Neris picked up his linen napkin, slowly dabbing at his lips before setting it neatly beside his plate. He stood up, his tall, imposing frame casting a long, sharp shadow across the stone floor of the high dining hall.
"Come, Ser Lucen," Neris said, his voice clipped and flat, the words echoing off the frost-lined vaulting as his boots clicked sharply against the dark flagstones. "To my study. There are matters regarding the East we must discuss at length."
"At once, my king," Lucen replied, rising immediately and pulling his heavy fur cloak over his shoulders.
As the Prime Minister turned to follow his sovereign out of the chamber, his eyes met those of his daughter. Rhea looked back at him with a gaze full of quiet, mounting terror—the subtle tremor in her fingers against her velvet skirts betraying the panic she refused to speak aloud. For the first time in many years, Ser Lucen felt a deep, cold ache of fear for what the coming journey to Caelmont would bring to them all.
