Chapter 272: On Her Way To Draeven’s Chambers

She had been very good for eighteen years.

She opened the door.

The corridor outside was long and dim, lit by a single torch at the far end that threw wavering gold across the stone. A figure stood beside it, a young man in the king’s grey with his back against the wall and his hand at his sword hilt. He straightened at once when he saw her.

Corin.

She stopped.

Neither of them spoke. His eyes went to the robe, the slippers, the hair loose on her shoulders. Color rose in his face. He looked, very pointedly, at the ceiling.

"My lady," he said, to the rafters.

"Corin."

"Is there something you require?"

"No." She hesitated. "I’m going for a walk."

"Yes, my lady."

"By myself."

His gaze came down from the ceiling. He was very young, she thought, younger than she had realized. There was a faint bruise at his throat, the yellow remnant of an unseen hand. His expression was perfectly grave, and under it was something she had not expected.

It was understanding.

"The King gave me instructions, my lady," he said carefully. "To stay near enough to protect you, and far enough that you need never see me."

"You’re not very far."

"I’m afraid that’s rather the problem." A faint, rueful twitch of the mouth. "I find I’m bad at hiding."

She almost smiled.

"Then follow me," she said. "But not closely."

"As you wish."

"And Corin." She met his eyes. "If you would not mention to anyone where I’m going....."

"I will not."

"Thank you."

"My lady." He bowed his head. "I would not dream of it."

She turned and walked down the corridor, and when she glanced back at the first turning, he was a long way behind her, a shadow among shadows, keeping a respectful distance and looking at the walls.

The palace at night was a different country.

She had walked these halls at all hours as a maid, hauling linens in the grey before dawn, scurrying from kitchen to scullery with her head down. She had never walked them as this. The great galleries stretched away, hung with banners and portraits, their painted faces glimmering in the torchlight. The long windows showed a black sky and a thin crescent moon. Her slippers whispered across the floor.

She met almost no one.

A night guard at the head of a stair, who saw her coming, stiffened, and then turned very deliberately to look out of a window. A pair of maids with a basket of folded linen, who pressed themselves against the wall and curtsied so low their noses nearly touched their knees. A cook’s boy, scurrying with a covered tray, who took one look at her and went scarlet and bolted down a side passage.

No one spoke.

No one stopped her.

It struck her, partway down the third gallery, that the whole palace knew. Of course it did. It had known since dawn. They had seen her carried through the halls in Thorne’s arms. They had seen the marks. They knew where she had slept, and with whom, and now they saw her in her robe at midnight, and they drew their conclusions and kept their eyes down.

It should have shamed her.

She waited for the shame to come. She kept walking, one slipper in front of the other, her chin up, her heart beating a steady urgent rhythm, and she found that it did not.

Instead, what she felt was something very like freedom.

Let them look, she thought. Let them draw what conclusions they like. I’m not doing it for them.

She was doing it because she wanted to.

It was such a simple thought. It was almost frightening in its simplicity. She turned it over as she walked, feeling the shape of it. I want. I choose. I am going. The words had the clean hard edge of a coin.

She passed two doors on the way.

The first stood ajar by the width of a finger, and from behind it came a deep, slow, rumbling snore that could only belong to a man who had drunk a great deal of wine and regretted none of it. She pressed her lips together to keep from laughing and slipped by on her toes.

The second was shut. Under it ran a thin line of lamplight, and as she drew level, a thread of shadow slid out across the stone and curled toward her slippers. It paused there, as a hand pauses before it touches a sleeve. Then, quietly, courteously, it drew back under the door, like a man lifting his hat as she went by.

She did not stop. But her throat went tight, and she walked a little faster.

The corridor narrowed.

She had not been this way before. She knew the east wing only by rumor, a quieter quarter of the palace, wide stone passages lit with tall iron sconces, where the three kings had their chambers. She had seen the map in her head a hundred times. She had never expected to walk it.

The air grew warmer as she went.

It was faint at first, a mild current against her face, as though somewhere ahead a great fire burned behind a closed door. The torches here burned a deeper gold. The stone underfoot seemed to hold the heat. She felt it climb through her slippers and up her calves, a slow, spreading, friendly warmth, and she knew without being told whose it was.

INFERNUS.

The word came unbidden. She did not know where she had learned to call it that, the dragon who had flown out of the sun and landed on a hillside and looked at her with his great burning eyes.

She turned the last corner.

A single door stood at the end of the passage, tall and dark, bound in iron. Two torches flanked it in tall wall brackets. The light they cast was steady and the color of honey, and it pooled on the flagstones before the threshold like a doorstep.

No guard stood there.

She understood why. He had sent them away.