Dinner had ended an hour earlier, yet Emery had not let go of Zekar's hand.
They had wandered through the corridors of the white-stone palace slowly and without purpose, moving simply because movement meant they could remain together. The guards they passed smiled and looked away. The servants pretended not to notice. In ten days everyone had learned the truth of it: the king and his songbird were rarely apart.
Now they stood outside her door.
Emery's heart hammered against her ribs, though not from fear. Not anymore. The fear had burned away somewhere in those ten days—perhaps in the garden, perhaps in his arms, perhaps in the quiet hours when he had held her through nightmares and whispered that she was safe. What remained was something else entirely. Something that made her palms damp and her breath come shallow.
She turned to face him.
