Ravenna
I told him the next morning.
I had turned the Queen's words over in my head the entire drive home from the dinner, all through the night lying in the dark of my room, the entire short drive to the office. I had tried to decide whether it needed saying. Whether telling him would make me look frightened, and whether looking frightened to Valkor was the same as being frightened, which felt like it mattered in a way I could not fully explain.
The Queen had been so careful. She had not said anything direct. She had not made a threat that could be repeated to anyone and clearly attributed to her. She had built something that sounded, from the outside, like genuine maternal concern for a young woman in a complicated household. And the fact that I had understood exactly what it was did
