Kael had not slept properly in weeks, and he had begun to suspect it had very little to do with the failing southern harvest or the growing unrest among the council, and considerably more to do with a conversation he could not stop replaying in his mind.
I believe that I don't fully understand what you are, Elira. I never have.
He had said it without meaning to, the words slipping past whatever careful composure he usually maintained, and he had spent every night since turning the confession over, wondering why it had come so easily to a woman he had just exiled, when he had never once managed to say anything half so honest to her during six years of marriage.
He sat now in his private study, a stack of unread correspondence from the southern provinces spread across his desk, and found
