hall was filled

ve, and had refused to delay the ceremony despite his physician's prote

rk cloth wound discreetly beneath the collar to suggest a bandage no one would be permi

nds we

d the collar

walked. Slower

emem

let them fall when you sit. As if i

kno

s filled w

ara

rned tow

will say a wounded king was too we

you su

oked at

time to find out who put a blade in my brother's che

ion. Amara stepped through them as Adrian - each stride measured, deliberately slower than her own, the weig

people turne

h the crowd - not of confusion, but of relief, of something close to awe, for a prince wh

er her, and beneath it, something else: how eas

ched th

, his expression giving away nothing of what

e kingdom feared

, "will need to look harder than an

proval moved t

touched

king," the chan

all e

ive the

ed to, faster than the wound wo

the room, Lucien

ation when the crown went to someone else instead - not unless the outcome itself had surprised him. He had expected a funeral. but He had

nd a man standing

. The commander

and he looked as though he had walked straight from a battl

d not

man doing arithmetic. Amara held his gaze

d you fought off your o

the same,"

d across his face

aid. "And your recovery faster

Lord

er shoulders, and her hands, where a faint tremor betrayed exactly the exhaus

e quicken. He was l

study. the crown lay on the desk before h

ppened to Adrian was known to more people than she could count on one hand. A physician, A guard w

terrupted h

nt

and Kael Veyro

mmediat

mand

Maje

re you

e palace security and t

I s

Amara said, and d

attacked in? The guards' report

xpression

rned with finding my attacker than wit

, forgive me, but the man I served under these past th

keeping the motion slow, deli

under had never before fel

. "Or perhaps grief and near-death cha

e on somethin

here is one more ma

t ma

Not your own guard captain. Only the physician, and the princ

heart ti

ast night. You would deny h

wounded badly enough to warrant that much secrecy was well enough, h

om wen

d herself n

apse in private than falter

t leave her face. "Or perhaps

urled around the

he

m the night of the attack, as you requested. If someone within thes

d toward

until he was

mand

sto

said, "for taki

t like respect

Majesty. Someone in this palace nearly ended House V

after he left.The room

s voice, the careful fiction of a wound that would never heal

re stil

begun to suspect that the king recovering behind t

a folded piece of parchment that had

one sentence. You may wear the king's crow

infully in her throa

lack serpent,the same serpent she

toward the

was dead - not

the physician even fini

who had murdered her brother,