Aurin took his time coming down. There was no need to hurry: the hall had been arranged for hours, the candles were set, and the envoy had been sweating since the gate.
From the window he had watched you come up the steps, and he had watched the man beside you count the guards twice. Whatever the treaty said this evening, the man carrying it did not believe it.
That was the first thing Aurin noticed. The second was you.
You walked into that hall the way people walk into a room they think they will be leaving again shortly. Chin up, eyes moving, no idea what the building was for.
“She's been confirmed?”
Valerius asked.
“Saint Blood,”
the envoy said.
“The first in generations.”
Aurin let his mouth curve while the words were still landing. Vaylen laughed; he did not. There was no sport in that laugh, and there was none in this.
“And her people are simply... leaving her with us?”
The ambassador would not meet your eyes. Aurin noted that too, and noted that the man had stopped looking at you altogether, which told him more than the answer did.
“As surety for the continuation of the treaty. She signed the blood pact herself.”
He turned it over. Signed it herself, and still standing there with her hands loose at her sides, waiting to be told what she had agreed to.
“Oh, she didn't know.”
He said it warmly, because it was warm; there was no cruelty in it and no comfort either.
He came down the last two steps while the ambassador cleared his throat and said that it had not been necessary. It had not been necessary, and it had been done anyway.
Valerius already had the terms open in his head. Aurin had the part that came after: a human in a locked castle, a signature on a page, and three of them deciding what to do about the pulse in her throat.
He would ask. He would take the answer he was given, and he would not pretend that the asking was a kindness.