27. Leif
Leif
They’ve built a lock out of people and dressed it as a party.
I’m standing where they put me, a pace to the right of an empty throne, and I’ve gone over the pieces twice. Twice is procedure. The count doesn’t improve.
Two men at the main doors dressed as stewards, standing the way no steward stands.
Weight even. Hands free. Backs to the wood.
A woman at the west windows who hasn’t once looked through them.
Aides spaced along the route from the grand stair to this dais, one every few paces, each turned a quarter away from the spectacle every other guest in this room crossed the realm to see.
A gray robe at the musicians’ alcove. Another at the servants’ passage. Another at the garden doors.
Doorways. Windows. Choke points. The route. I know the formation because I’ve built it. I have stood soldiers exactly there, and there, and there, and called it securing a location. Every way in covered, which is the same thing, always, as every way out.
Once she walks into this room, there is no path back out of it that doesn’t pass through hands loyal to the Vestry.
She will stand in the middle of a thousand guests and be more contained than a prisoner, and she won’t see it, because it’s wrapped in flowers, and everyone smiling at her is part of the door.
I’ve known something was coming since dawn. For the last hour, I’ve known what.
This morning, Gunnar talked for three minutes without making a single joke.
Brock didn’t correct him once. I believed every word before he was half finished.
He gave it the way we were trained to give it — field signs, and a whisper shallower than breath, under the noise of four tailors arguing about hemlines in the next room.
Morty’s voice. Sam’s orders. Get her away from them.
The place we agreed. They’ll be waiting. Tonight.
Erik stopped breathing beside me. Rayner’s hands closed and opened twice, which is Rayner shouting.
We know Morty gave the order. The order is the Vestry’s.
The chamber that called her queen last night means to take her tonight, and wherever that is, they’ve already chosen the location.
Gunnar and Brock would know Sam’s voice anywhere now that they’ve heard it.
But nobody knows his face. And the women took us from her at dawn, politely, properly, and we haven’t seen her since.
We know. They don’t know we know. That’s all we have, and it has to be enough.
Attendants collected us at dusk and walked us down corridors lit like a festival, and I ran the route as we went — collect her at her doors, walk her down, five of us around her the way we came down the Vestry steps. We passed the staircase to her wing and kept going.
“Her doors are behind us,” I said.
“The queen will be presented, commander. You’ll be positioned.”
Positioned.
They walked us the full length of this gold room and arranged us around her empty chair like furniture, and Gunnar threw his arms out at full volume — “What the fuck is this? I thought we were escorting her.” — because at full volume nobody suspects you of anything.
“The queen must make her first entrance alone,” the attendant said, serene. “The realm must see her before it sees those she has chosen.”
It sounds like an honor. It is engineered to sound like an honor. What it does is put the entire length of this room between her and us, alone, in front of everyone.
Their excuses don’t even make sense at this point.
We’re already standing here. On display.
Which brings me back to the real thing circling us.
We weren’t meant to find our mate.
It’s the one thing they didn’t see coming. And now they’re trying to get between us and her.
It won’t work.
Elara is ours. Queen or not.
That woman… she’s everything.
And they want to put her on a pedestal and play pretend.
I look around the room at the males, and I make myself look away, because things are going to get very bad for everyone if I don’t. No one here is innocent. No one in this room knows what she is to us. All they know is that she’s the only female dragon they’ve ever seen.
A growl rumbles up. I shove it down.
Now is not the time to lose it. Not when getting her out of this depends on all five of us staying exactly this calm.
The lock doesn’t open from the inside, and it doesn’t open with fire, not with her about to walk through the middle of a thousand people. It opens with Sam. A voice. A face. A location.
And the plan I gave at dawn is already dead. Erik can’t stay closest to a woman crossing a hundred feet of open floor alone. Five lines of sight don’t close a gap that starts at the top of a staircase.
So I adjust. That’s the job.
Let her cross. Let the realm look. Let Morty have his perfect entrance. Every route in this room ends at this dais, and they put the five of us exactly where she’s going.
That’s the whole plan now. She gets to us. The ring closes around her and it does not open again tonight. We keep our eyes and our ears open, and whatever happens in this gold room, whatever they think they’ve arranged — we are standing there when it happens.
None of us leaves her alone again. Not tonight. Not ever.
The orders go out in signs small enough to pass for a stretched shoulder, a checked cuff. Erik’s hand answers. Understood. Brock’s chin drops a fraction. Gunnar grins at the room like he’d happily burn down. Rayner watches everything else.
My dragon is closer to the surface than he’s been in a century. I hold him.
The music dies mid-phrase.
At the top of the grand stair, the doors swing open, and a herald’s voice fills the whole gold length of the trap.
“The queen.”