The Man She CameTo Destroy
951 Words
Seraphine didn't move.
She didn't breathe. She didn't blink. She just sat in that chair, and looked at Dravon and let the silence stretch between them like a wire pulled too tight.
Then she smiled.
"That's quite an imagination you have," she said. "For a king."
Dravon didn't smile back. He just watched her the way he always did: steady, patient, like he had all the time in the world, and none of it was wasted on her.
"You're doing it again," he said.
"Doing what?"
"The smile that means nothing."
She kept it in place. "Maybe it means I find you amusing."
"Maybe." He walked back to his desk and sat down. "Or maybe it means I got too close to something, and you needed a wall fast." He picked up a paper and looked at it. "Either way. I said what I said. The offer stands."
Seraphine watched him for a moment. He wasn't pressing. He wasn't threatening. He had dropped something heavy into the middle of the room and then simply… moved on.
She didn't know what to do with that.
"Is that all you needed?" she asked.
"No," He set the paper down. "I need you at dinner tonight. Oren is hosting. I want you there."
Everything inside her went sharp and still.
"Oren's dinner," she said.
"Yes."
"You want me specifically."
"I want you beside me specifically." He looked up. "Is that a problem?"
She uncrossed her legs and stood. Smoothed her dress. Gave him the easy smile, the one that was slightly warmer than the court smile, the one she reserved for him because he had learned to distrust the court one.
"Of course not," she said. "I'll be ready."
She spent the rest of the afternoon preparing.
Not her dress, not her hair. Those things took minutes. She spent the afternoon sitting at her window, looking out at the palace gardens, and building herself back into something solid.
You knew this would happen, she told herself. You knew you would have to be in the same room as him. You have been in the same room as him. You survived it.
She had. Three times in three months. Brief, public, always with Dravon close enough that she had an anchor.
But tonight was Oren's dinner, his space, his table, his rules.
She pressed her fingers together in her lap.
He doesn't know who you are. He destroyed a family, and forgot about them the way you forget about a meal. You are nothing to him. Use that.
She stood up and went to get dressed.
Oren's dining hall was everything the man was: beautiful on the surface, expensive in every detail, and somehow slightly wrong underneath. The chandelier was too large. The flowers on the table were very perfect. The laughter from the guests was half a beat too quick, like everyone was performing for someone they were slightly afraid of.
Seraphine walked in on Dravon's arm, and felt the room adjust to them immediately.
She kept her eyes moving. Cataloguing faces, positions, who stood near Oren, who kept their distance. Information. Everything was information.
And then she saw him.
Oren stood at the far end of the room, cup in hand, laughing at something a lord beside him had said. He was handsome, that was the thing about him that had always made her sick: he was genuinely, effortlessly handsome. Dark hair, easy posture, a smile that looked like it cost him nothing.
She remembered that smile.
She had last seen it on the night his men came to her family's gate.
Breathe, she told herself. You are no one. You are just the king's mistress. Breathe.
"You've gone quiet," Dravon said beside her. Low. Just for her.
"I'm observing," she said.
"Mm." He guided her forward with the slight pressure of his hand at her back. "Oren puts on a good show. Don't let it fool you."
She looked up at him. That was unexpected. "You sound like you're warning me."
"I'm always warning you. You never listen."
"I always listen. I just don't always react."
He looked down at her, and something moved behind his eyes. Something that wasn't quite a smile, and wasn't quite a concern.
"Stay close tonight," he said quietly.
Oren greeted them twenty minutes later.
He embraced Dravon the way brothers did “: familiar, easy, with that particular warmth that looked real unless you knew what to look for. Then he turned to her.
"Lady Seraphine." He took her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. "You grow more lovely every time I see you."
"You're very kind," she said.
He held her hand a beat longer than necessary. His eyes moved over her face with a curiosity she didn't like.
"Have we met before?" he asked. "Before the palace, I mean. You have a familiar quality. I can't quite place it."
Her heart slammed once against her ribs.
"I have one of those faces," she said pleasantly. "People always think they know me."
Oren smiled. "Perhaps that's it."
He released her hand, and turned back to Dravon, already talking about something else: trade routes, border tensions, the usual business of powerful men at dinner. Seraphine stood exactly where she was, and kept her face perfectly, beautifully still.
But underneath her dress her hands were shaking.
He had looked at her.
Really looked.
And somewhere behind those easy, handsome eyes something had flickered.
She reached for a cup from a passing tray, and took a slow sip and smiled at nothing in particular.
He doesn't know, she told herself.
But for the first time since she had arrived in this palace, she wasn't completely sure.
- Writer
