25. Gunnar
Gunnar
I don’t sleep.
I try. Sleep says no.
Typical.
I lie on the couch with my boots on in protest. I stare at the ceiling, where some dead artisan spent a year, maybe more painting clouds, and I memorize it twice. Early in the night, the castle got loud.
One guess who.
Good for them. Truly. I had six better lines than FINALLY and Brock made me swallow every one of them. Reality owes me those.
There’s a ball coming. For her. Nobody’s told us when, and nobody’s told us why, and the people throwing it are the same ones I’m not sure we can trust anymore.
I think we’re all feeling it though, so that saves me the trouble of having to explain it.
The Vestry has been the power my entire life. Longer than that. Going back to the time right before female dragons all but disappeared, if my history lessons are to be believed.
And there’s Pops.
The paperwork thing. That’s all it is. A paperwork thing.
Just as you said you would.
My father. The most rule-abiding man in every realm I’ve ever been to. Reported his own son’s unit before breakfast, then walked into our kitchen and grinned and told everyone how proud—
No. Nope. Not before sunrise. Maybe never.
The sky through the windows is going gray at the bottom.
“You’re vibrating,” Brock says from the other couch. Not asleep either. Of course he isn’t.
“I’m lying perfectly still.”
“Loudly.”
“I can’t sit in this room anymore.” I’m already up. “Walk with me or don’t.”
He’s up before I finish the sentence. He was always going to come. Know somebody long enough and the invitation stops being a question.
The castle at dawn is quiet the way a barracks is quiet, which is to say full of people being quiet on purpose.
Staff moving through side corridors with linens and firewood.
Bread somewhere, already baking. We go down the grand ridiculous staircase like we own it, because the trick to being somewhere you shouldn’t is pretending you’re exactly where you belong. Nobody looks at us twice.
The ballroom doors are open.
Sweet mother of excess.
Gold. Gold columns. Gold ceiling. Gold leaf on the sconces, on the door handles, on things nobody will ever notice.
A wall of mirrors. Chandeliers the size of wagons.
Flowers climbing every column, white and violet, thousands of them.
And an indoor fountain, because somebody looked at this room and decided what it needed was something a little extra.
At the far end, a dais. One chair on it, draped in white and violet.
One chair. For her.
Brock whistles, low.
“I’ve raided warlord compounds with less gold in them,” I say.
“The fountain’s my favorite.”
“The fountain is a crime.” I turn a slow circle and take the full inventory. The mirrors. The gold. The flowers. The fountain again. “Somebody planned this. Multiple somebodies. There were meetings.”
“Two weeks of them.”
“Think she’ll like it?”
“Absolutely fucking not,” Brock says.
And we’re gone. Cackling in an empty ballroom at dawn, because it’s true.
She threatened to have me executed over a staircase.
This room has a throne and a fountain. She is going to walk in here tonight in some gown three women bled over, and she is going to hate every square inch of this place.
I am going to be standing exactly where I can see her face when it happens. Front row. I’ve earned it.
She’ll know exactly why I’m standing where I am.
“Ten gold says she threatens somebody’s life inside the first minute,” I say.
“No bet,” Brock says.
I’m laughing and he’s laughing, and somewhere in the middle of it he reaches over and knocks his knuckles against my sternum, twice, the way he always has, and the laugh dies in my chest right under his hand.
He doesn’t take the hand back.
I look down toward his hand, then at him. He’s stopped laughing too, and there’s a foot of air between us, and my mouth opens to fill the room with something, anything, volume, a fountain joke, a—
“Gunnar,” he says. Quiet.
No.
Nope. Not here. Not at dawn in a gold room with her chair on the—
Footsteps.
Both of us move without a word — old training kicking in before either of us does — behind the drapes at the windows, floor-length brocade heavy enough to stop light, and Brock pulls the edge flat and I do the thing they beat into us in a war nobody here remembers.
Slow the breath. Then slow the heart. Dragons hear heartbeats before they hear footsteps, and any ears in this castle worth hiding from will find a hammering pulse behind a curtain long before they ever see it move.
So we both go quiet all the way down, hearts dropping to a crawl, two dead men standing hidden.
Brock is an inch from me. His heart is a slow drum I can feel through the shared dark. Mine matches it.
That’s the training.
The footsteps come in unhurried. Two sets. One light and quick, one measured.
“—and the flowers on the east columns refreshed by midday.” An old man’s voice, dry, precise, the kind that has never once been interrupted. “Tonight has to go absolutely perfect, Sam. The future depends on it.”
I know that voice. Everyone in the Legion knows that voice. Morty — Mortimer if you’re in trouble — the voice of the Vestry when the Vestry doesn’t come down the steps themselves. When Ezra isn’t in the room, his mouth is her word.
“But sir—” Younger. Nervous. Sam, apparently.
“You know your orders, Sam.” Slow footsteps on marble, coming closer to where we are.
In the gap where the drape meets the window I can see a slice of him — gray robe, hands folded behind his back, inspecting the flowers like he’s grading them.
“Get her away from them. Get her to the place we agreed.”
My heart tries to speed up.
I don’t let it.
“They’ll be waiting,” Morty says.
Sam takes his time answering. “Yes, sir.” Smaller, reluctant.
One set of footsteps leaves quickly. The other doesn’t.
Morty walks the length of the ballroom like he has nowhere to be for the next century, pausing at the dais, at the fountain, at the chair — her chair — and he straightens a fold of the white drape with two fingers. Gently. Like fixing a kid’s collar.
Then he leaves.
We stay dead for another hundred heartbeats. That’s the training too. The room stays empty.
Brock lets the drape fall open. The gold light comes back in and neither of us moves for a second.
“Do you think—” I start.
“Yes.”
“We need to tell everyone.”
“Now,” Brock says, and we’re moving, out the doors, down the corridor, not running because running gets noticed and noticed gets questions, walking fast and my head replays it on a loop with no off switch — get her away from them, they’ll be waiting, the place we agreed, the future depends on it — and I can’t say a word of it out loud, because this castle is full of ears that hear heartbeats, and the first rule in a realm of dragons is that a room is never empty.
We make it one corridor.
They’re standing in the middle of it like they were placed there. Anya, Neve, Colette. Gray dresses, folded hands, three polite smiles at dawn.
“Just the men we wanted to see,” Anya says. “Come with us.”
“Where?” I ask.
“Where do you think?” She’s already turning. “Since the queen has decided to keep you, you’ll all be escorting her tonight. Fittings.”
Fittings.
There is a man in this castle planning to take her, and they want to measure my inseam.
Brock and I look at one another, talking without talking, and we have a plan.
I groan instead, loud, because Gunnar-being-difficult is the least suspicious thing I can think of. “It’s dawn. Measure me at a civilized hour.”
“The tailors have been up since third bell,” Colette says, unmoved.
“I’ll follow you down,” Brock says, easy, warm, the voice that opens every door he’s ever come to. “I left something in the room — take him, he needs the most work anyway — I’ll be right behind you.”
“I’m afraid we must insist.” Anya’s smile doesn’t move an inch. “All of you, together. And no seeing the queen before the ball. Old customs. It’s what’s proper.”
No seeing the queen.
Brock’s face does absolutely nothing. Which is how I know we both realize how fucking screwed we are. Keep the men downstairs. Keep the queen upstairs. Everything proper. Everything perfect.
All of it bullshit.
The future depends on it.
The women turn and start walking, certain we’ll follow, and we do, because a scene right now is only going to make everything worse. I need them to believe we don’t know, that we’re compliant.
That we don’t suspect a thing.
Sweetheart, I think, at a door I can’t see from here. Don’t let them take you anywhere I’m not.