Nobody slept much after that. I certainly didn't, and by the time the sun came up gray and thin over the Undercrypt's one carved window, I'd already gone through the encounter in my head enough times that the words had started to lose their shape, the way any sentence does if you say it too often to yourself in the dark.
You wear your crown over a soul that should not exist inside it.
I hadn't told anyone the exact wording. I'd told Zereth and Selena that the creature had confirmed knowledge of my nature, which was true, and left the rest folded up somewhere I didn't examine too closely. Some things you carry alone not because you have to, but because putting them into other people's mouths makes them more real than you're ready for.
