Costis blinked.

He walked forward automatically, but his mind was rooms away. Three steps into the queen’s bedroom, he could take in the whole room, paneled in wood, carpeted in gold, with chests and a desk and various chairs and a bed, raised on a dais, with a cloth-of-gold spread. It had no bedposts, no canopy, and no curtains to hide the sleeping occupant.

Costis knew, even before he saw the dark hair on the pillow, who it was. If he hadn’t been so tired, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Eugenides had long since proven that he could move through the palace of Attolia as he pleased. Clearly, both he and the queen could travel to the queen’s room in private if they chose.

“He took a few drops of lethium several hours ago, so I don’t think there is a particular need to be quiet,” said the queen. Costis turned toward her and hastily pulled himself to attention. Nothing could stop the flush of red creeping to his hairline.

She was amused.

“I want you to stay here until he wakes.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“You may sit.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.”

Costis didn’t move.

“Tell an attendant when he wakes.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

When she was gone, and the door had closed behind her, Costis drew a shaking breath and glanced around the room. Moving cautiously, he approached the bed. The king’s face was turned away. Costis bent to look at it closely, aware that he was taking a liberty very few must have. Eugenides looked very different in his sleep, younger and—Costis searched for a word—gentler. Costis had never thought the king’s expression strained until he saw that strain, by the action of a few drops of poppy juice, relieved.

Thoughtful, he stepped back from the raised bed. There was a low upholstered chair nearby. Costis settled hesitantly onto it. The buckles of his breastplate dug into his side, reassuring him that this was not all a dream.

The morning light was dim. The skies were still gray. Costis yawned. As if in answer to a prayer, Phresine arrived at the doorway with a tray in her hands. He snapped his mouth shut and stood, feeling guilty for sitting down.

She smiled to put him at his ease. “I thought you might like breakfast,” she said.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Costis whispered. “I’m not sure I should.”

“Of course you should,” she said. Her voice was low, but she didn’t whisper. “You aren’t here on guard duty. He has men in the guardroom to keep him safe. You’re here in case he is…unwell when he wakes.” She put the tray down on a small table beside Costis’s chair, and crossed to the bed to lay her hand on the king’s forehead. He didn’t stir. She slid her hand around his face to cup his cheek and bent to kiss him on the brow, like a mother kissing her child.

Costis stared.

Phresine smiled. “The liberties an old woman can take,” she said. “Even with a king.” She slipped through the door, leaving Costis alone again.

The queen’s bedchamber was as golden as a honeycomb and as peaceful as a tomb. Though Costis was occasionally aware of the quiet bustle of coming and going in the rest of the apartment, the silence in the bedchamber was soporific. He stood and paced across the carpet to keep himself awake, and looked with interest, but not too close an interest, at the queen’s writing desk with its tidy rows of inkwells and pens, and at the row of carved beads on a shelf and the assortment of tiny amphoras on a tabletop. Then he sat back down to watch the king sleep.

Once Eugenides’s head turned on the pillow and he opened his eyes. He looked around the room, puzzled but unconcerned. His gaze settled on Costis. Costis leaned forward in his chair and said, “Go back to sleep.”

Eugenides obediently closed his eyes.

Costis smiled. Behind him someone chuckled and he started. It was Ileia, one of the younger of the queen’s attendants, with her dark hair escaping from its silver net and curling against her neck. She was leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed. “I didn’t think he ever did as he was told,” she said, smiling.

“I only told him what he was going to do anyway,” said Costis.

“That would be the trick,” Ileia agreed.

Later, when Eugenides stirred again, Costis was relieved to think the king might finally be waking. Costis was stupid with fatigue. The day had passed with creeping slowness, and his eyes were desperate to close. Even when he held them open, they seemed unwilling to focus, and it took time to realize that the king wasn’t waking, he was having another nightmare.

Costis dropped forward onto his knees beside the bed.

“Your Majesty?”

The king flinched as if flame-bitten, but he didn’t wake.

Suddenly he was completely rigid. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing anything in front of him. He struggled for a deep breath, and Costis, to forestall the scream he knew was coming, grabbed the king hard by the arm and shook him.

A heartbeat later the king was on the far side of the bed, eyes wide and a six-inch knife like a sudden miracle in his left hand. Costis kept his hands out in front of him, easily seen, and held very still and spoke very calmly.

“You were having a nightmare, Your Majesty.”

“Costis,” said the king, as if he was struggling to recognize him.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Squad leader.”

“You made me a lieutenant, Your Majesty,” he said carefully.

The king focused. “Yes, I did.”

He lowered the point of the knife. It was shaking, but the color was coming back into his face.

“Irene,” he said softly.

Costis turned to see the queen in the doorway. When he looked back at the king, the returning color had drained away again.

The queen stepped around the end of the bed and came up beside the king to put her arms around him.

The king leaned against her and said apologetically, “I am going to be sick.”

“Put that down, then,” said the queen, lifting the knife from his unresisting fingers and tossing it onto the bedcovers. With one arm around him still, she reached with the other for a basin set on a table beside the bed. She held it for him and stroked the king’s forehead as he threw up.

“My god, how humiliating is that,” said the king as he lay back on the pillow.

“Survivably so,” said the queen.

“Easy for you to say,” said the king. “You weren’t throwing up.”

“Tell me what I should say, then,” the queen asked.

The king sighed. Forgetting Costis standing nearby, forgetting possibly that anyone or anything else in the world existed, the king said shakily, “Tell me you won’t cut out my lying tongue, tell me you won’t blind me, you won’t drive red-hot wires into my ears.”

After one moment of gripped immobility, the queen bent to kiss the king lightly on one closed eyelid, then on the other. She said, “I love your eyes.” She kissed him on either cheek, near the small lobe of his ear. “I love your ears, and I love”—she paused as she kissed him gently on the lips—“every single one of your ridiculous lies.”

The king opened his eyes and smiled at the queen in a companionship that was as unassailable as it was, to Costis, unfathomable. Deeply embarrassed to be witness to this private moment, he glanced at the door, thinking of escape, but the way was blocked by two of the queen’s attendants, present but as immobile as doorposts, both looking carefully at the ground. He wished the floor could open and swallow him, the floorboards split apart and he and the upholstered chair and the small three-legged table all be sucked down out of sight. Assuming, of course, that it could happen without a sound, and without drawing the attention of the king or queen.