Tristan found her in the temple.
"River, what did you do?"
His voice echoed off the temple walls. The words were flat, devastated, the voice of a man who already knew the answer and was asking anyway because the alternative was accepting it in silence.
River didn't answer. She was curled in a tight ball on a stone slab, her knees pulled to her chest, her arms wrapped around herself. White hair fell across her face in a curtain that hid everything except the sound of soft crying.
Tristan turned on the priestess. The green in his eyes was a wildfire.
"You performed a severing without my knowledge." His voice climbed into a register that the temple had never heard and the priestess had rarely faced. "Without my consent. Without the authorization of the council or the crown. You severed a royal bond in this temple, on her word alone, and you did it while I was unconscious in a bed and unable to stop it."
