Keiser lounged against the arched window of the princess's temple, one of those tall, narrow openings where Olga often stood with her sacred, beast-corded bow and a quiver of arrows, always ready to strike at any rats or worse that crept near the temple at night.
He fussed with his bandage, keeping it wrapped tight.
It was a small act of caution to hide that he had been healed, and to conceal the faint trace of blood scripting that still marred his skin beneath the linen.
The knights on the temple wall threw him the kind of looks you gave a man you suspected of carrying secrets, they watched the room more than the chapel, more than the princess, as if any one of them might be the first to notice the wrongness in him.
A slow, hot ache crawled along his wrist. He could still feel the princess's mana on him, a residue like fragrance, subtle and insistent.
