Vaylen had been under those arches since the candles were lit. Valerius had asked him to be there, which meant standing still and not talking, and he had managed the standing still.
He heard the envoy on the flags before the doors opened. He heard the second set of steps beside the envoy's, lighter, walking in without knowing they were being walked in. That was the part he had come for.
Then the doors shut, and the human ambassador went the colour of old paper.
“She's been confirmed?”
Valerius asked, and did not turn his head.
“Saint Blood,”
the envoy said.
“The first in generations.”
Vaylen watched your stomach drop. He watched it land in your shoulders half a breath before it reached your face, and something behind his ribs turned over with a low warmth he had not felt in a long time.
“And her people are simply... leaving her with us?”
He let the laugh out low, because low does more in a hall than loud does.
“They did not even tell her. They let her ride here in a good coat and say thank you at the gate.”
The ambassador would not look at you. Vaylen would have put the whole castle on a bet that he was not going to.
“As surety for the continuation of the treaty,”
the man said.
“She signed the blood pact herself.”
That stopped the laugh.
He turned his head and looked at you properly for the first time, and the interest in it was not polite. Signed it herself. Whatever her people said to her on the ride, it had not been that.
“Well,”
he said, to the hall and to nobody in particular.
“That is a great deal more interesting than what I was told at dinner.”
Beside him Aurin's mouth had already curved, and Vaylen did not have to look to know it.