Page 62 of Rhapsody of Ruin (Kingdoms of Ash and Wonder #1)

On the facing balcony, Elowyn’s hand tightened on the rail.

I watched it. I watched the tendons move under skin.

I watched the moon chain she hadn’t put on press its crescents into her palm.

The half of her mouth that wasn’t lacquered lifted, not a smile, not a baring of teeth, something older.

The part of me that follows maps of battlefields recognized surrender.

The part of me that loves her recognized it as a different word entirely: permission .

If the palace had not been full of eyes, I would have crossed it.

I would have found my way in through any door, any window, any seam in the Shroud.

I would have knocked her mask off with my mouth and made her breath say yes in syllables the law does not know how to punish.

But the palace was not empty; it was a stage that eats the actors and applauds itself.

We stood where we were. We looked. We learned the shape of not touching for a long, long beat.

I turned away first.

It was not strategy. It was not pride. It was mercy I did not know how to give any other way.

If I loved her, and I do; I can finally write that without apologizing to the part of me that was raised to believe love is a luxury for men who like to die pretty, then I would not make her choose to hold a gaze she needed to break only when the city was watching.

I put both hands hard on the rail and let the stone bite my palms. I bent.

I pulled a breath up from where the fire waits under my ribs and let a little of it out across my knuckles.

The heat took the sting out of my hands.

The stone took the heat and kept it, a little warmer than it wanted to be, a small betrayal of its own indifference.

I left finger-lengths of black on the rail, soot marks that would be gone after the next rain and would live on my skin until I washed them away myself.

Below, a bell pealed once and then again, Shroud’s hour, not the council’s.

The palace shifted. The nobles remembered they had other rooms in which to pretend to be necessary.

The masks tilted in unison like sunflowers passing light along.

I felt the council’s weather changing. I felt Maelith thinking.

I felt Iriel deciding what posture grief should take when it needs to teach other people how to cry without mussing anything important.

I let my hands go slack and rested my weight on the railing for a breath. Then I straightened and made the decision the day had been asking me to make since I woke to the taste of iron under the idea of incense.

Keep her alive.

Keep Drakaryn alive.

Whatever it costs.

Not and . Not a prudential gentleman’s if possible.

Whatever it costs. If the price is the last favor token and all the ones I don’t have.

If the price is the boasts the court likes to carve into the backs of men who choose love in public.

If the price is being called a prince who bends law until it breaks and then calls the noise it makes music.

If the price is kneeling to a god my blood has never bent for because her safety lives in the language of please this time.

If the price is her hating me forever while she breathes.

If the price is dying in a room full of people who will say my name only when it suits their evening.

Whatever it costs.

I wanted to say it aloud. I did not. Vows belong to quiet, or they don’t belong at all. Dragons write theirs on the inside of their chest and let them burn there until they mean something. I let mine take root and decided I would feed it.

Across the way, Elowyn still watched. She was as far away as a woman can be and still make a man feel as if he recognizes the shape of his own name.

She did not lift a hand. She did not lower her head.

She stood in her storm-gray gown with the moon chain in her fist and looked at me until the beat turned to pain.

Then, as if the palace had taught her too well how to turn love into something that doesn’t rot, she lifted her mask with her free hand and set it fully on.

I closed my eyes. I opened them. The Shroud trembled. The balcony hacked up a scent like wet iron. Torian’s steps were careful behind me again, then stilled when he caught the angle of my shoulders.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

“Tomorrow,” I agreed.

“Do you want, ” He didn’t finish the sentence. That is one of his gifts. He does not hand men the pieces of their own pride and call it help.

“No,” I said. “Not tonight.”

He left me to my rail and my burn and my vow.

I looked once more, only once, at the facing balcony. Elowyn had stepped back into the corridor’s gloom, her outline just enough to draw my body toward it against my will. A shadow crossed behind her, the healer, probably; or the hour. The door shut softly. It sounded like a word I didn’t know.

The palace listened the way a predator does when its prey finally stops moving.

I lifted my hand and covered the soot my knuckles had left with my palm until the warmth sank into skin and pretended that meant I would carry this stone with me when I left.

Then I released the rail. The mark remained.

A small act of vandalism against a building that thinks it can survive us unchanged.

I went back through the high door into the corridor’s throat of stone.

The air tasted less like metal and more like dust again.

I did not look over my shoulder. The door shut softly behind me, the latch catching with a clean little kiss, the kind a craftsman listens for to know he has done his work right.

It did not feel like mercy. It did not feel like defeat. It felt like what men call the end of a day when they are too honest to pretend they are grateful for it. It felt like the beginning of a war I had finally learned how to name.

Tomorrow, I would buy us hours with a coin I did not have. Tomorrow I would teach the law to sing a different song than the one it uses to cover the sound of its own appetite. Tomorrow I would stand again and again until the word lost meaning in the mouths of men who use it as ornament.

And I would keep her alive.

And I would keep Drakaryn alive.

Whatever it costs.