23. Kaedryn
Kaedryn
Sleep doesn’t come. The fire in my chamber burns low, rebuilt twice by servants who refuse to meet my eyes.
I pace the same length of rug until I know the weave by memory beneath my boots.
Outside, the mountain wind drags sleet across the stone walls of the castle, and somewhere below the windows the snow falls softly. It should be calming but it is not.
Neither is the fact that Adelina has been behind closed doors for hours while Varek and Selvara call it preparation.
Preparation.
I stop at the window, brace a hand against the stone, and look out into the black. Snow glimmers faintly where the torchlight from the outer courtyard reaches the walls, but beyond that, Dravaryn is only darkness and ice.
She is somewhere in this castle. Too close for the pull to have gone entirely quiet. Too far for me to tell what the hell is happening behind stone and protocol.
The thread between us is there. I feel it faintly beneath the anger, beneath the exhaustion, beneath the raw frustration of bringing her back from the temple road only to watch her walk out of my sight in her own brother’s courtyard.
But it’s not strong enough to read. Not without whatever final binding fate or old magic or the gods themselves seem determined to force on us.
It’s only a weak, erratic pressure beneath my ribs.
Tonight it does less than I want and more than I trust, just enough to tell me she is not at peace but not enough to tell me why.
A knock sounds at the door before Sylas lets himself in. He takes one look at me, the pacing, the untouched food, the open window, and sighs. “You look terrible.”
“I feel worse.”
“That’s promising.”
He closes the door behind him and crosses to the hearth, helping himself to the wine I have ignored. He leans a shoulder against the mantel, one ankle crossed over the other, watching me in the same irritatingly perceptive way he has had since we were boys.
“Well?” I ask.
“Well what?”
“You came here for a reason.”
“I came to see if you were still pretending you can wear a hole through that rug and call it strategy.”
I say nothing.
His eyes narrow slightly. “You can feel her.”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
I drag a hand over my face. “Not bad enough to warrant barging into her chambers.”
Sylas straightens from the hearth and studies me more carefully. “Explain.”
I force myself away from the window and back into motion, because standing still feels worse.
“Something is wrong. I can feel that much. She’s not settled or at peace.
The connection keeps pulling and then dulling again, like it’s trying to come through fog.
” I glance toward the door, toward the corridor beyond it, toward the private wing where she vanished hours ago.
“But it isn’t enough. Not to justify breaking down her door.
Not to stand in Varek’s hall and say my instincts outrank his authority. ”
“Your instincts usually are usually right, though.”
“That’s not how courts work.”
Sylas lifts the cup to his mouth, then lowers it without drinking. “No. It isn’t.”
The silence stretches. I keep pacing. At some point, I realize I am counting the turns without meaning to. Twelve strides from hearth to door. Stop at the window. Turn. Do it again.
Sylas watches me do it twice before he says, “The wards may be interfering.”
I freeze. “What?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “It’s Dravaryn. They ward everything that breathes. If her wing is sealed for silence or privacy, whatever bond has awakened between you both might not come through clearly.”
The thought knots in my chest. “You think Varek would ward her chambers like that?”
“I think Varek would ward the queen’s bathwater if he thought someone might learn something useful from the steam.”
That is true enough to be unhelpful.
I look back at the door. “I should have insisted.”
“On what?”
“That she stay under our supervision from the moment we arrived.”
“You did insist.”
“And I let them talk me around it.”
“No.” Sylas’s voice sharpens slightly. “You let yourself be held in place by the same net that holds every kingdom in this realm. Ceremony. Optics. Diplomacy. Don’t confuse that with weakness.”
I laugh once, short and humorless. “I took her from the temple road because I told myself I had no choice. Then I brought her here because Father told me the same thing. Strange how there is always no choice when the person paying for it is her.”
Sylas says nothing to that. He knows better.
I know better too, once the words are out.
The room feels smaller. I press the heel of my hand to my sternum, to the place where the pull keeps trying to sharpen and failing.
“She looked at me in the courtyard,” I say quietly. “When the guards took her. It was as if she already knew how the rest of the night would end.”
Sylas’s expression shifts, sobering further. “I told you how she looked on the boat.”
“I know.”
“Like a condemned prisoner.”
“Yes.”
He exhales through his nose. “And still, here we are.”
Here we are.
Guest chambers in a hostile castle. A princess behind closed doors. A treaty balanced on paper and blood. I turn toward the door.
Sylas catches me. “Kaedryn.”
“If I go now, what do they say?”
He answers at once because he already knows. “That you are unstable. That you are suspicious without cause. That you do not trust the northern crown in their own hall. That Elyrion’s prince tried to force his way into an unmarried princess’s private rooms.”
“And if something is happening to her?”
His jaw tightens. “Then we hate ourselves for standing here.”
The honesty in it lands like a stone. I look at him for a long moment, then back toward the door again. The bond gives another faint pull, thin like a fog has settled in.
Or perhaps that is only my imagination giving shape to helplessness.
Damn it.
I make myself step away from the door. “For tonight,” I say.
Sylas nods once, though he does not look pleased by it. “For tonight.”
Rowan takes first watch in the corridor outside my chambers.
Merritt relieves him at midnight. Kellan offers to sit outside Adelina’s wing and claim he has lost his way if challenged, but I refuse.
One nervous guard hovering outside the private royal rooms does nothing except give Dravaryn something to mock.
Soren comes by once, late enough that the fire has burned almost to embers. He brings a sleeping draught I don’t touch and a healer’s opinion I did not ask for.
“Trauma can make people quiet,” he says when I mention nothing concrete, only that Adelina seemed too still on the journey back. “So can exhaustion. So can hopelessness.”
I lean against the table and look at him. “Those are not the same thing.”
“No,” he agrees. “But they can wear the same face, and we can do nothing without evidence, or at the very least, her testimony.”
That stays with me long after he leaves.
Once, near the darkest stretch before dawn, the pressure changes. It dulls all at once, as if someone has thrown a heavy cloth over a candle. The sharp edge of fear fades into something thick and slow, and for one irrational second I wonder if she has fallen asleep.
Then pain slips through anyway.
Faint. Buried. Gone before I can hold it.
I stand there, palm flat to the cold stone, waiting for it to return, but the bond only gives me that muffled quiet again.
I make myself a promise in the dark: whatever condition she is in when I see her tomorrow, I will not look away from it.
?
By morning, I have slept perhaps an hour in fragments too shallow to count.
A servant arrives before dawn with hot water, fresh clothes, and the careful expression of a man walking into a beast’s den with a tray.
I dress in silence, trading travel leathers for formal blue and green, silver-threaded cuffs, a ceremonial blade at my hip.
My reflection in the mirror looks sharper than I feel.
Harder too. My eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep, my jaw set from too many clenched hours, my hair brushes back with less care than my valet would permit if I were home.
Sylas, when he joins me, looks only marginally better. “Still no word?” he asks.
“None.”
He nods toward the servant as he fastens the last of his bracers. “And the princess?”
The servant’s hands falter for half a breath.
There. I see it. One small, involuntary break in movement at the mention of her.
Fear.
I fix him with my gaze. “What do you know of the princess?”
The man’s throat works. “Her ladies have been with her since last evening, Your Highness. Her Majesty has seen to every detail personally.”
It makes me want to put a dagger through the nearest wall. I dismiss the servant before I say something regrettable, though from the look on Sylas’s face, he suspects that was the reason.
The betrothal ceremony is set for midday in the same audience chamber where I first saw Adelina enter beneath banners and firelight.
Somehow the room feels smaller now, less impressive than strategic, every polished surface designed to reflect power.
Varek has changed the arrangement since the contract signing.
The long council table has been removed.
In its place stands a raised dais draped in black and gold, with a smaller altar-table between the northern and southern standards.
The formal betrothal documents rest there beside a ceremonial blade, a bowl of salt water from the Celestial Sea, and two silver cups meant for the blessing wine.
Witnesses gather in controlled numbers: Varek’s advisors, Selvara’s ladies, and a cluster of northern nobles who wear curiosity like perfume.
Sylas waits beside me and my men stand close by. The room is public enough to make violence difficult, and private enough to control the story of whatever happens inside it. I take my place on the dais and feel the weight of a dozen eyes measuring my expression.
Let them. I know how to stand through scrutiny.
Varek enters first, every inch the composed king, dark furs over ceremonial black, crown gleaming in the firelight. Selvara arrives at his side in a black gown trimmed with fur and gold thread, her beauty sharp enough to be dangerous even without the smile she wears.
I watch the queen closely. She looks relaxed, pleased, even. If she spent the night attending Adelina, it did not cost her sleep.
Varek clasps my forearm in greeting when etiquette demands it. “Prince Kaedryn. I trust you rested.”
I return the gesture because witnesses are watching. “As well as your hospitality allowed.”
His mouth curves faintly. “Dravaryn is not known for softness.”
“No. It is not.”
Selvara steps closer, graceful and fragrant, her voice warm enough to frost the room. “Adelina is almost ready. The poor dear is still recovering from her ordeal, but she insisted on honoring the ceremony properly.”
Poor dear.
The phrase makes Sylas go still at my shoulder. If Selvara notices, she does not show it.
We wait.
It should not be a long delay. A few minutes at most. Enough time for a herald. Enough time for a princess to appear and cross a room.
It stretches.
My restlessness sharpens with each passing heartbeat. That weak thread beneath my ribs is quiet again, too quiet.
Then the doors open.
The herald strikes his staff against the floor. “Her Royal Highness, Princess Adelina of Dravaryn.”
Every conversation in the chamber dies. And for one suspended second, I cannot breathe. She is beautiful. That is the first thought, immediate and unwilling. The second is that beauty can be a weapon.
They have dressed her like an offering to a god they expect to devour her.
The gown is northern in cut, fitted through the bodice and flowing long from the hips.
Dark blue, with crystal beading that catches every lamp in the room.
The neckline is modest. Her shoulders are draped in velvet that floats when she moves, hiding the line of her back.
Her hair has been left down but away from her face, silver waves pinned with diamond-shaped moonstones and tiny chains of crystal that glitter against the pale strands.
To anyone else, she looks regal, composed, and exquisitely prepared.
To me, she looks wrong. Her pupils are a fraction too wide, and her blink comes too slowly, as if every movement has to travel through water before reaching her body.
The cosmetics are flawless, but they sit over skin too pale, too cool beneath the powder.
Whatever they used on her lips gives them color. It does not give it life.
She is too perfect. Too arranged.
The memory of her on the temple road flashes against the image before me. Mud-spattered cloak. Rain in her hair. Desperation in her eyes. Then the coach ride north. Blank silence. Hands folded in her lap.
Now she moves toward the dais with the same folded hands, the same silence, only dressed in jewels. Her posture is faultless, but I see the effort in it. The way her shoulders are held just a little too carefully, as if some invisible line runs across them and any wrong movement would pull.
Twice, her weight shifts wrong, a slight hesitation when her left foot takes weight, then a correction so smooth it looks like grace unless one is watching for pain.
Her steps are graceful, but measured with a precision that suggests control rather than ease.
There is a fraction of delay before each one, small enough that no courtier would notice unless they were looking too closely.
I am looking. I notice all of it.
And when her gaze rises to meet mine, I see the worst thing of all.
Nothing.