Enzo #2
Nadia had not spoken through any of it. She'd let me receive them because this promise was mine. But now she stepped forward, and every eye in the room moved to her.
“Lady Aldric.”
Liesel turned. “Your Majesty.”
The title trembled slightly. Not from disrespect. From the strange weight of arriving at one household and finding two kingdoms inside it.
Nadia’s expression softened by one careful degree. “I would like to meet your children when they are rested. Not today. When the youngest is awake. When they've had food and sleep and no one standing over them with titles.”
Liesel’s face changed. Barely. Enough.
Nadia studied the children. “I'm Queen of a court I haven't seen in a hundred years. There are no children in Mrachgorod whose ages I know. I would like to know yours.”
The girl looked up then. Directly at Nadia. Brave child. Aldric’s eyes, certainly.
Nadia crouched before her. Not fully. Not dramatically. Just enough that she no longer loomed.
“What's your name?”
“Elian,” the girl said.
“Elian,” Nadia repeated. “Your uncle was very annoying.”
The girl blinked.
Liesel made a sound that was almost horror.
Nadia continued solemnly, “He was also brave, useful, and apparently far too tolerant of hair ribbons.”
A tiny, stunned laugh escaped the seven-year-old. The room seemed to breathe for the first time.
Nadia glanced toward him. “And you?”
“Tomas.”
“Tomas.” She nodded gravely. “A strong name. Excellent for making trouble.”
His eyes widened. “Am I allowed to be trouble?”
“Moderately,” Nadia said. “Until I get bored.”
My father made a sound behind me that might have been a cough. It absolutely was not a cough.
Liesel was crying again, but differently now. Softer. Less like falling apart and more like something inside her had been given permission to loosen.
Nadia rose. “When they're ready,” she said, “I would like to be a presence in their lives. Not a formal one. Not a frightening one, if I can help it.”
“That may take work,” I murmured.
Nadia didn’t look at me. “I said if I can help it.”
The boy smiled. Gods. He smiled.
Liesel pressed a hand to her mouth. “Yes, Your Majesty,” she managed.
Nadia turned to the steward. “Take them to their rooms. Food first. Healer after they sleep unless someone's actively bleeding.”
“No one is bleeding, Your Majesty,” the steward said.
“Excellent. Let’s keep that as a household goal.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The steward bowed and led them out.
The nursemaid carried the sleeping child. Tomas walked backward for three steps so he could keep staring at Nadia until his mother corrected him. Elian kept one hand in Liesel’s and glanced over her shoulder once before the door closed.
At me. Then at Nadia. Then they were gone.
I sat down in the chair by the wall before the latch had fully clicked shut.
Not because my body failed. Because for one moment, I had no order to give, no report to receive, no sword to raise, and the weight of Aldric’s last request had finally reached the floor beneath my feet.
Nadia’s attention found me but didn’t speak. That was how I knew she understood.
My father crossed the room and poured bloodwine from the sideboard. He handed it to me without comment. That was wise of him.
I took it because my hands needed something to hold.
For a moment, the three of us remained as we were: Nadia standing near the center of the room, watching the closed door; my father before me with the empty flagon in his hand; me sitting with my dead captain’s promise still warm in the room.
Then my father said, “Lorenzo.”
I lifted my head.
His face was composed, because of course it was. Augustin Veyne had once watched a noble house collapse into civil violence without letting so much as an eyebrow betray him.
But his eyes weren't composed this time. Not entirely.
“You kept your word,” he said.
The words shouldn't have struck as hard as they did. “I gave it to a dying man.”
“Yes.” His voice roughened by one quiet degree. “And you carried it when you had every excuse to let someone else do it for you.”
My hand tightened around the cup. “I failed him.”
My father’s expression changed. Barely. Enough.
“No,” he said. “The people who put that knife to his family failed him. The people who used his love against him failed him. You honored what remained when they were done.”
The room stilled.
Nadia had turned toward us, silent now. The bond carried nothing from her but attention, careful and unobtrusive.
My father set the flagon down. Then he put his hand on my shoulder.
Not as king to prince. Not as sovereign to Sword. As my father.
“You did well.”
For one breath, I couldn't answer.
Four hundred years of command, duty, silence, and old misunderstandings shifted under those three words. They didn't heal everything. They didn't undo what had been hidden from me, or what I'd believed, or what still waited between us.
But they reached something.
Something younger than the man sitting in that chair. Something that had wanted, for longer than I cared to admit, to hear my father say exactly that.
I covered his hand with mine. Only briefly, but it was long enough.
“Thank you,” I said.
His fingers tightened once against my shoulder before he released me.
Nadia remained near the center of the room, looking at the closed door. The bond carried the shape of what moved through her.
Not pity. Not even grief alone. A queen staring after three children who'd survived the kind of bargain that had once made a war out of her own childhood.
I reached for her hand. She came to me without making me ask twice. When her fingers closed around mine, the mark over my heart warmed.
Not enough to heal what had happened. Nothing would.
But enough to remind me that Aldric’s last promise had not died on the wall with him.
It had reached the keep.
And it was alive.