Her queen danced like a flame in the wind, and the mercurial king like the weight at the center of the earth.

He looked gravely at the king. "It isn't an easy thing to give your loyalty to someone you don't know, especially when that person chooses to reveal nothing of himself. But no matter, Your Majesty. You are revealed at last." The king looked down at his nakedness and back at the captain. "Was that a joke?" he asked.

I can't leave her there all alone, surrounded by stone walls... She's too precious to give up.

Sophos turned red, and I wondered about the circulation of his blood; maybe his body kept an extra supply of it in his head, ready for blushing.

She pulled the bedclothes up as far as they would go and suppressed a perverse wish to have her old nurse come to chase away the darkness, perverse because she didn't know if she wanted the shadows to be empty or not.

No," he said. "Relius was right and I was wrong. You are My Queen. Even though you cut my head from my shoulders, with my last breath as a noose tightens, to the last beat of my heart if I hang from the walls of the palace, you are My Queen. That I have failed you does not change my love for you or my loyalty.

The queen!" someone shouted in alarm, and the King erupted like a wild animal caught in a snare.