Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Elara
“Do not get your hopes up.” Vale walks the way men who’ve made a 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.