Chapter 4 #2
Evelyne let the silence linger while she continued to eat her breakfast, before she set her utensils on the porcelain plate with a quiet clink and asked, “Has there been word from the western patrols?”
Her father glanced toward the windows. “Kaer’Vosh has been quieter than usual. Which, in their case, makes me more wary than if they were making noise. They’ve diverted their caravans around Nyvaron three times this month, and none of their trade delegates have signed the new grain accords.”
Evelyne dipped her head just as a servant stepped forward, laying black bread with caraway seeds onto kind’s plate before withdrawing in silence. Rhaedor scooped butter with the tip of his knife, pressing it into the bread’s warm pockets
“Your cousin is overseeing the garrison there,” he continued. “He sent word two days ago. He may not make it to the wedding. Given the circumstances, we can probably excuse his absence.”
“I wouldn’t expect him to,” Evelyne replied.
“Hadrian’s duty is to the border. I would rather have one fewer toast at the feast than a flare on our flank.
Though his wife will certainly be missed.
Lady Meriane always had a way of keeping everyone laughing.
And it’s been far too long since I’ve seen the children. ”
Her father studied her for a moment. Evaluating.
“Have we responded?” she probed.
Her father shook his head, “Not yet. But if they reroute again, we’ll signal Hadrian.”
Evelyne’s eyes narrowed. “If they test us anyway, then we remind them that we may dress for peace, but we are not unarmed. We have the largest army; we have nothing to fear.”
He gave a small grunt of approval, studying her over the rim of his cup.
“Who would’ve thought I’d be marrying you off to Varantia, of all places?” he murmured with a dry huff. “From rival to ally—our ever-charming neighbors.”
Evelyne tilted her head.
“Polished, talkative,” he continued. “They’ll spill half the kingdom’s secrets over a bottle of wine and a well-placed compliment.”
“And we’ll pretend not to listen,” she remarked, “while writing it all down.”
“Still,” Rhaedor added, fingers drumming lightly against the carved armrest, “they are not our enemy. Nor our kin.”
“No,” Evelyne agreed softly. “But they’re what we need. And we are what they fear.”
“You know,” he admitted after a pause, “I nearly turned them down.”
That drew her eyebrows up. “Truly?”
“Mm.” He leaned back. “Their prince may be golden, but their grain is the only thing keeping half the southern coast from starving. And there are whispers about him. About both of them—him and that old raven of a grandfather. Constantly poking holes where things ought to stay sealed.”
Evelyne reached for the platter, adding a few spoonfuls of food to her plate she had no intention of eating. The motion gave her hands purpose while her mind worked.
“You mean… forbidden arts?”
“Yes. Enough to make certain allies nervous. Enough to make me wary.”
“And yet you agreed.”
“Because we need grain more than comfort. And because I’d rather have the prince close than guessing his motives from a continent away.”
She hesitated. “So, you offer me, as the cost of insight.”
He didn’t flinch. “I offer you because I trust you’ll see what others won’t. And because they won’t expect that of an Edrathen’s bride.”
Something turned in her stomach. He had ruled with quiet severity, his wives soft-voiced and ornamental, fading into the castle drapery. He had never treated a woman as an equal in court, not once asked Ysara’s counsel. Yet now he offered her not only permission but expectation.
Evelyne finished loading her plate to full, then turned her head and caught Isildeth’s gaze. The maid gave a near-imperceptible nod and rose to begin their quiet ritual. She would take the plate under the familiar pretense that Evelyne would finish her meal in her chambers.
But it wouldn’t go there.
Three times a day, the food was carried elsewhere—down the winding halls and out the servants’ wing, to the kitchens and out again, where a child might smile over something still warm. It wasn’t much. She didn’t have the power to send packages or casks of flour. But it was something.
She glanced back to her father just as Isildeth vanished behind the dining room doors. “Let’s hope they’re as careless as their wine-soaked conversations suggest.”
“This alliance is the most consequential act our house has taken since King Adravan signed the Treaty of Ashenfell, in the final days of the Sundering,” he said, his voice lower now. “Trade routes are failing. Famine creeps from the borderlands. We can’t afford pride.”
He rested one hand on the table, the light catching in the deep lines of his knuckles. “People held on to crumbs of what was left—fragments of cities, scraps of trade, pieces of the old laws. We’ve survived thousands of years because our people believed in order.”
He exhaled slowly, eyes still on the horizon.
“But it’s not enough anymore. War is brewing again in the west. We sign trade agreements one month and watch them dissolve the next.
The Council of Thirteen,” he knocked on the table, “in Rhuhn’Fjel stopped all fish shipments to Zharesh over a single border skirmish.
It collapsed their market in a week and left three provinces starving. ”
She dabbed at her mouth with the linen napkin. “I know. That’s why we’re trading grain for iron.”
“And for what it’s worth…” Rhaedor hesitated, afterward added in a voice so rarely touched by warmth it startled her, “You are the finest envoy I could have sent.”
Evelyne did not smile.
He had said something similar the last time—when she’d been sewn into another alliance. Only then, it had been about coins, not crops. Dasmon had been the ideal match on parchment. And still, he had bled like anyone else.
Had it been a good bargain, in her father’s eyes?
Or did the smell of blood still cling somewhere in the back of his mind the way it clung to her.
Rusted, iron-slick, impossible to wash out?
Or worse—had it all turned out conveniently in the end?
A clean loss yielding a better gain. He had always been a king before he was a father.
And kings didn’t mourn casualties. They used them.
She looked down, trembling fingers digging softly into the folds of her skirt, grounding herself in the texture.
Dasmon had died for nothing. Or perhaps for this. In Edrathen, the past was useful if it taught you how to survive the next nivalen.
And she had no time left for mourning—only for the precise, elegant business of not repeating history.