She stood. Sorath stood. They walked together out of the dining room — the girl in white silk and the prince covered in hives, side by side, three inches apart, moving through the candlelit corridor with the particular, awkward dignity of two people who were both pretending that the situation was normal when it was, by any reasonable measure, catastrophically absurd.
"You knew," Sorath said as they turned the corner. His voice was quiet now. Not the performance voice — the dinner voice, the prince voice, the voice designed to carry across rooms and centuries. This was private. Close. The voice of a man speaking to someone he was not trying to impress.
"I knew," Cordelia said.
"You watched your mother pour garlic into my wine, and you said nothing."
"I did."
"May I ask why?"
