Chapter 76 Lessons
Lessons
THREE WEEKS WITHOUT COLSAR
The morning after dinner, the palace feels different, though nothing visible has changed.
Before noon, the King sends word that I may resume my carpentry in my antechamber.
The phrasing is careful, framed as a privilege restored, a kindness extended.
He makes no mention of the south gallery, of lessons with Matron Oramin, or of tea with Brinette.
I curtsy in acknowledgment when the message is delivered. Inside, I catalog it. He was pleased. Perhaps it was my request for dessert.
My carpentry table smells of shavings and resin, and when I wrap my hands around familiar tools, I almost forget for a moment that I am still watched.
Guards linger at the entrance, pretending not to observe, and servants glance at me with quick curiosity before lowering their eyes.
Word spreads quickly in a palace. The Princess has returned to her habits. The Princess has behaved.
Within days I am permitted to move throughout the palace again, though never beyond its gates, and never outside.
The restriction is unspoken but understood.
Doors that were once closed remain guarded.
Nyara is not permitted to visit nor can we exchange letters.
Matron Oramin is still not allowed to provide lessons, and I am not permitted to visit with Brinette or to go to the stables to check on Torsin’s horses.
Soon, a new order is given: Maridale is now only permitted attend to me once per day.
I am suffocating.
The King claims the palace must remain on lockdown because of threats beyond the walls, and though he says it with the language of protection, I recognize control when I see it.
Night after night I dine with him. It is always the same. He chooses the dress. Silk in colors he prefers. Structured bodices that hold me upright whether I wish to be or not.
“Indulge me.”
He watches me chew. “Swallow.”
I do. I focus on the motion of my jaw, the pressure of my teeth, the exact moment he seems satisfied enough to let me continue.
By the time I am permitted another bite, I am no longer sure whether I ever wanted it.
The question of hunger feels distant, almost irrelevant.
What matters is the timing. What matters is his approval.
“I find I sleep better on nights when I have memorized you," he tells me one night.
"Yes, Majesty," I say quietly.
I do not know why he needs to memorize me, or why he must dine with me and not Yvara.
I have stopped trying to understand. The servants hover in careful silence.
Sometimes one of them offers the King more wine when his goblet runs low.
They pour generously. I see the exchange of glances. The quiet attempt to dull him.
He notices. “That is enough,” he says one evening when his glass is filled a second time without instruction. His voice is calm, but the servant’s hand trembles as he withdraws.
They try in other ways. An extra roll placed near my plate. A second portion offered though my first remains unfinished.
“For strength, my lady,” one whispers.
“I did not grant her permission for more,” the King replies mildly. His voice is calm, yet his eyes flash crimson and his lips part to reveal the point of a canine.
After that, no one offers again.
Every time I ask if there is word from the mountains, Sevrin tells me there is none.
His voice is smooth when he says it, almost soothing, as if he is comforting a child rather than answering a wife whose husband rides toward war.
I do not know if he is lying, if Colsar is wounded, freezing, fighting, or dead.
Once, in a moment of exhaustion, I test him. He tells me to swallow.
Remember yourself, Asharin, I think briefly, too tired to weigh the consequences.
Instead of swallowing, I take another bite. A small one, just enough to exist as defiance. He watches me chew it, silent. The next morning the door to my adjoining chamber is locked, the privilege of carpentry is revoked. The servants say nothing when I ask.
The path of least resistance is not surrender. It is strategy.
Strategy, not defiance. And so I resume swallowing when told and no longer pay attention to my own hunger. It becomes irrelevant. Hunger is sensation, and sensation invites reaction, and reaction invites consequence.
The mind goes quiet if you let it. I learned long ago in the Baron’s house how to eat when ordered, starve when ordered, and smile either way. I learned how to separate my body from my pride. I learned how to sit upright while humiliation scraped against my ribs.
Colsar pulled me out of that version of myself.
He called me queen. But here, night after night, something old begins slipping back into place.
I remind myself that this is not as bad as my life before.
I am not kicked. I am not denied food entirely, and it is made especially for me.
It is not Yvara’s leftovers. My rooms are locked, but they are not closets.
All he wants is to observe and correct, I remind myself. And Colsar will return soon.
Edrin waits in the outer corridor most evenings now, holding correspondence he is no longer permitted to deliver to me. He bows too quickly. His expression tightens as he looks at my hands, my face, the dishes carried out behind me.
“I am fine,” I say.
He does not believe me. “I have told my father,” he tells me one day as he escorts me back to my rooms. “He is General Rorin, perhaps he can help.”
“There is nothing wrong,” I say with a faint smile. Yet as the days blur, some part of me knows this cannot last.
After too many days within the palace walls, I decide to give up my mother’s pendant.
The night I decide, the palace is quiet as I slip from my window.
The air beyond the walls is colder than I expect, the path to the woods longer without desperation driving me.
I do not hurry. I let the night take me, listening for movement the way Arven taught me, testing the edges of my awareness as I move between the trees.
I walk into the clearing and wait. I feel him before I see him. A pressure just beyond my senses. He steps from the dark as if he had grown there, arms crossed loosely over his chest, expression unimpressed.
“You came back,” he says.
“I did.”
There is no approval in his face, only assessment. “You look less pathetic than last time,” he remarks.
“Thank you.”
His brow lifts slightly at my tone.
I do not prolong it. I reach up and unclasp the pendant from my neck, the chain sliding through my fingers.
For a moment I hesitate, understanding the finality of what I am doing.
This is the last thing my mother placed around my throat.
The last proof that I once belonged to something softer than this.
Whatever it takes to be safe.
I step closer and hold it out. “I want lessons,” I say. My voice does not waver. “Real ones.”
His eyes drop to the pendant in my hand. He does not take it immediately. Instead, he lets the silence stretch long enough to test my resolve.
“You understand,” he says at last, “that this is not symbolic. I do not return payment if you grow bored.”
“I won’t grow bored.”
“No,” he agrees quietly. “You won’t.”
He reaches for it. His hand brushes the inside of my wrist as he takes the chain, and the contact is not accidental. His fingers linger just long enough to remind me that he could feel my pulse if he wanted to.
My breath shifts before I can control it.
He notices, of course. “Still reactive,” he murmurs, almost to himself.
“It’s cold.”
He looks faintly amused but does not call me out on the lie. Instead he lifts the pendant between two fingers, studying the crest etched into the metal. “Alarnan,” he says softly. “Old work. Your mother had taste.” The way he says mother makes something tighten in my chest.
“She did,” I reply.
He closes his fist around the pendant and tucks it inside his coat, as though it is nothing more than coin.
“Very well,” he says. He circles me once, not touching but close enough that I feel the shift in the air around me.
“You do not need more power,” he says. “You need discipline. Your magic is not failing you. You are failing it.”
“I know.”
“Good. Then we begin.”
He does not give me time to brace. He moves suddenly, forcing me to sense him rather than see him, striking without warning, stopping his blade a hair’s breadth from my throat before I even register that he has drawn it.
“You hesitated,” he says.
“I felt you.”
“You felt something. That is not the same.”
He withdraws and circles again. “Do not chase me with your eyes. Use what you are.”
I close them despite the risk. The forest expands. Breath, leaf, damp soil. And beneath it, him. A presence that does not blend with anything around it.
He moves, but this time I move first. My hand catches his wrist before he can strike. “That,” he says quietly, “is the beginning.”
We train until my muscles burn and my lungs ache.
He forces me to reach outward without forcing power through myself like a flood.
At some point I realize I am not having a nosebleed or coughing up blood.
I reach again, deliberately this time, letting the magic rise like a tide instead of forcing it into an explosion.
Arven watches me carefully. “Congratulations,” he says dryly. “You are not killing yourself tonight.”
I lower my hands slowly, breathing hard. “Will you teach me more?” I ask.
He considers me, weighing something he does not name. “Come back tomorrow,” he says finally. “If you are late, I will assume you have died and I will not mourn you.”
“That would be inconvenient for you,” I reply. “Given your habit of murdering friends, I imagine companionship is scarce.”
Something inside me warms. It has been a while since I allowed myself humor. His eyes shift slightly, amused despite himself. “Do not grow clever,” he says. “My jokes are wittier.”
I bite back a smile.
I walk back to the palace before dawn with dirt beneath my nails and something new beneath my skin.
In the nights that follow, I return again and again, sometimes bruised, sometimes furious, always learning.
His corrections are precise, my mistakes costly.
I begin to move differently, to think before I strike, to strike before I am struck.
My power answers to me now. It does not rule me.