Chapter 17 #2
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.”