Chapter 6In the Long Gallery, scores of deceased Starskeep rulers and family members—and a few favorite horses and dogs—regarded Arthur with benevolent patience in painted faces. Rain plummeted down tall windows in sheets of watery glass, and the marble floor lay cool and flat under their steps. Each footfall echoed.
Arthur wasn’t sure he wanted to think about echoes at the moment. Or reverberations. Or disapprovals. Or the dull ache inside his chest, like that’d been bruised too. Like Alan’s, only not visible.
“Arthur.” Horatius had set Arthur’s hand on his own arm, very proper, as they walked; he set his own atop it now. His eyes were dark brown, earnest, dismayed. “I do need to apologize. Of course I should have said so to you first. And I shouldn’t allow myself to be…to be provoked b
