After the meal, Lannahi agreed with her friends that they wouldn’t return to their own chambers amongst the other palace guards. Instead, they would move to an adjoining chamber to her own for the next few days. She also changed the guard schedule, assigning Dallal a day shift permanently and introducing a flexible schedule for the rest of the men. She wasn’t sure if it was the right decision, but she hoped that Dallal’s presence by her side would be enough to remind the landshapers of what awaited them if they revolted again.
Later, she wrote Lizaar a letter detailing the words of the oath she and the rest of the palace’s residents were to take tomorrow. Then she asked Souhi to help even out her hair.
She spent the rest of the day thinking about Nihhal. About how he forced her to obey him and about his intentions to make her his slave. About how she almost died trying to fight his curse.
And about how much she resembled him.
***
Lannahi woke up many times that night, not always able to distinguish whether what she dreamed was a memory or a product of her imagination. In one, she saw the collar around Lizaar’s neck and her red face. In another, she was the one who couldn’t catch her breath. She watched Gannar as she licked the floor, then dropped to her knees herself, looking up at smiling Nihhal. She felt a cold blade of scissors at her throat and then she attacked with it.
She was beaten and humiliated.
She beat and humiliated.
She was a queen.
She was a slave.
Fae, she thought later.I am a fae.
***
When half an hour before the oath ceremony Esau announced Ashared’s appearance, Lannahi felt like hiding. She didn’t want to see anyone. She wanted silence, peace, and solitude, not judgmental stares and the need to weigh every word. She wanted to run away.
But she was a queen. Queens didn’t run away.
“Let him in,” she told Souhi who finished dressing her hair.
She didn’t know what to expect, but when Ashared entered the room dressed not in uniform but in a white shirt and black pants and nodded instead of greeting her with the customary bow, she realized that yesterday’s events could have had consequences she hadn’t considered.
The man moved his eyes over her hair and dressing on her temple. An emotion flashed in his eyes, but before she could grasp its meaning, they took on a wary expression again.
“May we speak alone?” he asked.
Though tension and concern squeezed her stomach like claws, Lannahi replied with coolness. “Such a request after what happened yesterday?”
A muscle on his face twitched as if he held back a grimace. “I swear I won’t attack you,” he said seriously, “if you don’t attack me.”
It was a standard formula, and after a few heartbeats, Lannahi nodded. Before she could ask Souhi and Esau to leave the chamber, however, Ashared asked, “Can you promise me the same?”
Lannahi regarded him carefully. He did not bow, did not use formal titles, did not wear a uniform, and now he demanded a reciprocal oath. Was he planning on leaving Goldfrost?
Feeling a strange tightness in her chest, she repeated the vow. When Souhi and Esau exited her room, she invited Ashared to take a seat.
“Does the fact that I haven’t seen you in uniform lately have a particular meaning?” she asked.
Ashared seemed surprised by her directness, but this approach must have suited him because he began to explain, “I’m not a guardsman, Lannahi. Lizaar made me captain so I’d have an excuse to watch you, but I see no reason to continue this charade.”
“Are you angry with her for not sharing her plans with you?”
He paused, as if analyzing her words for a trap. “She knew I would have opposed them.”
“And why would you have opposed it?”
“They had a low chance of success.” He sensed her interest and after a moment added, “I knew you would take revenge on her.”
Lannahi forced her lips into a light smile. “Was a month long enough for you to be able to predict how I would behave?”
