Chapter 88
Get Out
SEVRIN
Sevrin returned to the palace at dusk with the rain still clinging to his cloak and the scent of damp iron following him through the corridors.
He did not pause in his chambers, did not remove his gloves, did not permit himself the luxury of solitude before presenting himself in the throne room as expected.
He had scarcely mounted the dais when the royal healer requested a private audience.
The request alone was enough to alter the temperature of the room.
Sevrin dismissed the court with a gesture, watching the heavy doors close before turning his attention to the man who had once set his broken arm as a boy and stitched him back together after his first true battle.
The healer did not hesitate. “I have examined Lady Yvara thoroughly,” he said, his voice measured and without ornament. “She is not with child. Not in any way.”
For a moment Sevrin did not speak. The words dissolved through him with a corrosive clarity that left no room for denial.
Not pregnant.
"Are you certain?"
"Yes, Majesty."
He felt his hands begin to tremble before he consciously understood that they were moving.
He clasped them behind his back and forced the motion into stillness.
He had negotiated treaties under threat of war, had faced blades drawn at his throat without betraying weakness, and yet the idea that he had been deceived so completely in something so intimate hollowed him in a way no battlefield ever had.
He thought of the first time he had seen Asharin outside her father’s office, veiled and silent, and how something in him had shifted even without the privilege of her face.
He had dismissed it as curiosity, as distraction, because at the time he had already committed himself to producing an heir with Yvara.
The realm required it. Stability required it.
His desires had never ranked above those things.
He remembered the night of the ball, the way Yvara’s voice had cut into Asharin while he stood by and allowed it, convincing himself that diplomacy demanded restraint.
He remembered the moment Asharin was wounded and required blood, how easily he had considered draining Yvara if it meant Asharin would live, even while believing Yvara carried his child.
He remembered the quiet hope he had never named aloud, the shameful one that had grown despite him, that perhaps Yvara would fail, that perhaps Asharin would conceive, that perhaps Colsar would remain indifferent as he always seemed to remain indifferent to anything that was not war or mountain wind.
In that secret, unguarded space he had imagined an heir bound as close to his own blood as possible and a woman whose presence had already begun to undo him.
The one thing he had allowed himself to imagine in unguarded hours. Her beside him without politics between them. A child who bore his name without shame. A home that did not feel temporary. He had never known such a thing, and had not believed he was meant to.
Yvara was not family material, but by then he had taken her to his bed too many times to undo it. He would not create a bastard; he knew too well what that meant, what it cost, and that was a line he would never cross. He had relinquished it for the realm, and in return, he had been lied to.
He dismissed the healer and left the throne room before anyone dared speak to him. He moved through the corridors with a pace that caused servants to flatten themselves against the walls, his mind no longer concerned with appearances.
He needed to see her.
When he reached his chambers he unlocked the door and stepped inside, the echo of rain faint against the windows behind him. Something was wrong, though he could not yet name it. The air lacked her presence, undisturbed.
He crossed to the desk first, drawn by something he could not yet name. On the surface lay a scrap of parchment. He picked it up and read.
Went to the theater with Nyara. I will return before you.
His hand paused on the page as the meaning begins to form in his mind, the mention of the theater pulling at something low in his chest. He had already denied it.
Anger rises, threaded with something closer to alarm than irritation, building through him before he forces it inward and leaves only control behind.
He sets the note aside with care that does not match the strain in his body and crosses into the adjoining room, the chamber whose walls and ceiling bear mural after mural of her likeness.
His eyes move across the painted walls, over the countless versions of her rendered in careful detail, each one preserved, controlled, contained.
The covers are disturbed, the air otherwise untouched.
Even here, where he had placed her himself, she had slipped beyond his reach, and the palace had already failed to contain her once, a failure he would not permit again.
The thought gives way to something heavier, the sense of something interrupted. When he looks at Asharin now, he will see what had begun to take shape, a life that might have bound them more tightly than any alliance.
He remembered Colsar’s voice from the day the marriage was negotiated, stripped of warmth and edged with warning. “If you marry her to me, she is off limits to you. Entirely. That includes curiosity.”
Sevrin had agreed because he believed discipline was strength and sacrifice was duty. He had believed himself capable of containing what stirred in him. But now, that certainty no longer held. Yvara’s lie had cost him time. Asharin’s disobedience had exposed the weakness of the palace itself.
Patience had been a luxury of certainty, of a man who believed the outcome was inevitable.
That certainty no longer held. Too many variables had revealed themselves at once, interference where there should have been none.
He had been content to wait. He would not make that mistake again.
Rathmor had proven itself incapable of holding her, so now he had new plans.
Plans she would not accept. But first, he needed to find her.
Practical considerations assert themselves.
Asharin should have returned by now. If she is not in her chambers, then she is somewhere she should not be.
The room had been locked from the outside; someone had intervened, and he would find out who.
They would be punished. An example would be made. But first, Asharin must be located.
He reaches across his desk to ring for a servant when a knock sounds against the door.
“Who is it?” he demands, the edge in his voice uncontained.
A pause follows.
“May I come in, Majesty?”
The fist he didn’t realize he was clenching releases. Today, her voice was thinner than he remembered, fragile in a way that made him uneasy. He closed his eyes briefly. He could not look at her right now, not when his control felt so close to fracture.
“No,” he said.
Silence stretched between them before she spoke again.
“Sevrin. I need you.”
The words struck him in a place he had long ago trained himself to guard. He remained facing the window, rain trailing down the glass in uneven lines, hands clasped tightly behind his back.
“Fine.”
The door opened and closed with quiet care. He heard her enter but did not turn.
“Sevrin, can you look at me?”
“I would rather not.” He kept his tone measured, though something in it tremored beneath the surface.
If he looked at her now, he might choose her over what needed to be done.
“You said,” she continues, her voice quiet, “that you wanted me broken. So you could put me back together.”
He says nothing.
“Please. I need you. I need to be put back together,” she says, her voice breaking.
His shoulders draw tighter.
“I need you…to keep me safe here.”
“You lied to me,” he said, the restraint thinning. “And you left.”
“I did not. Yvara—”
“Get out.”
“Just let me explain.”
He does not answer.
“Look at me, Sevrin.”
“I will say this once more. Get out.”
He heard movement behind him, uneven and faint, and then the soft close of the door.
He remained facing the window long after she had gone, telling himself the irregular sound of an uneven gait, of a leg dragging, was merely his imagination and not something else entirely.
He did not turn around to confirm.