I looked at the ornate wooden case sitting beside me as I finished signing the imperial verdict and set it down for the seal. The pink diamond necklace was mine now — Reichert had given me the keyword, *Thalia*, with which ownership could be transferred to another. I would simply have to speak it and press the key to the case.
I should have felt pleased. It was an extraordinary piece.
Instead, looking at it only reminded me of the man who had given it to me, and the persistent, unnameable unease he produced — that crawling sensation, like something moving just beneath the surface of a still pond. It made no particular sense. He had apologised, honestly and without artifice. He had given me something invaluable. And yet.
I shook my head and turned back to the papers in front of me.
Reichert was not my concern right now. I had stranger things to occupy me.
After completing the summons for Niwara of House Gorawa and setting it aside to go to the Emperor's seal before dispatch, I allowed myself a moment of stillness in the makeshift study I had arranged for myself among the stacks of the imperial library. The quiet here was a different quality from the quiet of my chambers — deeper, older, the particular hush of rooms that have held accumulated knowledge for a very long time.
Then Rora's footsteps approached between the shelves.
"A letter has arrived for you, my lady."
*A letter?* I turned the possibilities over. It was too soon for a reply from young Sagar — I had only sent my last letter to Gorei the previous week, and even travelling quickly it would not have reached him yet. A reply could not possibly arrive for at least another ten days. So who—
"Bring it here."
When Rora placed it in my hands, I noticed immediately that it had been opened. The seal was broken, the fold disturbed in the way of something read and then re-folded by someone else's hands.
"Did you open this?"
Rora shook her head. "It arrived to me in this condition, your Majesty."
Strange. It had never happened before. I turned it over once, examining the exterior, then opened it and read.
---
Dear Rhia,
I heard about what happened in Draga. I am sorry — I should never have asked you to go back. I'm sorry that it happened to you, when you went there with nothing but good intentions.
I returned to Draga myself after recovering. The situation there is not good. The elders are attempting to renounce your claim to the throne and crown Salime as king in your place. Salime refused. He stood firm — said you are the only queen there will be, and that hasn't changed. He married Sara last week. They are both well, and managing, despite the elders making their displeasure known at every available opportunity.
But you know how it is, Rhia. They are afraid of you. They are still discussing whether to move against you before you become something they cannot stop. Something unkillable.
Well. There is that.
I have included this month's supply of pills with this letter. I want you to know I remain opposed to this, as I have always been. I think you should speak with the Emperor about it — he may see things differently than you expect.
I am leaving Draga for the west on a business venture and will not return until next month. Write to me at this address:
The Gillium, Fourth City, West Bonporth.
Your friend,
Jiao.
---
I lowered the letter slowly.
The pills. He had sent the pills with the letter. I looked up.
"Was there anything else with this? Another parcel, a pouch — anything?"
Rora's brow creased. "No, your Majesty. Only the letter, as you see it."
"Looking for this?"
The voice came from the doorway.
Arvid stood there, holding a small velvet pouch between his fingers. His posture was still. His expression was not.
"Why do you have that?" I rose from my chair slowly.
"Leave us."
His voice carried a register I had not heard from him before — low and controlled in the way of something that is controlled with effort, not by nature. The servants moved immediately, filing out in quick, quiet succession, and then we were alone, and the door was closed, and the library was very still.
"You read my letter." The words came out flatly.
He raised one hand — not aggressively, but decisively — and drew a breath that did not appear to do him much good.
His eyes found mine. They were bright with something that had gone well past composure.
"Why?" He set the velvet pouch on the table between us with a force that was just short of throwing it. "They told me these were contraceptive pills. Why would you — do you not want a child? Is that it? Do you not want a child with me?" His voice cracked on the last word, and he pushed through it. "I was concerned for weeks that you were ill and hiding it from me, so I had them examined. And then I understood what they actually were." A short, unsteady breath. "My own wife does not want my child. How generous. How humiliating." His jaw tightened. "Or is it that you haven't forgotten your little lover back in Draga? Is that why?" A sharp, humourless sound that was almost a laugh. "It doesn't matter, as it turns out — the letter says he's married now. So whether you welcome it or not, you are staying with me. And whether you welcome it or not, you will have my child, because—"
"Because that is what I am here for." My voice came out quieter than I expected, and steadier. "To give you a child of double royal blood, so the heir to the throne faces no opposition. You said as much yourself, the night we came back from semestress." I looked at him. "Isn't that why you married me?"
The words sat between us.
And then something that had been held under pressure for three weeks found the crack it had been looking for, and I stopped being careful.
"And am I truly the only one in this marriage who has been dishonest?" I heard my own voice rising and did nothing to stop it. "If I asked you why there is a dragon tomb in Turga — why the dagger my nanny used to stab me came from that tomb, why the red crystal found in that Draga woman matched what I found beneath that mausoleum — what would you say? What would you tell me?" The tears came without permission, burning at the edges, and I let them. Everything I had carried for three weeks, everything I had pressed down and redirected and refused to examine in full daylight, rose up all at once. "Did you love me? Did you ever love me? Or was that a performance too, because you had something to accomplish and I was the means of accomplishing it?"
The words broke at the end.
And the room went entirely silent.
The fury drained from Arvid's face in a single moment, replaced by something I had no name for — something older and more private than anger, something that looked very much like pain arriving at a person who had not prepared a defence against it.
He was still for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost all its edges.
"I regret it." He said it simply, with the weight of something that had been sitting on him for a long time. "Every day since. I never intended for it to go the way it did. I never wished to harm you — not a bruise, not a scratch, nothing. What happened to you was—" He stopped. Swallowed. "It was the worst thing I have ever lived through. Coming close to losing you. I love you, Rhia. I love you in a way I don't have the right words for, and I know you have no reason to simply take my word for that right now. But it is true, and it has always been true, and I am asking you — please don't doubt it."
He sounded, in that moment, not like an emperor. Not like the composed, deliberate, architecturally patient man I had spent the better part of a year trying to understand.
He sounded like someone who was frightened.
The sight of it made me cry harder, which I resented, because I had wanted to be angrier than this. I had wanted the anger to be the loudest thing in the room. Instead it kept dissolving at the edges into something that hurt far more.
I looked at him through the blur of tears and said nothing, because I didn't yet know which words were the true ones.