For a single heartbeat, her walls crumbled. Her tongue moved instinctively to tell him—to pour out the crushing terror of the blood-stained note, to lean into his chest and let him carry the weight just as he had done in the quiet darkness of the night before.
But before the words could form in her throat, his cold, polite response to Jericho from earlier that morning echoed violently in her ears like a slap to the face:
"Our relationship is strictly that of a Queen and her court jester. That is all we are, and all we will ever be."
The fleeting warmth in her crimson eyes died instantly. A wall of impenetrable, biting frost descended over her features.
"It is nothing a mere jester like you needs to concern himself with," she said coldly, turning her gaze away from him and staring blankly at the stack of papers on her desk.
