Chapter 59. After the Door

The Spiral Garden emptied in ripples. Witnesses left with their masks of law and their private stories, lanterns were raised back to their hooks, chalk handprints dulled to smears. When the last rustle of silk faded, the garden remembered how to be a place that grew things.

Kael and I didn’t move for a while. His forehead rested against mine, his breath steady in that new way it had since the poison left him for good. The bond purred low, calm as a cat in sunlight.

“Come with me,” he said, quiet.

He didn’t lead me through the main halls. He took the side stairs, the narrow corridor where the wall was close enough to trail a hand along it and feel the tiny faults left by decades of blood and weather. He opened a door I hadn’t seen before—one of the old rooms high on the western face, where the wind might as well live and the sea spent all day talking to the cliff.

A washbasin waited on a low table. A kettle steamed soft on a brazier. Someone—Mavienne, by the n