Vathorem read me fast and deep. He read me with such force that I cried out, that I was left shaken and nauseous in the wake of it. He jerked me out of the seat. “Nali, you’re not fighting a war no more,” he whispered. He pulled me out of the room through a side door. Dor sat on a bench in the hall. His hands gripped its underside so tight his knuckles were white. He was rigid, and he was wounded. “Ariah, take off,” Vathorem said. “Give us a moment alone.”

A cold, remote smile cracked across Dor’s face. “Ah, no, he can stay. I’m sure he feels it. What is it you always told Dirva? You lot owe the rest of us an illusion of privacy? Well, hell, Falo, I know it’s just an illusion. He can stay.”

Vathorem sighed. He sat down beside Dor. Slowly he wrapped an arm around the boy’s shoulders. Vathorem winced. He drew out the confusion, the anger, like it was poison from a snake bite.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

Dor looked over at me. “You got nothing to apologize for.”

“Still,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded.

Vathorem walked me back to the Pickled Bear later that afternoon. “So,” he said. “Now you’ve seen the queen.”

“She is…regal.”

“She is ruthless. And she’s good at what she does. And she’s never trusted anyone but herself, not really. Not even her consorts. Not even her boys. She’s a soldier through and through. And the thing is, Dor’s never been a soldier. She plucked him up as her left hand two years ago, and he’s done so well sorting trade, getting roads built. Dor’s got a knack for peacetime. But Nali, Nali don’t know what this place is when there’s a peace. She named him heir because I told her I’d leave court if she didn’t. He don’t know that. He don’t know why she named him, and it cuts him to the quick for her to have named him and for her to keep questioning him like she does. Understand?”

“I think so.”