Chapter 14 The Courtyard watch...
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I did not think.
I was on my feet before the maid had finished speaking — robe pulled around me, feet finding the floor, moving toward the door. The maid called after me. I did not stop.
The corridor was busier than usual. Maids moving with their heads down, a guard walking fast in the opposite direction, two court ladies standing close together near the east staircase. They went quiet when I passed. I did not slow down.
The sound reached me before I reached the stairs.
Not loud. Just present. The particular silence of a crowd that has gathered around something and decided not to name it out loud. Something about that silence was worse than noise would have been.
I took the stairs fast.
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The courtyard was almost full.
Not the whole household — but enough. They stood in a half circle with their hands folded or their arms crossed or their eyes carefully arranged into expressions that gave nothing away. Nobody spoke. The only sound was the wind moving through the courtyard and something else underneath it that I felt before I heard.
I pushed through.
Shoulders, elbows, not excusing myself to anyone. People moved. Some looked at me. I did not look back.
I got to the front.
And I saw him.
He was standing.
That was the first thing — that he was standing. Not on his knees, not bent forward, just standing in the center of the courtyard with his hands at his back and his chin level and his eyes fixed somewhere ahead of him that was not the crowd and not the guards and not any of the faces watching him.
His brother stood beside him but not too close.
His shirt was gone.
The marks on his back were fresh — three lines, clean and parallel, already darkening against his pale skin. A guard stood to his left with something in his hand that I looked at once and then made myself stop looking at.
Dorian did not move.
Did not make a sound.
When the next one came his jaw tightened, just once, just briefly and then even that released and he went back to wherever he had gone inside himself and stayed there.
I moved forward without deciding to.
My feet went and my hands reached and —
Two guards stepped into my path.
Not roughly. Just there — solid and immovable, a wall between me and the center of the courtyard. One of them looked at me with an expression that was almost apologetic.
"My lady —"
"Let me through."
"My lady, you cannot —"
"He is my husband." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Let me through."
They didn't move.
I looked past them at his back. At the marks. At the way he was standing like the courtyard and everyone in it was something he had already decided not to give the satisfaction of a reaction.
My eyes did something I had not given them permission to do.
The warmth came fast — I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth and looked at the ground for one moment and breathed and looked back up.
He still had not looked at me.
He did not know I was there.
I stood behind the guards with my hands still half reaching for something I could not get to and I watched him take the rest of it and I did not make a sound. Because he had not made a sound. And it felt wrong — deeply and unreasonably wrong — to be the one who broke that when he had decided so clearly not to.
But why is he the alone one being flogged?
What did he do?
So I held it.
The way he was holding it.
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It ended.
The guard stepped back. Something brief and official was said. The crowd began to disperse, quietly, efficiently, with the practiced normalcy of people returning to their day.
Dorian reached for his shirt.
He pulled it on slowly. Buttoned it without looking down. Straightened the collar. Then he turned and walked straight and unhurrie d, like nothing in this courtyard or anywhere else had the authority to change his pace.
The crowd parted around him.
He passed close enough that I could have reached out and touched his arm.
I didn't.
His eyes didn't find mine.
What if he does something crazy?
He walked through the door and was gone.
I stood in the emptying courtyard with my hand still pressed to my mouth and the warmth still in my eyes that I refused to let go any further.
After a moment I lowered my hand.
Wiped my face.
Turned to the guard at the courtyard entrance — older, steady, eyes forward.
"What happened," I said. "Between him and his brother?"
The guard looked at me briefly. Then ahead again.
"That is not for me to say, Her Highness."
I looked at him. "Then who is it for."
He said nothing.
The courtyard was empty now. Just the wind and the stream somewhere beyond the wall and the silence of a place that had held something and was not going to give it back.
I walked back inside alone.
I'll ask Aldric