l of more people than she had ever wanted to be looked at by in one room, and she had been standi

re and made her feel like she was walking into battle in the wrong armor. She had considered refusing it. She had considered a great many acts of refusal in the hour since she had arrived, and discarde

ut as heads turned to track her progress across the floor. She kept her chin level and her pace steady and refuse

ine. Beside him, a man perhaps twice her age with sharp, watchful features and the kind of stillness that made her think of a snake deciding whether it was worth striking, who she would later learn was Lord Malachi Thorne. And

d without being tol

spoke. Alaric looked at her the way she imagined a man might look at an unwelcome bill arriving early, and she f

hat was smooth in a way that immediately set her teeth on edge. "The council

eeping her voice level even as she felt Seraphine tense somewhere behind h

something in Alaric's expression, gone almost as fast as it appeared. Interest, ma

cisely the sort of instability the Pact exists to prevent. We are grateful

repared to use." The words were out before Wren fully decided to say them, and she watched M

his voice thinner than she expected from a man who had ruled this city for decades. "You have you

Wren's chest, but she kept her face still, because falling apart in front of this court was exactly th

gested a great deal of practice at controlling it. "My father tires easily. Perhaps introductions can continu

cy, a man managing an event rather than a person, and she resente

y with the same interest they might have given a novelty animal at a menagerie. Alaric said almost nothing to her directly for the first half hour, speaking instead to the courtiers on his other side

His voice was quiet enough that it did not car

was

ays useful to say out l

as plenty of that too, but something wearier underneath it, a man who looked like he had been fighting a version of this exact conversation for a long time before she ever arrived

ace at that, gone before she could na

o lost any sleep over it." She kept her voice low, matching his. "I've been in this city for three hours. I could be wrong. But I've been wrong about very little since I fo

pression she could not read, and when he finally spoke again his voic

she had expected instead, or why the truth of him sitting beside her, sharp and tired and clearly

the table Malachi Thorne smiled at something the ailing king said and did not once look dir