Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
Elara
Squeak-squeak-squeal.
Blessed saints, the wheelchair I found in the infirmary sounds like a nest of frantic mice when I push it through the chamber’s threshold.
Getting this thing past Miss Hampshire without her noticing wasn’t the easiest task by any stretch of the imagination.
Vale was much easier, namely because he’s been blessedly absent ever since our greenhouse disagreement.
Time to get the king out.
Out of the room, out of the gloom, out of the habit of listening to his own decay.
If he moves, he might talk. And if he talks, he might show me the man under the ruin.
And if I can find that man, then I might find his heart.
And if I have his heart…then maybe I can learn who taught him to fight the curse instead of feed it.
I set my foot against the rear axle, test the wobble, lean on the handles until the right wheel groans instead of screams. “Good evening, Your Majesty.”
He sits where he always sits: half-turned on that low couch, as if lying down costs too much effort. “Come to pester me at such a dark hour? You ought to—what…what is that?”
“A chair,” I say, likely with a bit too much cheer in my voice. “With wheels.”
Two lines cut between his eyes, tightening the pink skin I coaxed smooth yesterday. “Miss Hampshire would never have consented to this.”
“That’s why I snuck this thing past her room.”
“I refuse.”
“It’s either the chair,” I tell him, nudging the cushion so it huffs dust like an old man clearing his throat, “or I light every candle in this mausoleum, line them all in front of you, and lash your lids open with gauze. Choose your miracle.”
His lungs almost remember a laugh, then abandon the attempt when his chest rattles. “You know nothing of miracles.”
“I know they rarely attend the lazy.” I move beside him. “Lean forward. Heel under. One. Two. Th—”
“Do not count at me.”
“Then move at one.”
He grumbles a word that would start wars if spoken in court before he gets his foot under himself—bare, cold, old grace in the way he tests the floor before weight—hands braced at either side.
For a moment, he’s heavier with flesh than pride.
Then pride lifts and flesh follows. He drops into the chair like a king refusing to concede even to gravity.
“Blanket.” I tuck it over his lap.
His gaze falls to my hands, lingering for a beat. “I should dismiss you.”
“Sure. After our walk.”
We squeal into the corridor, stone growing damper the closer we come to the gardens. Two footmen argue in whispers about what they ought to do at the sight of their rotting king, if anything. They do what men often do best: nothing.
The side door sticks like old doors do, but my shoulder makes quick work of it. Cold breath spills in. The king flinches at the first bite, then holds still as if listening to something he hasn’t heard in a long time.
“Wind,” I inform him.
He lets out a grunt. “It stings.”
“It reminds you that you have lungs.”
The garden keeps itself alive as best it can. Water worries a stone somewhere. Dew sets tiny greedy teeth into the edges of my old shoes. I push off the flagstones and onto a seam of black-green moss, the wheels going quiet in the moon’s half mercy.
“Did you come here often?” A question that’s innocent enough, if not for the fact that his mother clearly appreciated plants. Why else the greenhouse gift? “I mean, in the past. Before the rot climbed these trees.”
He lifts one foot from the rest, baring his pale toes, and lets the ball skim damp grass. “Once,” he says. Then, more reluctantly. “Often.”
His head maps the sky like a man embarrassed to be caught marveling at the stars. Then, a cough rattles his chest.
“Does the cold air pain you?” I ask.
“It reminds me I have lungs, like you suggested.” He watches his breath rise and vanish. “Pain is a cartographer…it draws boundaries.”
“That’s useful. Boundaries keep fools out.”
“I am more concerned with fools kept in.”
My giggle jumps out before I can warn it not to. He looks up, startled by my amusement, as if he dropped a small jest by accident and isn’t sure whether to pick it up again.
Then his mouth tilts—almost a smile.
Moonlight is a liar with good intentions in that moment.
It smooths the angry reds to salt-pale, inks his eyes blue, lays a clean edge along high cheekbone and jaw where royalty survived.
Close-cropped gold looks like wheat in frost. Come to think of it, his mouth is a fine, decisive line.
Even his hand on the blanket reads handsome work: signet knuckles, long fingers, and—
His gaze cuts through my stare.
For a heartbeat, something sharp flickers behind his eyes—shame, maybe, or anger at being seen as anything less than a ruin. “Focus on the path,” he says, too low, too fast, his gaze shooting forward again.
“I’m sorry.” The words scrape out, brittle, heat gnawing my nape.
Silence follows, stretching long enough that I think I’ve lost him. Then a slow shift—his shoulders easing, his breath exhaling long and slow.
“I used to study on the east lawn,” he ventures carefully, almost like a peace offering for a battle we’re both growing tired of fighting.
“Scrolls. A blanket. My mother at the windows, thudding them shut when her eyes and nose would not stop itching.” A breath, softer.
“Occasionally, she would venture out and indulge me with a game of chess beneath a tree.”
Something unclenches under my ribs that I must’ve braced against since stepping out here. This is the first time he’s shared anything personal with me.
A tingle of hope.
“Did she let you win?”
“Never. Losing teaches an even temper, she said.” The corners of his mouth trudge up. He smiles, truly smiles. Then the smile wobbles, folds, and dies. “Clearly, the lesson was lost on me.”
And there it is again, that little vise under my ribs, tightening at the sadness in his voice, the tension clawing the air. I could prod, ask what else she taught him besides losing—like how to break a curse, for example—but the last thing I need is for my impatience to kill a decent minute.
“Your chest is healing up well,” I say, picking a softer lever as I angle us toward the water’s whisper. “Your eyes seem to be clearing up, and nothing has torn on your face today.” Even the bald spots on his scalp seem to carry a newborn fluff of gold. “The crown was generous.”
“Yes, we are surrounded by its charity. Let us kneel in gratitude.” A muscle jumps beneath his ear. “I do not care for any of its offerings.”
“I noticed.” I slow the wheelchair, almost as if navigating around potential pitfalls in this conversation is a physical hurdle. “Some days, it mends only slightly quicker than you can undo it. As if it’s a race you mean to win by losing.” A breath for courage. “Another lesson from someone?”
His head turns as if he wants to look back at me, only to pause halfway through a breath before his attention sinks to his toes. “I am bored with talking about myself. Tell me something about you.”
My tongue presses against the roof of my mouth. I got close, didn’t I? But that’s neither here nor there, now that he’s changing the subject, putting up a wall against my efforts.
“What would you like to know?”
“Tell me about your family. About something that your thoughts drift back to when you’re alone in your chamber at night.”
My fingers tighten around the handles as my mind strains to find a cheerful memory that can maintain the mood.
Most of them lie so far back, but…maybe this one?
Daron at seven, with flour in his hair, sword fighting with a stale crust, swearing he’d make a meal laugh before it was eaten.
Something warm enough to hold the moment steady, but—
“Is your family well?” the king cuts through my thoughts. “Healthy? Or are they…ill?”
The question tightens like wire around my knuckles. Be true, Vale had said. But what if the truth makes the night fold back on itself?
“My brother…” I gather breath to the top of my lungs where it won’t shake, taste the metal of it, and feel the answer splinter against my teeth. “Rot chews his nails. The missing knuckle wakes him. He’s silly. He’s too thin. He is…loved.”
Silence.
Heart-rending silence.
“Reign of Rot.” The king’s jaw knots on the words until it grates, the little warmth we’d gathered draining out of him with them. “I know full well it is what the streets say.”
“Streets aren’t meant for saying kind things, and alleys even less so.” I turn us toward the water. Maybe it’s a distraction cleaner than memory. “Look. It’s the fountain I discovered yesterday.”
From a distance, the statue at the center could be a man.
Nearer, the differences assert themselves.
Cloak thrown over shoulders, mostly made of sinew.
The left hand lifted, palm up, offering a heart that is not a heart, not really—too smooth, too perfect, a symbol dressed in veins.
The right hand is hidden deeper in the folds.
You could call the face beautiful if you were a poet.
You could call it a skull if you were drunk and honest.
Somehow, it’s both.
“What is it?”
“Death.” He all but spits that name, looking at the statue like it’s a relative he barely tolerates. “To remind us of what is owed to this unfeeling monster. It was erected by my father.”
That last word drips with enough disdain that it might leave puddles on the ground. “You didn’t care for him.”
“The crown demanded that I slit his throat.” His hands tighten on the blanket, the tendons showing white. “Did you know? Did someone tell you how the crown gets passed on?”
I shake my head. “Miss Hampshire wouldn’t approve of such talk.”
“That’s how it goes. Father crowns son, and son ends father. That’s the mercy of it.” His voice sharpens. “But mercy wasn’t what I wanted.”
Silence takes care to step out of the way when I say, “What did you want?”
“To put my blade in his eye,” he says. “And then the other. He screamed like an animal, and I didn’t mind it.
I opened his neck; I stabbed his groin. I ripped up into the belly he filled while he lectured me about goodness—stabbed, stabbed, stabbed—until even the crown was bored and counted it done.
” His mouth pulls tight. “Many years, I’d waited for the opportunity to kill him. ”
My tongue turns to iron, unmoving. Every clever sentence I brought dies in my mouth like a fly in milk. I’ve collected men butchered like that in alleys, but there’s a difference between arranging the pieces and listening to the hand that broke them say it liked the sound.
My next swallow goes down like dust as I cling to this raw truth between us, the anchor it could be into vulnerability. “You were—”
“Enough.” The word stabs the cold air like an ice shard. “Back.”
“We could—”
“Back.” The old, clean cruelty returns to his voice. “Do you hear me?! Take me back! Now!”
It’s not a roar. Roars need breath.
It’s a lash.
It cracks me into motion, my steps wobbly as though I’m barefoot on the shards of my miserable defeat. There’s no more prying anything out of him anytime soon. It’s locked behind temper and tenacity, every word a door I don’t have a damn key for.
But maybe keys aren’t what I need.
Not if I have a lockpick.
If I can’t lure clues from the king’s mouth, then I’ll steal them from ink and parchment. Lies. Distractions. Something has to get me into the library, or to some lesser recordings, even if it takes feigning curiosity over bowel movements.
The chair shrieks, and the hedge behind me answers with a small, precise rustle. I don’t turn. If it’s staff, then I better get close to the annals before Miss Hampshire hears of this incident and throws me out with or without the king’s urging. And if it’s Vale?
Pfft… He’ll be chuckling in the dark, counting my mistakes like beads.