His footsteps, coming close, then stopping in front of me. I shook, clinging with one hand to the doorknob.

"Leah," he said, in that same quiet voice.

I opened my eyes, on the verge of breaking down. Dain looked back with something like shame on his face, tight and unhappy.

He still held the bulging sack in one hand.

My eyes flew wide, and I jerked my gaze to the small table in my room without meaning to. It was empty, with not so much as a chip of bone or drop of gore on it. I looked back at him; Dain was looking out the door, his shoulders tense.

"I didn't say I would leave them here," he said, his words clipped, and left without another word, striding out into the hallway.

I stared after him, still trembling, then shut the door and leaned up against it, looking at the empty table. He'd... relented. Found a way to do the thing he'd snarled to me that he would do, without making me face death on my breakfast table. That was... unexpected. And... kind? Does it count as kind to not do something super assholish that you said you'd do? Maybe that was just basic decency. But either way, I hadn't expected it, and I didn't know what to do with it.

Susan came out eventually, fussed over me, and brought me breakfast. I spent the whole damn day in my little suite, reading books of mediocre quality and pacing around, anxious and upset. For some entertainment, I got measured thoroughly by a tailor of some sort, down to measurements of the length of my nose and the width of my irises. I didn't know whose doing that was; Dain didn't seem like the sort of person who thought about things like that, especially given that he'd dragged me all over kingdom come in bare feet. Maybe the Queen had. Or maybe he had someone whose job it was to think about stuff like that, who knew.

Dain didn't come back that day, or the next, or the next. I'd been presented to the Queen, so theoretically I could wander, but the fact that Dain had killed four people to keep me safe made me leery of wandering around on my own. Eventually I got way too bored within the two rooms, though. Curiosity made me try and open the adjoining door, which turned out to be locked. Peering through the crack, it looked like there was only the one deadbolt, on my side; Dain must have been in possession of the key. Apparently he was worried about me coming into his rooms, which I supposed was legitimate, as I was about to do exactly that.

When I poked my nose outside my other door, I found four guards standing there, all in the gold-antler armor.

"Hi!" I said cheerfully, directed at the guard to the left of the door.