“I was prepared to die for him. Prepared to do terrible, brutal things in the name of serving him.” He paused, tracing one of the scratches carved into his desk. “You know what I wasn’t prepared for? The flies. Clouds of them, buzzing so loudly, you felt it in your bones. No one prepares you for that sound. Or the smell of bodies lost to fire. I couldn’t get it off me. I dream about it, two decades later.”

Ranka closed her eyes. After Belren, the stench of burned flesh had clung to her hair for weeks. “I dream about it too.”

His laugh was flat. Humorless. “What a world we’ve wrought. A child dreaming of those flies.”

“I’m not a child,” Ranka said. “I’m a warrior.”

“Is that what they told you?” He sighed. “Plenty young folk are handed a weapon and told they’re a soldier. It doesn’t make them any less a child.”

The look he gave Ranka made her skin crawl. Like she was just some lost little girl—one he’d been too late to save. Like he was sad for her.

Ongrum had never looked at her like that.

“Forgive me, Captain,” Ranka said. “But why am I here?”

Foldrey held his drink up to eye level, turning it this way and that. Reddish-brown liquid beaded on the lip of the glass. In that golden light of midday, it looked like blood. “I can’t imagine how terrified you were to come here. I know the stories your people tell, of the wicked Skybreaker king and his treaty wife. Of the bloodthirsty, witch-burning humans they ruled.” He ran a thumb over the grain of his desk. “Alus and Lyra were not perfect—but they were not storybook monsters, either. They loved each other. They loved their children and their people even more. And most of the time we loved them back.”

“If you’ve called me here to change my mind about dead rulers—”

“I haven’t. Let me be blunt.” Foldrey laced his fingers together. “Galen is too soft to rule alone—oh, don’t look at me like that. We all know it. His gentle heart is a blessing, but this country would eat him alive. And Aramis cannot rule while a male heir lives. But together? They might just be enough.”

Dread stirred in her. He was still dancing around why he’d called her here.

“I’ve spent my life trying to protect them. To be their shield.” He paused. “I have loved them, more than I ever had a right to. But I don’t know if I can protect them from what I saw in that alley.”

She nearly went limp with relief. This was about winalin, then. Not her, or the coup. He suspected nothing. She was in the clear.