“I know how blessed I am to have Rain,” she agreed. “All my life, I dreamed of a Fey-tale love. My mother always tried to discourage me. I was an unattractive child.” She smiled a little, remembering. “She no doubt meant to spare me the pain of lost hopes, but I didn’t realize that at the time. So when she’d tell me to set aside my dreams of Fey-tale love, that such great loves weren’t meant for mortals, I’d remind her that she had found such a love with my papa—” She hesitated, then admitted softly, “—and that you had found such a love with the queen.”

When he said nothing, she added, “I’m sure that whatever difficulties may lie between you now, they will not last. I have seen the great love you bear her.”

He glanced at her with sudden suspicion. “Are you reading my thoughts, Feyreisa?”

“Nei, King Dorian. I and every Fey in Kreppes have done all we can these last days to shield ourselves from mortal thoughts and emotions. But not all thoughts require magic to detect.”

He grimaced. “I suppose not. Especially when one isn’t being particularly subtle.”

“If you need to talk, I would be glad to listen. About anything.” She started to reach for his hands, but drew back before she touched him. The moment her skin touched his, her promise to leave him the privacy of his thoughts and emotions would be broken.

“You have never much cared for the queen.”

“I—” His statement caught her off guard and left her scrambling for an appropriate response. She wanted to deny his remark, for his sake, but Fey did not lie.

“No.” He smiled. “You haven’t. It’s all right. Most people don’t. She is not an easy woman to like…” He looked back towards Eld, “… or to love.”

“But you do. Love her, I mean.”

“More than life.” He rubbed his face, weariness apparent in every line of his body. “So much that the break between us weighs on me more heavily than this war.”

Ellysetta had to fight to keep herself from touching him, from weaving peace upon him. His emotions had opened up so much she could not hope to block them. The ragged, aching hole, the emptiness, as if part of his soul was missing. The fear that his wife’s love might be lost forever.

“Your Majesty… Dorian…”

“Some people believe I don’t see her flaws,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard her, “but I do. I simply love her in spite of them. Or perhaps because of them. She is a princess of Cappellas. There’s not a more deceitful, conniving, heartless land in all the mortal world. Intrigue, betrayal, murder: They’re a way of life there. No one trusts anyone—not even their own family. And she grew up in that. Can you imagine?

A child, a beautiful, innocent little girl, raised in that… that darrokken pit of a Hells hole. Ah, gods.”

He leaned back and shook himself, as if trying to shake off the overwhelming emotion. “She didn’t let it break her, though. She was too strong. So strong she could live through all of that and still allow herself to be vulnerable enough to love me.”

The words kept tumbling out, as if he needed to say them, to hear them. As if he needed to remind himself.

“She is vain, I know. And she plays her game of Trumps with the members of the court, making them dance to her tune so she can control them. She constantly schemes for ways to increase Celieria’s power and might. But all that is part of her armor. She learned from a young age the best way to protect vulnerabilities was through power, and that power comes from being the most beautiful, the wealthiest, the wiliest, the most controlling. That is how she defends herself and the few people she will ever let herself love. In a way, she is like a tairen. Fierce. Territorial. Willing to destroy anything or anyone who trespasses on her lair or threatens the members of her pride.”

Ellysetta would never have drawn that comparison herself, but a look at Annoura through her husband’s eyes put a different perspective on Celieria’s beautiful, scheming queen. “I never understood that about her.”

“Few do.” He gave a melancholy smile. “She doesn’t want people to understand her.”

“Because that would make her vulnerable.”

He nodded. “There’s nothing she fears more than that.”

Fear and vulnerability were concepts Ellysetta understood all too well. She didn’t like Queen Annoura. The woman had never been more than grudgingly gracious, and sometimes not even that. But King Dorian was a good man with a kind heart, and Ellysetta could tell he loved his wife deeply—perhaps as much, in his own way, as she loved Rain. There must be something worthy inside the prickly queen—some goodness Ellysetta had never seen.

“I have faith you will find a way to set things right,” she said. “Hold fast to your hope. She loved you once enough to overcome what she feared most. A love that strong does not wither easily.”

Dorian closed his eyes, rubbing his face in a weary gesture. “So I have always believed. We have had our arguments before, some of them quite fearsome. How could any man not, with such a strong, stubborn woman for a wife? But this time…” He shook his head. “This time feels different.” Bleak shadows filled his eyes. “I chose the Fey side over hers one too many times. She says I have betrayed her. And the way she said it… the look on her face…” He shook his head. “I don’t know that this breach can be mended.”