She reached out and touched the king’s face, cupping his cheek in her hand.

‘Just a nightmare,’ he said, his voice still rough.

The queen’s voice was cool. ‘How embarrassing,’ she said, looking at his maimed arm.

The king looked up then, and followed her gaze. If it was embarrassing to wake like a child screaming from a nightmare, how much more embarrassing to be the reason your husband woke screaming. A quick smile visited the king’s face. ‘Ouch,’ he said, referring to more than the pain in his side. ‘Ouch,’ he said again as the queen gathered him into her arms.

‘Tell me what I should say, then,’ the queen asked.

The king sighed. Forgetting Costis standing nearby, forgetting possibly that anyone or anything else in the world existed, the king said shakily, ‘tell me you won’t cut out my lying tongue, tell me you won’t blind me, you won’t drive red-hot wires into my ears.’

After one moment of gripped immobility, the queen bent to kiss the king lightly on one closed eyelid, then the other. She said, ‘I love your eyes.’ She kissed him on either cheek, near the small lobe of his ear. ‘I love your ears, and I love’ – she paused as she kissed him gently on the lips – ‘every single one of your ridiculous lies.’

The king lifted a hand to her cheek and kissed her. It was not a kiss between strangers, not even a kiss between a bride and groom. It was a kiss between a man and his wife, and when it was over, the king closed his eyes and rested his forehead in the hollow of the queen’s shoulder, like a man seeking respite, like a man reaching home at the end of the day.