POV: shallan
Summary
Shallan practices being someone else in her rooms in Sebarial's section of the tower, a balcony room she begged onto the borders of the building so she would not be entirely swallowed by the dark of the tower. She breathes out Stormlight and feels it settle on her face, then steps through her own illusion as Veil: black hair, an angular nose, lean strength under a sturdy coat, callused safehand, no time for the long trailing sleeve. She circles the bare room in Veil's gait and tries her voice — deeper, rougher — running orders aloud, while Pattern hums approval. She has been sneaking out to draw her face in detail and the lips, at least, are right.
A knock at her doorway interrupts her. Expecting Palona, she calls *come* without checking, and Adolin walks in one-handed with a platter of food while she is still in her nightgown and bare-handed besides. They shout each other out of the room and through the doorway-curtain while she frantically wraps her safehand, drags on a dress, and recovers some of the Stormlight she had been bleeding off. They land in a flirting truce — birthmark on the left thigh, the knock was feminine, etc. — and he comes back in with the food.
He has brought her dinner because Palona told him she had skipped it, and a small stack of books on the Makabaki because his father had her lost during yesterday's politics meeting. She makes him sit on the floor with her — she has no chairs — and turns down a bite of his men's pork curry until he can wear her down. The first bite burns her tongue off; she drinks his water and Adolin's chuckling and tells him she hates him. They are warm with each other in a way that startles her into thinking, in clear words, *do not screw this up*.
For propriety Shallan calls Pattern out and formally introduces him to Adolin — naming his kind as Cryptic (not Shallanspren, Pattern sniffs) and finally telling Adolin that her real order is the Lightweavers, not the Elsecaller order she pretends in front of Dalinar's court. Pattern settles onto the side of a bowl to play chaperone, asks earnestly whether the inappropriate behaviour he is supposed to prevent is *dividing by zero*, and is told to please just keep an eye on them. The truth that has lodged in Shallan's head as one of the Lightweaver Ideals — that as a child she killed her own mother with the sword that is now Pattern, and that her father took the blame and was destroyed for it — rises into her throat and she pushes it back down to enjoy this evening for what it is.
After dinner, Adolin hesitantly raises *something else* he needs to talk to her about, and she braces for him to break the betrothal off. Instead it is that she had no idea Palona cared, and that her hair is currently in revolt, and — and he has been worrying that he is going to fail her now that she turns out to be a half-divine being from the storybooks. Shallan tells him no one is good at relationships, and offers up the cautionary tale of the last ardent she fell for: Kabsal, who tried to assassinate her with poisoned bread on his way to Jasnah. They kiss. Pattern bursts into the air pulsing rapidly through shapes and announces *NO MATING*. They collapse into laughter.
She steers him back to the books he carried in. May Aladar has sent over a notebook collecting interviews with Vedekar Perel's family and friends — where he had been before his death, who saw him last, anything off — and there are several volumes of Makabaki political background besides. Shallan takes them gladly, Adolin mock-disclaims that he listened to ardents lecture him as a boy, and they sit down to read. She promises him, as he picks the report up to leaf through, that neither of them is going to wreck this, despite what at times might look like their best efforts. He believes her, which warms her more than the wine.