"Oh. Um." I rubbed at my face. "After he got all shot up. He agreed to let me be in charge of taking care of him, as long as I promised to stay with him."

"Well," he said, still watching me. "He's going, and he's leaving tomorrow at dawn. He'll likely be gone for two months or more, so if you want to say anything to him before he goes, today is your last chance."

"Two months?" I said, my heart rate picking up and sweat prickling under my arms and down my spine. "He's going to be gone for two months?"

"There's no major roads linking Stag Court and the Court of Mercy," he explained. "It will surely be slow going, and they'll need to take horses, because it's unlikely the Court of Mercy will have the setup for deer. Our prince is planning on traveling to Lady Rynsandoral's lands first, because no doubt the story will have reached her long before him, and he wants to reassure her of his commitment to preventing open warfare. He will likely need to spend at least a week with her, and several weeks at the Merciful Palace, if not more." Alluin paused, giving me a sad smile. "Two months may be a significant underestimate."

"I..." I didn't know how to finish the sentence, or even where to start. It was as if I'd woken up in my regular house, then opened the door to find myself in the middle of a completely unknown landscape.

He'd... taken me seriously. Dead seriously. Dain had stood there, listening to everything I said to him, and had made his choice, maybe before I'd even given it to him. He was going to give up two months of time with me for the sake of stopping a war before it began, and he was going to do it by... groveling. Putting himself in a position of weakness in front of someone who could cause him serious harm and accepting the punishment for his actions.

I struggled to imagine something more difficult for him. Dain had spent his whole life defending himself, and now he was going to make himself defenseless.

For me. Because I could not tolerate him killing out of fear and anger.

I will strive to unlearn the lessons of my childhood and the century since for you.

"He's hiding in the conservatory for the afternoon, if you want to talk to him," Alluin said. He took one of his hands off of mine, and cupped my face with it, warm and gentle. "I asked him if he would say goodbye to you, and Dain told me that he didn't think he could bear to look at the judgment in your eyes again without being able to prove to you that he was a different man than the one you'd seen before."

My throat went tight, and I had to blink back tears.