Chapter
Seventeen
Elara
o not get your hopes up.” Vale walks the way men who’ve made a“D habit of going unnoticed do—hands behind his back, pace unhurried, the exact speed of nonchalance. “The scribe may yet refuse us and inform the king, and then we’ll have a problem.”
“A problem,” I say, because repeating stupid words sometimes makes them less so. “Such as the fit the king threw a few days ago, thanks to whatever you said to stir his rage? Whatever was that about?”
“Insults are a currency he spends freely with me.” Vale turns down a narrow run of corridor. “I mentioned a nearby granary where guards got killed and the grain plundered. He disliked hearing it. He also dislikes losing to me at chess.” A sigh. “The two together offended him.”
“That’s all you said?”
“That is all he heard, and nothing more once he threw the table.”
The library door waits for us around the next corner. Vale raps once— not a knock so much as a courtesy. Then, he pushes in.
The smell of paper meets us.
And blood. Lots of it.
The scribe hangs slumped over his lectern, cheek pressed to the margin, jaw slack against the red-stained paper. His quill has drawn a last thin river and dried in mid-stutter. The rag in his stiff hand is stubborn with red threads, and the basin beneath his desk shows a dried sunburst where the last cough tried to wash itself away and failed.
“Saints,” I whisper as I step to the old man and lay two fingers to his throat where a pulse would be if he were alive. He’s not. “Rot took his lungs for good.”
Vale frowns for a second before he simply shrugs. “Let’s go.”
I’m not exactly shocked by his aloofness, though I don’t feel comfortable with it, either. “Shouldn’t we…report it? See to it he gets his grave?”
“Plenty of men die quietly here. Graves are patient.” He lifts the ring of keys from the hook on the side of the lectern and holds them like an apology. “However, time is not patient, and ours is sprinting. At some point, someone else will find the scribe. Come on.”
With a jut of his head that puts me into motion, he turns toward the door behind the lectern. The key slides into the lock and whines, then relents with an effortful click. Hinges complain like tired knees.
“Ophelia,” I say when we enter, the stacks holding up a ceiling that looks like it would rather fall on us and be done. “I want to read up on her coronation. Actually, I want to look through her life.”
Vale slowly shakes his head. “The king’s mother has been dead for many years now. If she gave him the idea, then why has his stubbornness only now turned into nothing short of obsession?”
“Maybe something changed,” I say. “A new discovery of evidence. A new piece to the puzzle.”
Vale only huffs, making it clear he’s not so much helping me out of conviction, but to shut me up and keep me compliant. Which works for me.
Lanterns squat in high niches, their light made shy by the draft coming from windows barely big enough to let a cat in, let alone much brightness.
The air is exhaustedly sweet—glue and leather and a hint of old milk in the paste.
Vale moves, the keys barely speaking in his hand, and steers me to a ceiling-high case with a brass label smudged by many thumbs: Household Annals. “If memory serves, then these are of a more personal sort. Perhaps if you started—”
“I got it from here.” The strap that keeps the book I reach for lifts without argument. I pull it out, place it on the table, and flatten it to a random page. Ink, tidy and smaller than it ought to be, looks up at me.
“Light the table.”
Vale lifts a nearby lantern from the hook. Puts it on the table, where a handful of scrolls lie strewn about. His gaze flicks to my temple; the bruise must be blooming ugly under my hair. “That wound is bad for seduction.”
“I’ll wear it.” I let my pointer trace a line in the book. Something boring about indigestion. “Because it bought me a shame-ridden king who’s trying to make amends. I have a feeling things will be different between us now, allowing me to try for his heart.”
Vale’s mouth doesn’t move, yet it manages to sharpen somehow. “Oh?”
“The salt spring,” I say. “He agreed to go with me.”
“Hmm.” Vale’s silence stretches—long enough that I want to mistake it for quiet disapproval. Then his voice breaks it, soft and deliberate, the kind that slides under skin before it pricks. “Perhaps I was mistaken in my approach. Saints, maybe I should have let you lead from the start.” Words like warm oil on skin, if not for how he adds, “A fine rehearsal for the bedding.”
The word lands like a slap of cold water, making my fingers jerk up from the book. “What do you mean?”
“A spring is made of water, Elara.” He doesn’t rush to elaborate. He leans against the table beside me, rolling his cuffs once, slowly, thoughtfully. “And water, by its nature, doesn’t like cloth. It clings, reveals.
People rarely enter it dressed.” His gaze drifts, almost lazily, over my face before settling on my throat. “And if His Majesty’s weak balance fails him on wet stone? Well, he’ll need help. Steady hands. Your hands.” He lets the weight of it hang there. “Imagine it—skin on skin. His breath, close. His naked body, closer.”
My stomach pitches, twisting so hard it feels like the floor gives under me. Heat crawls up my neck, licking behind my ears and down my collar.
God, I haven’t thought that far. Not really. What if he strips down to nothing? What if…what I have to do the same?
Breathe. Fucking breathe.
The panic hammers once more, twice. Then it dulls. I knew this would come. It’s part of the plan, the price, the inevitable deal. Just…not yet. Not here, not in this room full of too many pages and not enough eyes to read them.
“Shut up,” I snap, louder than I mean to. Or maybe not loud enough, given how Vale smirks, faint and merciless. “I’ll deal with it once it arrives.”
“Of course,” Vale murmurs, the edge of amusement softening to something quieter, almost pity. “After years of loneliness, it’ll be hard for him to hide his…natural desires. His body—”
“Here’s something!” I tap on the page. “On the third hour of the fifth day in Harvest,” I read out loud, “the Lady Ophelia stood with the young prince in the painter’s chamber. The child showed reluctance to take her hand, even though the painter requested it for a pose. Lady Ophelia bade him wait, then produced from her sleeve a small toy—a boxwood horse with a blue thread at the mane. The prince brightened and consented to the pose, clasping Lady Ophelia’s fingers with his left hand and the horse with his right. The painter noted dimples, which Lady Ophelia had encouraged with a smile. The session proceeded without further upset.”
“Ophelia doted. All the old, mostly retired staff know.” Vale touches the open page lightly with the back of his knuckles, as if pointing without having to be impious about it. “It’s all here. Boring things: favorite soups, a gown with lace she favored, how the boy had a talent for numbers. Lovely, domestic nonsense. Tell me, why are we here again?”
“Anything written here that the king refuses to share could be helpful,” I say, turning pages with a thumb that’s feeling for worn seams. Most entries are mundane. A story of how the king broke his arm once. A note on a
cough. “Where is what lit the match?”
“Lit the match?”
“Somewhere, there’s a spark. Something that made a prince grow into a king who decided to break the curse.” Men who feed the poor and tend to their caretakers don’t just get up one day and decide to starve a kingdom.
“If I can find the first thought that said break it, then I can follow its footprints to whatever still listens to reason.”
Even Vale doesn’t argue that logic, and he half-sits, half-leans on the table. “Presume it will suit once the time comes to—why are you smiling?
What is it?”
“Listen to this.” I clear my throat. “By request of Lady Ophelia: the chessboard in the schoolroom is to be fixed to the table; pieces weighted.
The tutor is to stand two paces out of reach when delivering mate, sugared pawns sent after to sweeten tempers.” A chuckle rumbles loose before I can rein it in, and I angle the page toward Vale. “He hated losing so much his mother bolted the game to the furniture.”
He leans in and touches the margin, his warm breath ghosting my cheek and sending a flurry through my core. “Kings have an uneasy pact with checkmate.”
“Maybe I should teach him how to resign with grace.”
The corner of his mouth curves into a true smile, more sincere than I’ve ever seen on him before. “I would pay to see that.”
His finger lingers in the margin, brushing mine. Our eyes lock. For a breath, neither one of us moves. Time slows. That flurry in my core slows with it, turning into a sensuous swell of heat that sinks low into my belly, deeper than anything ever before.
Before it can reach my groin, I breathe it away and nod at the nearby ladder. “Maybe I’ll get luckier up there.”
Vale grabs the rail, steadying the wood. “Careful.”
I test the first rung. It holds.
I climb the ladder that leans into the heavy shelf with more faith than my quivering knees possess. “Heights were never my strength.”
He smirks up at me. “Presume that’s why you prefer to shovel down
into graves instead.”
“Probably.”
I climb two more rungs, the hem of my dress whispering along my calves. The lantern’s breath makes the book titles shine. Inventories. Chapel
Receipts. Sermons.
Boring. Boring. Boring.
I step higher. The ladder complains just as the light shifts, making the spines go pitch black.
I swat at a cobweb that tickles my ear. “I need light up here.”
“Coming.” Vale’s hand leaves the rail, reaching for the— Snap.
The wood turns to powder under my sole.
Gravity makes a claim, and I drop. Air flees my lungs with a sharp squeal, the room blurring into a rush of shelves and shadows. I brace for the
floor, but I never hit it.
I hit him.
It’s a collision of ribs and panic, my body sliding down the hard length of his until his boots take my weight. His arms lock around me instantly— one banding my ribs, the other clamping low on my waist, fingers digging into my hip with a force that has nothing to do with saving me and everything to do with keeping me.
I gasp, my fingers fisting into his vest, gripping leather and thread, waiting for the room to stop tilting. “Oh my god.”
“Are you hurt?” The rumble of his voice is right there, in the sensitive hollow where my neck meets my shoulder.
I unclench his vest, feeling the rapid, violent expand and contract of his lungs beneath my palm. “No. No, I…”
The words die in a throat suddenly too tight to hold them.
I look up.
The lantern’s hiss, paper dust, and the smell of him—carnations and heat—flood my senses. He doesn’t let go; if anything, his grip tightens, pulling my hips flush against his. His gaze is dark, blown wide, dropping to my mouth with the kind of hunger that usually ends in ruin.
My breath turns shallow, trapped high in my chest. His does the same, uneven, a jagged rhythm against my own.
His hand moves first. Not to release me, but to map me. His thumb drags, slow and heavy, along the curve of my waist, pressing into the soft dip of my side with a possessiveness that makes my knees tremble more than the fall ever did.
My hand stutters up the line of his lapel, intending to push. It forgets the command halfway there and curls into his shirt instead.
“Elara,” he breathes, and it sounds like a warning he’s too weak to heed.
We hover there as the air between us pulls taut. He leans in, a fraction of an inch, testing the gravity. I don’t retreat. I can’t. My chin tips up, a silent,
damning invitation.
Then, he sinks in.
There is nothing shy about it. His mouth crashes onto mine, hot and desperate and tasting of secrets. A moan vibrates in his chest against my
palms as he devours the gasp I try to take. His lower lip drags roughly against mine, prying me open, and then his tongue is there—a flick, a stroke, a deep, sweeping claim that wrecks me.
Heat floods my veins, liquid and heavy. I melt into him, my body curving to fit the hard lines of his, my hands sliding up to tangle in the black curls at the nape of his neck.
Vale groans, a low, ruined sound, and hauls me closer until the only things left in the world are pressure, friction, and the taste of him chasing my mouth and catching it with— He gasps. It’s sharp and wrong, as if something pinched him, sending a tremor through his entire body.
He pulls away from me, hands leaving my body, green eyes chasing something on the floor that I can’t seem to see.
“I shouldn’t have… I don’t know why I did that.” The words scrape out at first, but then his voice recovers quicker than my pride can handle as he tugs the wrinkled proof of us from his sleeves. “Best forget that I did, and trust it will never happen again.”
“Right.” Heat climbs my neck, and I step away from him and back into purpose. Purpose is easier to look at than the ugly maw of rejection.
Anger flares. At him, at me.
Mostly at me.
I don’t get to feel rejected by a man I don’t even want. I don’t get to ache over the wrong mouth. What am I doing, letting heat climb this far with the steward who walks me toward a blade? Vale is a means, an accomplice to my ending—nothing more—and I’ve just kissed him like I’m
allowed to live.
Fool!
I pull the word over myself like a wet cloak, turn, and face the shelf instead. Gold shifts on the spine of one of the books, writhing under the flicker of candlelight. Household Annals—Ophelia.
“Let’s finish what we came for.” I pull the book out, flatten it open on the table, and flip to a random ledger. Fevers reported, then another. Walks taken. Menses reported. Useless. Useless. Useless. “Maybe you were right.
Maybe there’s nothing helpful here.”
Another page flip… …and then a tug.
A page catches, thick where the corner has been folded under. It must’ve been stuck to its neighbor for years, maybe longer, the edges faintly glued together by age and dampness. I pry it loose. The sound is small, papery, but Vale’s head lifts at it, anyway.
“There’s something here,” I murmur, smoothing the brittle leaf flat. The handwriting runs close to the spine, half-faded where it’s been pressed shut so long.
Vale goes still behind me. “Likely an inventory of prayers or some other domestic triviality.”
“Maybe…” I lean closer, squinting at the script. “It’s about her coronation. Per the date, the king must’ve been around…fifteen at the time?”
His silence sharpens before he exhales softly. “Then read.”
Upon the third toll of the bell, Her Majesty, Queen Ophelia, displayed agitation unseemly of the rite. The chaplain urged calm, though Her Majesty continued to protest.
Witnesses report she struck one attendant across the face and attempted to flee the fountain, during which she tore her gown and lacerated her forehead upon the paving stones. Her speech thereafter grew incoherent—weeping mingling with laughter. The chaplain deemed her seized by hysteria as Her Majesty, Queen Ophelia, accused His Majesty, the king, of having “slaughtered the last queen in the royal chamber,” and of having “made his son, the prince, watch.”
When His Majesty brought forth the blade, Her Majesty fell to her knees before the dais, pleading that Prince Kael be taken away, shouting that she would not be bled before his eyes.
The prince, overcome by distress, broke from the dais and attempted to reach his mother. Two guards were dispatched to restrain him and were injured in the effort.
When he could not be subdued, Death appeared in His divine form. His touch stilled the prince, who fell senseless and silent until four additional guards arrived to remove him by royal order.
Her Majesty’s cries subsided only after the chaplain completed the anointing. The rite concluded under ecclesiastical supervision. Chalice received. —Marginal note (Chaplain S.): I have counseled His Majesty to place the prince under lock and key. For his safety and survival, his chamber has been stripped of unnecessary items; windows to be barred.
I read the words again.
Then once more.
The ink looks steady, measured—written by a hand untouched by the chaos it describes. But the meaning beneath it begins to pulse, faint and awful.
“Slaughtered the last queen in the royal chamber.” The second queen.
The bloodstain beneath the rug. “She said King Merrick made his son watch. The prince.” The phrasing gnaws at me like a rat behind the walls.
“Why accuse him of having made Kael watch the death of a former queen when—”
The thought halts halfway out of my mouth. Something’s wrong here… “When what?” Vale asks.
“When Kael wasn’t even born yet.” My eyes go back to the entry.
Slaughtered the last queen in the royal chamber and made his son the prince watch. “Did King Merrick have another son prior to Kael? An older
heir?”
Vale scoffs. “No.”
Those faraway murmurs echo through my skull again, faint and unintelligible. “But then why else would she have said something like that?”
Vale’s hand comes to rest beside me on the table as he leans over the page. “Hysteria,” he says, smooth and steady. “You see it plainly right here.
The chaplain wrote of delirium. She struck attendants, split her brow, likely concussed. Her words were nonsense.”
I want to agree, and god, I almost do. But the thought won’t die. It lingers, quiet and stubborn, like a half-buried seed that refuses to rot.
“What if they weren’t?”
Vale’s mouth curves into something polite but firm. “If there had been an older heir, I would know.”
I turn to face him. “You’ve only been steward for three years.”
“Her panic found words, Elara, that is all. Nothing else is mentioned of another son here. Or anywhere.”
Vale’s logic holds, neat as fresh stitching. And yet…
“Fine,” I say. “Then let’s prove it.”
He tilts his head. “Prove what?”
“That there wasn’t another heir. If Ophelia was delirious, then the annals of the second queen should show no mention of birth or a child, right? What was her name again?”
Vale stares at me as if I’ve gone mad, but eventually says, “Queen Maeryn.”
I stride to the next aisle, eyes scanning the flickering spines. The shelves narrow around me, their smell of dust and age swallowing every sound but my breath. The brass labels blur by—ledgers, taxes, inventories—until a low trunk crouches beneath a table, stenciled in faded paint: Household Annals—Maeryn.
I drop to a crouch, pulse thudding in my fingertips as I reach for the hasp. “This might take a minute.”
Vale doesn’t move closer, but his presence feels like a shadow at my back. “We’re running out of time, Elara.”
“I’ll hurry.” The latch clicks open. Hinges bark. Dust blooms, then parts
like a curtain.
The trunk is tidy.
Extremely tidy.
Because it’s empty, aside from dust printing around the absence where book-shapes were lifted recently. A faint smear where a thumb had slid along the bottom is the only thing left behind.
Vale peers in and makes a small, knowing sound. “If I were a suspicious man,” he says lightly, “I’d say someone made certain those records couldn’t trouble you.”
