20
Kason
I woke to Teodor's fist against my door, markedly earlier than the morning session's scheduled start, and understood, from the specific urgency of the knocking alone, that whatever had happened overnight hadn't waited politely for a reasonable hour.
"The steward talked," he said, the moment I'd opened the door, not bothering with any of his usual careful preamble.
"Not maliciously, from what I've gathered — he mentioned it to another servant in passing, half in shock, and it spread through the kitchens and the stable hands before anyone thought to contain it.
By the time it reached me, it had already grown considerably past a simple kiss in a corridor. "
"Grown how."
"Grown into a rumor that the crown prince has been secretly courting a Frostmark heir under the Council's own roof, protecting her from lawful inquiry with a personal exemption designed specifically to shield the truth.
" Teodor's expression carried the particular grimness of a man delivering worse news than he'd hoped to.
"I don't know precisely which servant connected those specific dots first, but someone did, and it's traveled through this castle overnight far faster than any official announcement ever could have. "
I sat with that a long moment, understanding the full shape of what a single witnessed kiss had already cost us, considerably sooner than either my father or I had planned to spend it. "Halmar."
"Already informed, and already furious, though whether at the substance of the rumor or simply at learning it secondhand rather than from the throne directly, I couldn't say with certainty.
" Teodor crossed his arms, the stillness he brought to genuinely difficult news.
"He's called an emergency session before the Gathering's formal morning business.
Every Voivode currently in this castle is going to want an answer, Kason, and I don't think 'we're still deciding the timing' is going to satisfy a room this agitated. "
I dressed quickly, the distinct cold clarity of crisis settling over me the way it always did once the initial shock had passed, and made my way toward my father's study, already composing in my head the shape of whatever I intended to say to a Council that had just been handed, overnight, much more of the truth than any of us had chosen to give them.
My father was already awake, and Ilinca was with him, both of them bent over a hastily drafted statement that I understood, reading it, represented the best compromise three exhausted people had managed to reach somewhere past midnight.
"The Council's called an emergency session," I said, without preamble.
"I know. Halmar sent word an hour ago." My father set down his pen, weary but composed, the particular steadiness he'd carried through thirty years of ruling settling visibly over him now that the moment had genuinely arrived.
"We go with the truth. All of it, plainly stated, on our terms rather than the Council's.
I'd rather control the shape of this disclosure than let a night's worth of servant gossip continue defining it for us. "
"And the Wardstone? The Unbound?"
"Everything relevant. The Council needs the full picture to make sound decisions, and I don't think we serve anyone by managing a partial truth any longer than we already have.
" He looked to Ilinca, and something in the gesture told me plainly that this decision, at least, had genuinely been made together. "Are you ready for this?"
"No," she said, honestly, though her voice held steady. "But I don't think ready is a luxury currently available to any of us. I'd rather walk into that room prepared and afraid than wait for a version of myself that isn't afraid at all. I don't think that version is coming in time to matter."
The emergency session ran considerably longer than any council meeting I'd presided over in ten years of practice, thirty Voivodes absorbing, in real time, a truth that reshaped their understanding of the throne they'd spent generations serving.
Halmar's questions came sharp and thorough, though significantly less hostile once the full shape of my father's and my own six-week silence had been laid plain — the loyalist network, Katra's murder, the Unbound's methodical hunt, the Wardstone's uncertain mechanism, all of it given to a room that had, by the session's end, considerably more questions than answers but, crucially, no further reason to suspect the throne of active concealment.
Ilinca answered every question directed at her with a composure that left even Halmar's sharpest allies with little further ground to press, her wardsmith's precision translating, in that room, into something noticeably closer to formidable than fragile.
The broad-shouldered Voivode who'd cornered her the night before pressed hardest, unwilling to let the matter rest as easily as some of the others.
"And what assurance does this Council have that a woman raised entirely outside any pack structure, entirely outside this kingdom's traditions, carries any genuine loyalty to Vardain at all, whatever her blood happens to say about her birthright? "
"None," Ilinca said, before either my father or I could answer for her, her voice carrying clear and steady across the full chamber.
"You have no assurance beyond my own word, and I understand a stranger's word carries little weight against a bloodline's history you've only just learned exists.
But I'd ask this Council to consider what six years of quiet, deliberate survival actually taught me, if nothing else — that power used carelessly costs people their lives, and that I have spent my entire adult life avoiding exactly the kind of attention a throne now insists belongs to me.
I didn't seek this. I don't especially want it.
But I understand, better than most people in this room, precisely what it costs to protect something worth protecting, because I watched the woman who raised me die doing exactly that.
If this Council needs proof of my loyalty to this kingdom, I'd offer that as the only proof I currently have to give. "
The chamber went quiet in a way I recognized, the stillness that followed genuine, unguarded honesty rather than practiced political speech, and I watched several Voivodes who'd arrived that morning prepared for hostility reconsider, visibly, the shape of the woman actually standing in front of them.
"This Council will need time," Halmar said, once the worst of the questioning had finally subsided, "to properly absorb what we've been given today.
But I'll say this plainly, Your Highness, Your Majesty — a throne that finally chooses honesty, however delayed, earns considerably more trust from me than one that continues managing its people's understanding on its own convenient timeline.
I'd rather have today's difficult truth than another six weeks of comfortable silence. "
The session closed without formal resolution, the Council's full response deferred to further deliberation across the Gathering's remaining days, but I understood, walking out of that chamber with Ilinca's hand steady in mine, that we'd survived the morning's crisis substantially better than the night's chaos had promised we might.
The Unbound's response arrived considerably faster than the Council's.
A rider reached Castle Ironmoor before evening, exhausted and wolfsbane-scented in a way that told the whole story before he'd said a single word, carrying word from a border informant embedded, quietly, within the Unbound's own scattered network for the better part of a year.
Varak Ossendrei had learned of the previous night's events.
Not through rumor alone — through a source markedly closer to this castle than any of us had suspected, someone with access to the Gathering itself, who'd carried word of the witnessed kiss and the emergency session's substance to the Unbound's leadership within hours rather than days.
I met with the informant myself, once Teodor had confirmed his identity beyond doubt — a gaunt, wary man who'd clearly spent the ride convinced he wouldn't survive delivering his own report, and whose fear, once I understood the full shape of what he'd risked to bring it, seemed considerably less excessive than it had first appeared.
"There's someone inside this Gathering feeding information out," he said, hands wrapped tight around a cup of water he hadn't yet managed to drink from.
"I don't know who. I know only that Ossendrei had the substance of last night's kiss and this morning's Council session within hours, which means whoever's carrying word has access far closer to the throne than a stable hand or a kitchen servant would explain. "
"Someone in this Gathering itself. A Voivode, or a Voivode's retainer.
" The singular cold that settled through me at that confirmed a fear I'd been circling since the report first arrived — that the danger wasn't only approaching from outside Castle Ironmoor's walls, but already, possibly, standing somewhere inside them. "Do you have a name?"
"Not yet. I'll keep listening, if you'll have me.
" He met my eyes with the particular steadiness of a man who'd already decided the risk was worth taking regardless of the cost. "But I'd act quickly, Your Highness, on the part I can already confirm.
Costin Drell doesn't wait for perfect information once he's been given an order.
He's efficient. Patient in the planning, ruthless in the execution.
I've seen what he leaves behind when Ossendrei sends him for something specific. "
"He's given the order," the informant reported, relayed through Teodor with a grimness that settled cold and immediate in my chest. "Costin Drell is to move on her directly.
Not scouting any longer, not patient reconnaissance.
Ossendrei wants her taken, or confirmed beyond doubt, before the Gathering closes and this kingdom has the chance to formally secure her behind its full protection. "
I read the report twice, understanding, with a clarity that left no further room for the careful, deliberate pace either my father or I had hoped to maintain, that whatever time we'd believed the Gathering's remaining days still afforded us had just collapsed entirely.
Costin Drell. I didn't yet know the name's full weight, only that it belonged to a man the Unbound trusted enough to execute their leader's most urgent orders personally, and that he was already, according to the informant's last confirmed sighting, considerably closer to Castle Ironmoor than any of us had believed the Unbound capable of reaching.
I found Teodor waiting outside my study, already reading the shape of the crisis in my face before I'd said a single word.
"Double the guard around her. Immediately," I said. "And find out everything this kingdom knows about a man named Costin Drell, before he decides the Gathering's remaining days are worth the risk of reaching her here, inside the one place I promised her she'd be safe."
Teodor moved fast, already issuing orders before he'd finished crossing the corridor, and I found Ilinca in the archive wing an hour later, exactly where I expected her, though the guards now stationed discreetly at both ends of the corridor told her, before I'd said a single word, exactly how seriously the day's news had already been taken.
"Something's happened," she said, setting down her tools the moment she saw my face.
"Ossendrei knows about last night. He's given a direct order — a man named Costin Drell is coming for you, and much sooner than any of us hoped this threat would materialize.
" I crossed the room, needing the simple, grounding fact of her nearness more than I wanted to admit even to myself.
"I've doubled your guard. I'm not leaving you unaccompanied again, not for ten minutes, not for any reason short of an emergency I judge personally. "
Something flickered across her face — fear, unmistakably, though tempered by a steadiness I'd come to recognize as entirely, specifically hers. "Do you know who he is? This Costin Drell?"
"Not yet. Teodor's working on it now." I took her hands in mine, needing the contact as much for my own steadiness as for hers.
"I'm frightened, Ilinca. I want you to know that plainly, rather than pretend a composure I don't currently possess.
I've faced Unbound scouts in open combat and felt less afraid than I feel right now, standing here telling you a man is coming specifically for you. "
"I'm frightened too." She said it simply, without apology, her hands tightening around mine.
"But I'm not facing it the way I would have seven weeks ago, alone in a market stall with no one to tell.
Whatever comes, I have you. I have Yeva, and Teodor, and an entire castle that's apparently decided, against every careful political calculation, to actually stand behind me.
That has to count for something, even against a threat this large. "
"It counts for everything." I pressed a kiss to her knuckles, the same gesture I'd offered weeks before, though considerably more urgent now, significantly more determined.
"Whatever Costin Drell intends, he'll find this castle considerably better defended than he's counting on. I promise you that."
The promise felt solid, saying it. I had no way of knowing yet how little it was about to be worth.