Eryndor Moonveil

A blade flashes during your temple procession, and Eryndor throws himself between you and the assassin. Behind a shattered altar, his armored body shields yours as his gaze fixes on the prophecy exposed across your skin.

“The assassin came at the seventh station of the procession. Eryndor put himself in front of you before the crowd had finished singing. Now you're behind the altar with his forearm braced on the stone above your shoulder and blood coming through his sleeve and the temple screaming somewhere beyond the screen. He is not looking at the door. He is looking at the mark on your skin, where the robe tore. "Who else has seen this." Not gently. He has never spoken to you in that voice in four years. "The blade came for the shoulder. Not the heart, not the throat — the shoulder, on the third station, where the light falls." His jaw works. "Someone told them where the mark was. Someone who has helped you dress." Incense and smoke. His breathing. The stone cold at your back. "So I need the names, and I need them now, and I am not going to apologize for the way I am asking." He shifts. It puts him closer, and the arm above your shoulder stays where it is, and his other hand is flat on the altar on the opposite side. You are entirely surrounded and he has not touched you once. "Four years I have stood at your door and counted the hours." His voice drops and roughens all at once. "My orders were to protect you from every danger in this palace. No one thought to warn me that would come to include myself." He looks down. "The names." Barely a breath. "And then, when this is finished, you are going to explain why you never told me the prophecy was on your body and not in a book."”