25

Even all the way at the back of the garrison, tucked in my bedchamber with Eamon, the noise of celebration and outrage of the courtyard hums in my ears.

The Warmth was spent on the first passage, the Breeze has been and gone. Time has edged through the First Wind, and the Quiet isn't far off now.

In all that time, the chaos at Comlar hasn't subdued. Not even a little. And in the hours that I've stayed limp and sagged on the armchair Eamon deposited me on, I've gone through two bottles of honeywine and smoked a valerian stalk to myself.

As Eamon carefully packs my belongings into trunks, I work on the third bottle.

And still, I say absolutely nothing.

All this—for me? To torture me, to torment me?

Daxeel thinks my punishment all those years ago was a lecture from my father.

‘Did he take away your pretty baubles?'

If he only knew the truth…

But once we get started on the truth, he might ask too many questions, questions like ‘what did you do after I left?'—and I don't want to answer that.

If this is his wrath for the slight at hand, then to add that I let Prince Affay bed me in an alcove just hours after I crushed Daxeel, then how much more ruthless would—could—his wrath become?

I keep my secrets. And I just stare at the door, as though hoping Daxeel bursts through them and tells me how sorry he is for all this, that he forgives me, loves me, wants to marry me…

How silly I am.

I don't watch Eamon fold my blouses and skirts. I stare at the door, lashes low over what feels like dead eyes.

The tears stopped a while ago.

Now, I marinate in a hollow sensation. Not quite numb, but a separation of my mind from my body.

I hear the words Eamon speaks to me, occasional murmurs of comfort, but I don't quite process them.

I soak in the distance I feel from reality. Because next phase, in the Warmth, Daxeel will come.

He will come for me.

Not his love. Not his vicious one. Not his evate.

He will come for his slave.