Page 96 of Shadows and Roses

Vern smiled, his eyes sad. "Your mother was stubborn too."

The ice melted from her emerald gaze. "She was." She reached back to his hand. "I’ll be fine, father. Don’t worry."

He brought her callused hand to his lips. "It’s a father’s duty and honor to worry, Anais."

Tears burned her eyes.

She wasn’t fine.

—

The royal council was suspiciously accommodating. She wanted to believe their easy acceptance of her announcements, but that would be letting exhaustion make a fool of her. Instead, she gave more work to Laureline and Vern, and hoped nothing came from it. Perhaps the new year’s festivities were distracting them. She had no interest in celebrating.

What took up most of her attention was Octavius’ reports. They were brief but thorough, and didn’t arrive nearly often enough. Castien was physically healed though still too thin, but at least he was eating and taking care of himself.

The next week, he suggested she visit, that it might do them both good.

If she kept this up, she'd be riding in and out of the palace for the rest of the winter. Her nobles were restless in the cold, but most preferred the comforts of their home when there was little to amuse them here. Other than the occasional fete, activities were restrained to small, easily heated rooms. Watching servants freeze to death was only briefly entertaining, and only so long as they didn't feel the chill themselves.

They'd notice her absence and find it curious. Perhaps she'd spread a rumor about a lover. It wouldn't be far from the truth.

Octavius bowed as she approached the cottage, her guards waiting a short distance away with the horses. "My Queen. Castien is inside."

"I hope you are well, Octavius." She glanced at the door. "He wants to see me… alone?"

His charges usually asked him to stay with visitors this early in the healing process—theywere more comfortable with him.

"He insisted." The man frowned in disapproval but said nothing more.

"How is he?"

Hesitation. "As well as can be expected. Better than I’d thought possible at this stage."

Anais nodded and gently pushed the door open.

She barely noticed the inside of the cottage, her eyes unerringly finding Castien seated at the lone table. He sat stiff and straight, shoulders tense. His cheeks were hollow, his hair short, and those thin fingers clasped too tightly together on the tabletop.

But he was alive.

Two moons ago, he’d looked… She pushed aside those horrible images and memorized his face as it was now—sickly, but healing. He was healing.

"Castien," she breathed.

For a moment, hot anger burned her pity to ash, even her joy at seeing him alive going up in flames. She swallowed a scream at the cruel, sadistic bitch who had done this, knowing too many just like the Queen of Nadraken existed in her own court, barely if at all contained.

Her fingers flexed.

His eyes flicked to her gloved hands, then back to the table, never rising to her face. His mouth opened. He took a slow breath. "My Queen," he said, his voice almost normal for those two words.

Anais took a step forward. He flinched, and she realized the cost of that small piece of normalcy. Fear flashed across his eyes, his breathing suddenly shallow and too-controlled, his posture gone terribly still. This visit was too soon, and he should not be alone with her. Not with a Queen, a woman with claws the same as those that had made wounds only recently healed, left scars that might never be erased.

She would not let her selfishness cost him his sanity.

"I’m sorry. I’ll summon Octav—"

"Please sit," he whispered at the same time she lifted her foot to back out the door. The effort to say those words, the hint of begging in his tone… She couldn’t refuse him. She moved forward, taking small, slow, cautious steps, then sliding into the chair across from him. Uncertain whether to hide her hands or keep them in his sight, she settled them on the table with her fingers curled inward.

His gaze started at her hands, traveled up her arms, skittered over her eyes but examined her face closely. The silence stretched while she returned the scrutiny. White scars stood out on his bony wrists and crisscrossed his gaunt arms. At least his skin had a healthier hue.

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