The Tyrant's Queen

28: language lessons

Pulling the blankets closer to her body, Thalia opened her eyes. Mid-winter had certainly arrived.

She squinted through the darkness of Lucien's bedroom. The sofa, which he'd taken his place at, was empty. So was the carpeted floor- he was nowhere in the room.

Lucien's dark brown fur coat, which he had draped over himself as a blanket last night, was folded neatly on the hanger by the door.

His sleeping robe, too, was tucked without a crease next to the coat. Even his slippers were aligned, perfectly parallel to the sofa, by the carpet.

He was a trained soldier to the bones. At least when a woman wasn't in his bedroom, strewing pillows and empty wine bottles on the sheets.

Reaching for the collection of glass vials at the tea table, Thalia glanced at the clock by the fireplace.

It was about five minutes past four- where had he gone?

Only when she had emptied a sweet bottle of a vial did she realize what she'd just done.

Drunk a bottle so naturally and thoughtlessly, as one would take an inhale.

Putting the empty vial onto the bed side table, Thalia caught sight of an unsheathed knife lying on it.

It was the knife that was at Lucien's belt, when he'd been in the room with Ulla and Viva- shorter than a sword, but longer than a dagger, its blade straight and its edge acute.

After slipping her feet into her slippers, Thalia carefully opened the doors. Sitting on the marble floor, a terrifying axe by his side was none other than a fully armed Dehan.

His shoulders hunched over and his bristly thick eyebrows knitted together, he was fiddling with a piece of wood in one hand, and a small carving knife in the other.

The wood, about half the size of her hand, looked like it could be easily pulverized in Dehan's monstrous fist.

At the sound of the door opening, Dehan, an open book of a flustered boy caught opening his mother's drawer, shoved the wood and carving knife into his pockets and sprang to his feet with a bow.

Rubbing her eyes blearily, Thalia couldn't help but chuckle.

To think Dehan had a hobby of wood carving! "Good morning, Dehan. Did His Majesty go somewhere?"

His ubiquitously amused looking eyes went bigger, blinking slowly.

Right. How were they to communicate, when he didn't understand Aesnanian and she couldn't understand his sign language?

Putting her two hands up in her head to hint at a crown, Thalia tried again. "The king. Do you know where he went?"

Mirroring her action, Dehan's forehead scrunched up in intense concentration. He looked up at his two hands and head, then shook his head.

Did that meant he didn't understand, or that he didn't know?

"Um..." Why did she want to know, anyway? Thalia lowered her hands from her head, shivering from the cold of the corridor.

Without a single fireplace nearby, Dehan had been sitting on the marble floor, and without anyone's company.

The tip of his nose and ears were pink from the cold.

Holding her hand up, Thalia pointed to the doors. "I'll be- um, back."

After draping her coat and the carpet over her shoulder, Thalia carefully rummaged through Lucien's desk, picked up a few blank papers, his ink pad and quill, and returned to the corridor where Dehan awaited.