, looked distinguished on his face. He had not softened after months as her husband, all but a king. If anything, he seemed harder and sharper than that day. More drawn, somehow. Even the shadows seemed darker on his face.
He let her watch him, silent in his own inscrutable thoughts.
“What you did to Orleon...,” Erida began, hesitant. For some reason she could not understand, her voice trembled.
She saw the fallen prince in her mind, his corpse disemboweled, his throat slit, his limbs severed at hip and shoulder. Killed a dozen different ways. There was still some blood on Taristan, despite his best efforts to wash it all away. On his neck, behind his ear. Even a drag of it along his hairline.
Without thinking, Erida stood and ducked behind the screen hiding her bedchamber. She filled a basin with water and grabbed a cloth before returning to the salon.
Taristan eyed the bowl, confused.
Before he could speak and steal her nerve, Erida pulled a chair to his side. She dipped the cloth and began to clean his face, wiping away the speckles of Orleon’s blood still clinging to his skin.
“I am capable of cleaning myself,” he forced out, sounding rather strangled.
“If you were, I wouldn’t be doing this,” she answered with a tight smile. The cloth stained quickly; the water in the basin turning pink.
Taristan offered no more complaint and sat stock-still, as if moving would break the world. She felt the heat of his skin even through the cloth, and she wondered if it was the realm of Asunder burning in his heart.
“What you did to Orleon...,” she began again, this time with as much resolve as she could muster.
His eyes met her own. “Did I frighten you?”
Erida paused in her work, pulling away to face him fully. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I felt nothing.”
It was a strange thing to admit, having no sympathy for a man being butchered alive.But I am a ruling queen. The life of one man is but a feather on the scales I must balance.
“I only mean to say—I understood it. What you did to him, and why.”
“Enlighten me.” His teeth clicked together with every consonant, his eyes growing dark.
She drew back in her chair. “I know what you saw in him,” she said, dropping the cloth. “Fine armor. A good sword in a trained hand. A prince born and bred for greatness, for power. A man with the world at his feet, who did nothing to earn it.”
Taristan tightened under her scrutiny, until she feared he might snap. At least the red sheen did not return to his eyes.
“I saw the same,” she murmured, choosing her words with utmost care. His eyes widened a little, blazing over her face. “But for you—he was everything your own brother was given. And you were denied.”
Her consort drew a breath through his bared teeth. “I have not thought of my brother since the day I put a sword through him.”
“I don’t believe you,” she answered, blunt.
His reply was just as quick, like a volley of arrows across the battlefield. “I don’t care what you believe.”
“Yes, you do.” Erida folded her hands in her lap and set her feet on the ground, her back straight as a spear. She faced him as she would a councillor or a general. Though no councillor or generalhad ever made her heart beat so quickly. “Tell me about it. Where you came from.”
Taristan eyed her, silent for a long moment. “I came from nowhere.”
