20. Fen
CHAPTER TWENTY
FEN
Meckard no longer stood by my shoulder, and the lack of his presence gutted me.
My aide had been dismissed before I’d finished washing the arena’s dust off. No audience granted or explanation offered. A steward had simply informed me, with a bow, that Terrant would be attending me going forward.
From the time I was six, Meckard had known how I took my tea, which nightmares woke me, and what my face looked like the year my father died. And in twenty-four years he’d never once written any of it down.
My mother would’ve dismissed him with nothing. No wages, no letter of character.
What she didn’t know was that I’d stopped trusting her a long time ago.
I’d secretly put funds aside. Within a week, Meckard would be living in a new home, and his pension would arrive each month.
Both with no name attached. But he’d know anyway.
He’d taught me most of what I knew about doing things quietly.
If people were going to be made to pay my debts, the least I could do was set things up for them in advance.
Terrant stood where my aide belonged and watched everything I did with careful, patient eyes. He poured competently. He anticipated my needs well. He’d been chosen by someone who knew what a prince required.
My mother hadn’t spoken a word to me since the arena. She didn’t need words. She had a staff list.
I’d bought this ruling. At the rail, leaned in close, I’d given her the only argument she respected.
“Disqualify a commons for surviving,” I’d said, “and every soul in Shaleside learns two things at once. That the trials can be beaten, and that we cheat when they are winning. Let the woman fly, and the Scorching will finish what the crowd paid to see. A martyr starts fires. A casualty settles bets.”
Mother had nodded, acting pleased. But she must’ve seen through the prince I’d pretended to be.
By sundown, Meckard was gone, and I’d been tasting my words ever since.
The queen honored her concessions the way she honored everything—by letting someone else pay for them.
First my words, struck from a council record. Now my closest aide. She was working her way inward, one ring at a time.
We both knew what lived at the center.
I stood near the west wall of the ballroom, a glass of wine in my hand I hadn’t touched, and watched Eradin pretend she belonged here.
I couldn’t look away.
The storm-gray dress didn’t do a thing for her. It had been well-made, but it was not elite. No embroidery. No house colors.
Just a commons woman dressed for display.
If I’d dressed her, she’d be wearing silk in rich colors. Burgundy. Red. Cream that would never come close to matching her skin.
Her chestnut hair had been pulled back from her face in a simple style. I would’ve coiled it up on her head and woven in jewels that would glisten like stars. Left a few curls dangling beside her face.
My gaze fell to the trial mark on her hand.
She was a servant playing dress-up in a world that wanted her dead.
She didn’t show gratitude like the gray-bearded man whose smile never reached his eyes. Or stare at the wall like the red-haired man who’d already given up. Her gaze swept the room the way mine did, noting exits first, then guards, then who held real power versus those who only pretended.
The crown had paid tutors to teach me how to do that, and it hadn’t been easy.
She’d learned because she had to.
I looked down at my wineglass and found I’d been holding it so tightly, the stem had pressed a line into my palm.
When her eyes found mine, she didn’t flinch away. She looked at me the way Aristus sometimes did, reading something I didn’t know I was showing. I wanted to look away. My jaw ached from holding it tight.
This woman was unraveling all of me just by standing there. By surviving when she shouldn’t. By refusing to play the role society had written for her.
Protocol said I should go to her again, only this time I could acknowledge the fact that she’d made it through the initial trials. Offer congratulations. Perform the role of the gracious crown prince who believed in the court’s fairness.
I didn’t move.
I’d spent my entire life making sure I didn’t fail. If I walked over there and acknowledged her as anything other than a curiosity or a betting slip, then I had to admit the kingdom was broken.
That I was complicit.
That my perfect life had been built on her suffering.
So I stayed where I was. Watched from across the room. Pretended disinterest while my jaw got tighter and my hands white-knuckled the glass.
Until she slipped away.
One moment she was standing near the food tables, a noble leaning too close. The next she was gone.
Following her would be foolish.
Terrant tracked my gaze to the door she’d used. He was good. He’d been chosen for that reason.
“I’m not enjoying this wine,” I said, handing him the glass. “Bring me a bottle of Vellish red.” I named a year that would be a challenge to find.
He hesitated. He’d know this wine was stored three floors down, behind the cellarer’s lock. But refusing meant explaining out loud whose man he was. Neither of us was ready to say it in words.
He bowed and left.
I strode across the room and stepped through the servants’ entrance.
Slipping the leash was its own kind of treason.
The thought arrived too late, after I’d watched her disappear from the ballroom using the same invisibility trick I’d been taught, the one that said, I belong here so completely you won’t question my leaving.
She didn’t belong. That was the problem. Or maybe the problem was that she actually did.
Outside the fortress, I paused to look for her. I’d expected she’d go to the adjacent aerie. It was her territory, familiar ground. But she turned onto a path weaving through the fortress gardens.
Following at a distance, I kept my boots silent on stone. My training made it easy. I could track someone through a crowd without them knowing, could disappear into shadows when I needed to.
I told myself I was following her to ensure order. Making sure the commons woman didn’t cause trouble. That’s what a crown prince did. We managed problems before they became incidents.
I was fooling no one with the thought, not even myself.
But I wasn’t the only one following her. Two men peeled away from the shadows of the building, moving like soldiers, not staff. Commons or low-tier guards. I didn’t recognize their faces, which meant nothing. But I recognized the way they moved. The careful spacing. The hands hovering near weapons.
My pulse kicked up with a spike of something that felt uncomfortably like panic.
These men were hunting her, and she had no idea.
I pulled blades from the sheaths at my side.
Calling guards would be the next wisest thing to do. That was what any lord or lady would’ve done. But that would raise questions I didn’t want to answer. Like why I was following a commons woman in the first place. And why my pulse was slamming harder than it had during my first kill.
The gardens were beautiful in the way everything elite was. Each plant had been nurtured, and every path had been groomed and placed to ensure the best aesthetic. Nature had been forced to perform for our exclusive consumption.
Flowering vines climbed trellises in geometric patterns. Hedges formed walls that created private alcoves. Water features trickled in carefully orchestrated harmony.
The garden had been curated until the wildness had been bred out of it.
Eradin walked fast, her gait slightly uneven to favor her left foot, moving deeper into the gardens, toward the far wall where the faelights rarely traveled and shadows pooled.
The two men split up, one going left, one right. Flanking her.
I tightened my grip on my blades.
They’d had training. They knew how to close distance without being seen and use terrain to cut off escape routes.
Someone had sent them.
She stopped near a fountain, its water dark, and cupped her face with her palms. She just stood there, not looking around, barely paying attention to what was moving closer.
Vulnerable in a way that gutted me.
The men closed in.
I could walk away. One less competitor. One less problem. My mother’s voice echoed in my head: Sentiment is weakness, Fenian.
Helping Eradin had already cost a scribe his kingdom and Meckard twenty-four years of standing. Whatever this cost, it would be steeper, and it wouldn’t be mine alone to pay.
The men pulled their weapons.
My feet moved.
Eradin’s head came up and her hand snapped to her hip. She fumbled to pull her blade. Whatever weapon she carried, it was clear she didn’t know how to use it.
She was going to die.
The realization landed in my chest as I rushed out of the shadows.
She pulled the blade from its sheath. The curved weapon caught the moonlight, black and wicked-sharp.
It looked too big and deadly in her small hand.
As they leaped toward her, she swung the blade in a wide arc.
Clumsy. Desperate. But the blade was sharp enough it didn’t matter. It connected with the first man’s arm, slicing through fabric and skin. He staggered back, his groan ringing out.
The second man gouged his knife toward her throat.
Fucking, no.
I’d killed before. All sanctioned, clean. This wouldn’t be clean, because they’d dared to touch her.
The first man was already wounded, off-balance from her wild swing.
I caught his wrist mid-strike and made the bone snap under my grip before I ripped his throat open with my blade.
I caught him before he could slump, because I’d done nowhere near enough, and punched my blade up under his ribs from behind, angling toward the heart the way my weapons master had drilled into me until it was instinct.
He folded, and I held him with my blade still inside him until his weight went slack.
Gurgling, he slumped to the ground.
The second man swung around, took one gaping look at me, and bolted. I shot magic after him, incinerating him on the spot. Only ashes remained, drifting down to settle on the ground.
A feral grin stretched across my face, and blood roared in my ears as I turned to Eradin.