Feren escorted her to her private chambers, before which no man stood guard. Relief flooded through her. She gasped once inside the heavy door, stepping away from Feren's side to catch her pent-up breaths.
"Amelia –"
A hand rose to silence him; she sank down on the seat of her vanity, eyes ghostly forward, down. Nothing suited her gaze. Her hands were shaking; they felt almost numb. She had never felt so empty and yet so full of lustless hope. Her people — those were her people in front of her, searching for her. In all her time there she could have nearly forgotten that her home existed. Everyone else had seemed too intent to ignore it — but the evidence was there. What were they like? What was her home like?
Anxiety and loss rushed through her all over again. The walls felt suddenly too close; the room too suffocating, and yet gapingly huge at the same time. Her heart skipped a beat in its race and her chest suddenly felt as if it had plummeted.
A hand touched her cheek. It brought her suddenly back into reality, back into her room. She leaned into it, closed her eyes. The second body stole the space by her side and allowed her to fall into him. Feren let his arms close around her. He knew not what else to do.
"How can it be true?" she whispered. "They've been hiding it from me this whole time. How could they have been blocking communications from my home? How could I be kept from this? They swore to me they'd relay all information, but they knew. They had to."
"Who, Aria?"
"The King. His Advisors. Traders. Grovers. Anyone." She paused before looking up. "Did you know? Do you know what they have been keeping from me?"
His fingers paused in stroking her back. "No, not much more than you. What I do know is... Jed has been collecting their messages. Since Leera."
Leera, she silently seethed.
"I have to talk to them — I have to go back down there."
His hand on her arm stopped her from rising all the way. "Wait," he said, relaxing his grip before she could panic. "He'll know if you do. If they're really hiding something, they won't let you in there alone with them. Not while they're watching every person in and out of that room."
"I can't just leave them down there. What if they— what if he hurts them?" As if to protect them through herself, her hands lifted to cover her heart. She was questioning everything about Andrew's character in that moment. Were the new Voerr safe? Were any of them safe?
They turned in unison to the door, hearing the frantic footsteps of King and hand. Feren wasted no time. He took Amelia's face in his hands and purposefully kissed the line of her hair. "I will return," he promised.
Feren snuck out through the door just before it closed behind Andrew, and again, her only confidant was gone. Luckily for her, Andrew didn't seem interested in conversation. He simply bathed and left to the separate room to sleep. When Feren came back for her, she blew out the candles and navigated through the room in total darkness, hoping that if for any reason Andrew did stir again in the night, it would offer them at least another second of cover.
Images of Constentine had been running through her mind since the second they had left Teeknan and Varkner, so vivid she could almost smell the pine trees and taste the warm cinnamon milk her mother would make to help them sleep at night. The long-dormant spirits that settled in her gut had begun to migrate toward her fingertips, likely hoping to be released like Larsa had been earlier. But there was a stark contrast in her mind between the bright green flower-spotted fields of her childhood summers, and the charred, lifeless plains Jed had dragged her through as they ran from her burning capital.
