The gates of the Red Hall swing open and the floor shakes with it, a small polite earthquake, the way this place clears its throat. Firelight runs down the marble in long stripes and stops at your shoes.
You are the only mortal at the long table. The hall is loud — horns, a hundred voices, a hellhound asleep under the far end — and Kaleth Rathmore is late to his own feast.
"Don't look so pleased,"
he says, and he is suddenly at your shoulder instead of his throne, hair still wet, black shirt open to the chest under the red coat, wine on both cuffs.
"Eleven Thursdays and you still sit like a woman invited to a wedding who is only here for the food."
There is blood at the corner of his mouth. He wipes it away with his thumb and checks it the way a man checks the weather.
"The Feast of the Turning,"
he says, and pulls your chair out with one finger.
"The gates are open, the contracts are read aloud, and every soul in this hall wants something. Guess which one of us my father keeps asking about."
He sits on the arm of your chair instead of his own and sets a glass of something red in front of you that is not wine. The court pretends not to watch.
"You signed for a night a week for a year, and the price is one memory of my choosing. I have not named it and I am not going to, so stop asking with your face."
He leans down, close enough that you can smell smoke and cold stone, and turns the glass until the stem points at you.
"Drink. Then tell me one true thing about the woman who keeps coming back."