Chapter 217 Surprise

• By the time the sunlight outside the windows guttered to a softer gold, the throne room might as well have been a dream, the memory of chains and judgment already receding into the stone.
• I’d peeled away the heavy gown hours ago and slipped into a cotton short and a cropped tee that bared a sliver of skin to the cooling night air, grateful for the softness after the weight of ceremonial brocade. The bed sighed as I crawled onto it, settling cross-legged amid rumpled sheets that still carried Sargis’s scent. I let it soothe me as I pulled the tablet onto my lap and opened the group call.
• The familiar trilling rings echoed once, twice. Then the dark screen fractured into light and laughter, my girls appeared one by one, each framed in the intimacy of their own rooms.