Aria did not speak again that night until the doors of her chamber were closed.
She had eaten dinner at the long table the way a queen eats dinner, upright, unhurried, asking Vael about the harvest reports and Helsa about the northern letters as though nothing in the world had happened that day. The kingdom did not see her hands shake. The kingdom did not see anything at all, because Aria had spent six years learning how to let nothing show.
The doors closed.
She let out a breath that had been sitting in her chest since the courtyard.
Kael was already there. He had come up ahead of her, the way he always did when he sensed she needed the room emptied before she arrived. He was sitting by the fire, not reading, not doing anything, just sitting, waiting for her the way he had waited outs
