Ressa’s head snapped up.
The carefully maintained blankness shattered entirely.
”Please…my lady, please, I didn’t…I heard nothing, I would never speak of anything, please…” Her voice was coming fast and high and breaking apart at the edges.
She had gone to her knees without appearing to decide to, both hands pressed flat together in front of her.
“I swear it, my lady, I swear on anything you ask, I have no one, I have no one who would even ask me, please…”
Elyndra turned back.
She looked at the girl on the floor.
The girl looked up at her, and her eyes were streaming, her hands were shaking and she was young, too young.
Something moved behind Elyndra’s eyes.
She pressed her teeth together.
Closed her eyes for exactly one breath.
Opened them.
”Lyel.” Her voice had gone sharp.
“Don’t kill her.”
Lyel, who had been in the process of a certain kind of preparation, went still.
”Take her,” Elyndra said, staring at a fixed point above the girl’s head.
“Somewhere far. Far enough that she won’t find her way back inside here. Give her enough coin to manage on, and take it from my accounts, and if she makes her way back to this city in the next three months then you may revisit the question.” She paused.
“But do not kill her.”
Ressa was shaking so hard her teeth were gritting.
”My lady…” Lyel began.
”Lyel!,” Elyndra said.
The words were flat, hard and entirely final.
“Do as I said.”
Lyel looked at the girl.
He looked at Elyndra then crossed to the girl in two steps.
One clean strike to the side of her neck, Ressa slumped without a sound.
He caught her before she reached the stone, gathered her up gently, and turned toward the passage.
Elyndra watched until he rounded the corner.
Then she tipped her head back and looked at the sky for a moment, the pale early blue of it, the morning still awakening slowly.
”Have someone see to everything,” she said, to the empty courtyard.
Lyel would hear her, wherever he was.
He always did.
“Make sure to leave nothing that points anywhere.”
She lowered her chin.
She walked away.
—
She was crossing the long corridor that connected the eastern side of the palace to the main hall when laughter reached her.
Male voices, more than one, the voices were easy and comfortable.
She slowed.
The sound was coming from the direction of the main gate.
She followed it without quite deciding to, turning down the side passage that opened onto the upper courtyard, and stopped, standing behind the large pillar on the corridor as she watches them.
There were three of them.
They stood in the courtyard just inside the main gate, two were still in travel attire, dust on their boots, horses behind them being led away by the officials. Get faster updates on g.com.
Two of them were talking at the same time, gesturing, clearly mid-way through some story that the third was listening to with his arms folded.
She knew the third immediately.
The crown prince.
But it was the other two she looked at first.
The two on the left were clearly brothers.
Both fair.
Blonde hair that caught the morning light and turned it to something almost silver, hazel eyes, strong similar features arranged in faces that were clearly copies of the same original.
The older one had something sharper about the jaw and cooler about the eyes; he looked cold and serious.
He carried himself gracefully.
The younger one was laughing.
It changed his whole face.
He was young but not too young, his smiles were the brightest and he looks cheerful.
And then there was Zyran.
He stood slightly apart from the other two, listening.
He was wearing a green emerald royal robes with golden embroideries, his black hair loosened from its usual formal arrangement, a strand of it crossing his face.
He was smiling.
Not the smile she had seen before.
Something easier than that.
Something that went to his eyes.
He said something to the younger of the two brothers and the boy laughed harder, and Zyran’s smile deepened, and he looked, for a moment, in that bright morning light like someone she hadn’t entirely met before.
His mother must have been very different, she thought, looking at the black hair and the silver gray eyes.
Queen Desdemona had the fair colouring both the other boys had inherited in full, and standing beside them Zyran looked as though he had come from a different continent entirely.
”Zyran.
Vaemond.
Denyro.”
The voice cut across the courtyard.
Queen Desdemona walked towards them in her royal robes, her arms already opened for them.
Denyro reached her first, tall and composed; she pulled him into a hug and kissed his cheek and said something near his ear that made him bow his head and almost smile.
Vaemond arrived to her generously.
She caught him with both arms and pulled him into a hug, tighter than the way she hugged Denyro, and he was laughing again.
”You’re thinner,” she told him, pulling back to study him better.
”I’m not thinner, I’m exactly the same, I’ve been eating constantly for two days…”
”You’re thinner.” She looked at Denyro.
“He’s thinner.”
”Considerably,” Denyro agreed, entirely without sympathy.
”I am not…”
Desdemona turned to Denyro, and her expression changed, still warm, but layered now.
She took his face in both hands briefly.
Looked at him.
”I’m well,” he said.
She studied him for another moment.
Then she released him and straightened.
”Come,” she said.
“All of you. Your father is waiting and I refuse to have my arrival announced twice.”
She walked toward the main doors.
Vaemond fell in beside Denyro as they followed.
“Thinner,” he muttered jokingly.
Then Elyndra noticed.
Zyran was watching her from where he stood, his expression unreadable as always.
He had separated himself from the others slightly, standing with his arms loose at his sides.
She bowed her head slightly and walked back to the hall.
She felt his eyes on her back all the way to the door.
Zyran watched the corridor for a moment watching her retreat.
He became aware, that someone was watching.
”Brother.” The voice was close and cheerful and utterly unbothered.
“We should go in. Father will want to see us before midmorning, Denyro already wants to change out of these clothes, and I have been thinking about the kitchens here for approximately the last two days of riding.”
Zyran turned.
Vaemond was looking up at him with hazel eyes.
His gaze had already moved to the corridor and could see Elyndra’s retreating figure then landed back to Zyran and back to the corridor.
”Who was that?” he asked.
”One of the selection candidates,” Zyran said.”Princess Elyndra Ivor of Velmora,”
”Ah.” Vaemond said nodding his head.
He thought about it slightly longer than necessary.
He looked at the figure.
Then at his brother.
”We should head inside,” Zyran said as they both begin to walk.
Zyran said nothing while they walk.
But somewhere between the courtyard and the doors, a faint smile crept on his face.
His eyes went, once, back to the corridor.
It was empty.
He looked away.
—
Tell me what do y’all think about Elyndra?