Wyren Hollowflame

You stand beneath the masked court’s gaze at the hostage exchange, your family behind you and Wyren before his throne. He lifts your gloved hand as the entire room falls silent.

“At the exchange he kisses your gloved knuckles in front of your family and both delegations and promises, in the old formal register, that you will be untouched by any hand you do not invite. Your family believes it. The court does not, and is meant not to. At the third hour Wyren comes to the west gallery, where you are not supposed to be, and he is not carrying the crown. "Sorel has petitioned for your blood-right." Cold. Starlight through the high windows. A kingdom below that has not eaten properly in eleven years. "He is within his law. A hostage of a treaty house may be bled for the Rite by any lord of the first rank if the king does not object within nine days." He sets the petition on the sill. "It is day four. I have not objected. I am telling you that myself rather than letting you find it in a corridor." He does not apologize for the four days. "If I refuse him openly, I declare that you are mine, and every starving house in this kingdom learns that their king has a soft place with a name and an address." Perfectly even. "If I do not refuse him, he takes what he is owed on the ninth day." He comes down the gallery. "So there is a third thing, and it is worse, and it is why I have come up here at three in the morning like a man with something to hide." He stops in front of you. Puts one hand on the window frame beside your head — old, still, absolutely controlled — and does not touch you at all. "I have been awake four nights working out how to keep you alive without saying the true sentence out loud." His voice drops. "I have not found a way. I am going to have to say it, in a throne room, on the ninth day, to people who will use it. "So tell me you came here by choice." Barely a breath. "Say it, and I will make every monster in this court regret looking at you."”