Chapter 59- The Portrait Above the Fire
Not because I feared crying in front of Elias.
That would have been foolish.
The man had seen enough blood, grief, terror, and ugly human collapse beneath this manor to make a few tears from a pregnant queen seem almost polite by comparison.
He had watched people die. He had watched people beg.
He had raised children who came to him with hunger in their bones and fear buried so deeply inside them that learning to laugh must have felt like learning a foreign language. Tears were not what frightened me.
It was being understood.
That was always more dangerous.
Pain could be hidden if no one named it correctly.
Grief could be folded neatly and placed somewhere private if everyone around you mistook it for exhaustion.
Even anger could be softened into diplomacy when necessary.
But understanding removed the last excuse.
It reached into places I had not offered and touched the bruise anyway.
I had never realized how badly I needed permission not to make myself useful to people who had already taken too much. I turned my face away before Elias could see too much of that realization settle inside me, and my eyes found the painting above the fireplace again.
The portrait looked less like a painting and more like a memory someone had somehow persuaded to remain still.
Elias sat with the effortless confidence of a man who had never needed to prove his authority.
He was handsome in the quiet, dangerous sort of way that only became more striking with age.
His hair, once black, had surrendered gracefully to time, long waves falling well past his shoulders and down his back, threaded with silver that caught the firelight like polished steel.
His beard was full and carefully kept, the gray woven through it lending him a distinguished appearance rather than an elderly one.
The years had left faint lines around his eyes and mouth, not from bitterness, but from a lifetime of smiling.
He wore richly embroidered royal garments of deep black and gold, every stitch worthy of a king, though somehow the clothing never drew attention away from the man himself.
His broad shoulders remained relaxed against the carved chair, looking more like he had wandered into the throne room by accident than someone who could quietly orchestrate the fall of kingdoms over afternoon tea.
His missing eye had been left uncovered.
There was no jeweled eyepatch. No embroidered cloth attempting to disguise what had been lost. Only the pale scar surrounding the empty socket, worn with such complete indifference that it no longer looked like a wound. It looked like another part of him.
Refusing to hide it somehow made him appear even more confident.
And then there was the way he looked at Veronica.
It was impossible to mistake.
His remaining eye softened with a tenderness I had never seen him offer anyone else.
There was admiration there. Quiet devotion.
The sort of expression that belonged to a man who had already chosen the woman before him long ago and never once questioned the decision.
Not because she was easy to love. Veronica did not seem like a woman designed for ease.
She was sharp edges, old scars, controlled violence, and stubborn pride wrapped inside a body that looked as though it had survived every war it entered and then insulted the battlefield afterward.
Elias looked at her as if none of that frightened him.
As if every difficult piece of her belonged exactly where it was.
Veronica stood beside him, one arm resting casually against the back of his chair as though she had occupied that place for years.
She was beautiful in a way that made softness seem unnecessary.
Even through the thick military uniform she always wore, it was impossible not to notice the curve of her body.
I had only seen her out of uniform a handful of times, once while swimming and another while changing after training, and the sight had genuinely startled me.
She was unmistakably muscular, her arms, shoulders, and back sculpted with powerful definition, yet none of it stole from her femininity.
If anything, the strength only emphasized it.
The curves of her waist and hips remained striking, while the countless scars crossing her skin did not diminish her beauty.
They sharpened it, tracing the shape of muscles earned over decades and somehow making her presence even more commanding.
She was clearly not from Elysium.
Her features were different from those of most people in the empire, though not so unusual that anyone could confidently say where she came from.
With so many neighboring kingdoms and distant regions, countless faces found their way into Elysium through generations of trade, war, and migration.
It was easy to recognize that Veronica's heritage lay elsewhere.
It was impossible to determine exactly where.
Not that she would have told anyone.
Veronica had never been the sort of woman who offered pieces of herself simply because others became curious.
Her past belonged behind her teeth, locked away with the same discipline she used to hold a blade steady.
Her skin was a rich, deep brown that contrasted against the dark military coat tailored to her figure.
High cheekbones framed a strong face, softened by full lips and expressive eyes that seemed to miss nothing.
Her thick ginger curls had been gathered into a practical bun, though countless tight ringlets had escaped around her temples and neck, refusing to be disciplined no matter how tightly they were pinned.
Though she was well into her late forties, she did not look it.
She still carried herself with the confidence of someone in her prime, standing tall with squared shoulders and perfect posture. Her expression remained stern, almost intimidating, but the painting betrayed what Veronica herself never would.
She was looking at Elias.
Not with an obvious smile.
Not with romantic theatrics.
Simply with the quiet certainty of someone who had long ago accepted that she was deeply, hopelessly loved.
The artist had painted discipline into her face.
But love into her eyes.
I stared at the portrait longer than was probably polite, but Elias did not interrupt me.
Perhaps he understood that some things needed to be witnessed slowly.
Perhaps he simply enjoyed watching people discover truths he had hidden in plain sight.
The office around us seemed to arrange itself differently once I understood the painting.
The blankets near the fire, the wine bottle beside the couch, the weapons left on the low table, the second coat hanging near his own, the half-open bedroom door revealing two lives tangled together in practical, intimate evidence.
This was not just Elias's office.
It was a place Veronica allowed herself to exist without armor fully sealed around her.
That felt more private than the bedroom.
Downstairs, I had seen what Elias kept hidden from the world.
Here, above the fire, I saw what he protected.
"So," I said quietly, still looking at the painting because it felt easier than looking directly at him, "what is this place?"
Elias made a sound that was half laugh and half groan.
I turned my head slightly.
He was leaning back in his chair now, one arm stretched lazily along the side, wine bottle held loosely in the other hand as though cups had personally offended his bloodline.
His face carried the open amusement of a tutor who had just discovered his student had failed to read the first page of the lesson.
"I knew you were not listening during your classes."
My mouth curved before I could stop it.
"Not one bit."
His eye narrowed.
"At least pretend shame."
"I cannot. It was too boring."
He stared at me.
Elias placed a hand over his chest. "Boring."
"Terribly."
"Those lessons covered the internal structure of an empire."
"They covered prison management for six hours."
"That is part of the internal structure of an empire."
"It should not have required six hours."
"It would have required less," he said, "if someone had listened the first time."
"I was very ill at ease that day."
"You were drawing flowers in the margin."
"They were educational flowers."
"They were not."
"They helped me focus."
He looked at the ceiling, as though asking his ancestors why they had allowed queens to become so troublesome. "This is why you kept making stupid mistakes."
I smiled sweetly."We learn best from our mistakes."
His head lowered slowly. "Do not use my words against me."
Despite everything, I laughed.
The sound felt small, but real.
Elias watched me over the rim of the wine bottle with a warmth that made him look almost harmless again.
Almost. The ink on his forearm ruined the illusion.
So did the memory of his voice downstairs, cold and empty as stone.
So did the knowledge that beneath this office, somewhere below the polished floors and warm rugs, my father sat in chains.
The laughter faded naturally.
He set the bottle down and leaned forward, his expression still easy but his voice becoming more grounded.
"Every kingdom has prisons," he said. "Most keep them beneath palaces, beside barracks, or attached to courthouses.
Rulers like their punishments close enough to inspect and far enough away to ignore when dinner is served. "
I looked down into my soup.
The surface trembled faintly when my hand shifted.
"Elysium did the same for a long time," he continued.
"There are still holding cells beneath the palace for short-term confinement.
Drunken nobles who forget treason is not a dinner topic.
Thieves caught inside restricted halls. Witnesses awaiting questioning.
Political idiots waiting for Achilles to decide whether they are useful, harmless, or combustible. "
"Combustible?"
"With effort, most things are."
I looked at him.
He smiled.
I decided not to ask.
"The issue," he continued, "was long-term prisoners.
Men with sentences measured in years become creative.
Men who know they will die in chains become theatrical.
They attempt escape not always because they believe they will succeed, but because desperation wants movement.
One man dug through the mortar beneath his cell with a spoon over eleven months. "
"Did he escape?"
"No. He emerged into the wine cellar and became too drunk to continue."
I blinked.
"He was found singing beneath a table."
"That is almost impressive."
"It was irritating. Good wine was lost."
"Of course, that is what bothered you."
"Waste is tragic."
I looked at him over my spoon. "A man tunneled out of prison."
"And drank three bottles of imported wine."
"Elias."
"Again, a waste of good wine."
He leaned back again, settling into the story as if prison administration were a family tale told beside a hearth.
"Another set fire to his bedding because he believed smoke would conceal his movement through the lower palace halls.
It concealed nothing except half the southern wing for two days and made the palace smell like burned wool, panic, and treason.
A third managed to hold three laundresses hostage with a broken chamber pot, which sounds ridiculous until you realize a desperate man with sharp ceramic and poor hygiene can be very persuasive. "
My brows rose slowly.
"The laundresses survived," he added.
"That was not the only part of that story that required reassurance."
He waved a hand. "The point is, the palace became inconvenient. Too many prisoners. Too many escape attempts. Too much risk to the royal household every time some condemned fool decided dying dramatically was better than waiting quietly. So this place was expanded."
"Expanded," I repeated.
"The original foundations are old. Very old. Parts of the manor existed before Elysium called itself an empire. My family improved upon them."
"That is one word for it."
"A correct one."
I looked toward the floor as if I might see through the rug, through the office, through the warm domestic evidence of Veronica's life, all the way down to the iron doors. "It took hours to get here from the palace."
"Because you traveled in a carriage." He pointed at me with the bottle. "A heavily guarded carriage. At night. In bad weather. With horses ordered not to jostle you because everyone involved wished to continue breathing once Achilles learned of the journey."
"I am not that fragile."
"No," Elias said lightly. "But your husband's temper is."
I gave him a look.
He looked delighted.
"On horseback, using the correct roads, this manor is about an hour from the palace.
Perhaps a little more, depending on the weather and how badly one wishes to keep the horse alive.
Far enough that trouble here does not lock down the palace.
Close enough that reinforcements can arrive if someone important begins screaming in a politically relevant way. "
"That is terrible phrasing."
"It is accurate phrasing."
"And no one is supposed to know what this place is?"
"Not unless they need to."
The answer came too easily, which meant it had been asked before.
I sat with that for a moment. The office suddenly felt layered, as though the room itself had become one of the manor's hidden passages.
Above, a home. Below, a prison. Around us, children are being fed, educated, and trained.
Inside the walls, generations of secrets held by people cheerful enough to offer tea while hiding screams beneath their floors.
"What happens to the prisoners?" I asked.
"Ah."
I immediately regretted the question.
"No."
"You asked."
"I know. I regret it."
"Too late."
"Elias."
He smiled as though this was all very educational, which, coming from him, was beginning to feel like a threat.
"Some die. Some are executed quickly if their crimes require spectacle, finality, or political punctuation.
Some are kept alive because they possess information.
Some are traded when diplomacy grows boring.
Some are hidden because their existence is inconvenient to someone important.
Some remain because the world is better with them behind iron. "
"And the others?"
"The others help with training."
The spoon paused halfway to my mouth. Elias said it gently. That did not help.
"Training."
"Yes."
"With prisoners."
"Yes."
"With children."
"With trainees."
"Some of them are six."
"Six-year-olds do not perform amputations, Ophelia. Do not be dramatic."
I stared at him.
He looked offended.
"They carry bandages. Count inventory. Learn letters. Learn anatomy in the abstract. Watch older students prepare supplies. Read case notes. Deliver food. Observe behavior. The serious work comes much later."
"Serious work."
"Medical procedures. Interrogation discipline.
Wound treatment under pressure. Psychological observation.
Restraint methods. How to keep someone alive who wishes to die.
How to keep someone who believes silence still serves them talking.
How to recognize lying when pain, fear, faith, pride, and guilt all begin wearing the same face.
" He leaned forward, resting his tattooed forearm on the table.
"A corpse teaches anatomy, but not consequence.
A dead animal cannot tell a person the stitch is too tight.
A wooden dummy cannot vomit, faint, plead, curse, lie, confess, or make the trainee decide whether trembling hands are still useful hands.
Living subjects teach what textbooks cannot. "
"Subjects."
"Prisoners, if you prefer."
"I do."
"I do not."
The difference between us sat there quietly.
His smile softened, but the edge beneath it remained.
"The people downstairs are not simple thieves, farmers, and unlucky debtors.
They are not children taken from roads. They are not servants who angered nobles.
They are the sort of men and women whose choices created graves, empty beds, ruined bodies, terrified villages, sold children, broken wives, poisoned wells, burned homes, and mothers who learned what their sons looked like in pieces. "
His voice did not rise.
"They harmed the world. So I harm them, it's simple ."
A chill moved across my skin.
I thought of the older children correcting spelling. The little boy with the bandages. The screams behind iron. The neat shelves labeled with medical supplies. The clean floors. The terrible, impossible logic of it all.
"So that," I murmured, almost to myself, "is why Veronica has never frightened you."
Elias smiled into his wine.
"My dear Queen..." His voice carried the warmth of someone discussing the weather instead of violence. "I refined her skills."
He swirled the crimson liquid slowly before taking another sip, the firelight catching the glass and turning the wine briefly to blood.
"Veronica was always talented. Brilliant, truly.
Strong hands. A stronger stomach. Excellent instincts.
" A quiet chuckle escaped him. "Creative under pressure. Deeply motivated by rage."
He looked into the fire.
"Rage is an extraordinary teacher. It sharpens the senses. It removes hesitation. It convinces someone they are capable of surviving almost anything."
His smile faded.
"It is also one of the cruelest masters a person can ever serve."
Silence settled comfortably between us.
It was strange how Elias could make silence feel intentional.
With some people, silence became pressure.
With others, it became awkwardness, a space demanding to be filled before the truth grew too large inside it.
Elias's silence had neither quality. It sat with us like a third person near the fire, patient and observant, allowing his words to breathe without apology.
I looked down at my soup, though I no longer had much appetite.
The spoon rested between my fingers, warm from the bowl, and the steam rose gently into the air as if nothing terrible had been discussed at this table.
"I did not fall in love with Veronica because she was dangerous," he said at last. He shook his head, almost faintly, as if correcting a rumor no one had spoken aloud.
"I fell in love because she was trying so desperately not to become the monster her pain wanted her to be.
" His fingers traced the neck of the bottle.
"Dozens of women threw themselves at my feet throughout my life," Elias continued.
"Not because they knew me." His smile carried no pride. "Because they knew my bloodline."
His gaze wandered somewhere far beyond the room.
"They saw titles. Power. Influence. A name close enough to a throne to make ambitious families salivate into their handkerchiefs.
" He laughed quietly, though there was little humor in it.
"They never saw me." I watched him carefully.
It was rare to hear Elias speak of himself without turning the subject into a joke before anyone could look too closely.
His humor remained, but softer now, set aside like a weapon placed within reach but not in hand.
"I never intended to marry," he admitted.
The confession surprised me more than it should have.
Perhaps because Elias seemed made for family, not in the respectable courtly sense, but in the chaotic, inconvenient, impossible sense.
Children followed him like small, loud shadows.
People leaned toward him without realizing it.
Achilles pretended irritation whenever Elias came near and then listened to him more than he listened to anyone else.
"It seemed..." He considered the word with faint amusement. "Unnecessary."
He took another slow sip.
"I found fulfillment elsewhere. I traveled.
I learned languages no one in this empire has ever heard spoken.
I crossed deserts that swallowed entire armies.
I sailed oceans that maps insisted did not exist. I studied medicine beneath scholars who considered death a puzzle and theology beneath priests who considered doubt a form of prayer.
I learned warfare from men history now calls monsters and philosophy from monks who believed violence was simply another form of grief.
" A wistful smile crossed his face. "I have seen cities carved into mountains.
I have eaten beneath skies where the stars looked unfamiliar.
I have walked through markets where spices were worth more than gold and libraries where books were chained like prisoners because knowledge was considered too dangerous to wander freely. "
His eye softened with memory.
"I have witnessed things no reasonable person would believe."
"People pitied me," he said, almost amused by the memory. "They wondered Why i refused a throne that many have killed for. Why had I never settled down? Why I had no children."
He looked back at me.
"They assumed i was lonely that i traveled to fill an empty heart that a family of my own would bring me."
His smile gentled.
"They never considered contentment."
Have people often decided the shape of another person's happiness for them?
An unmarried man must be lonely. A woman without children must be incomplete.
A queen gentle enough to forgive must be weak.
A tyrant capable of love must have changed.
People loved simple stories because they required less attention.
"I had no desire to sentence an innocent woman to a barren life in an empty mansion while I disappeared for months, perhaps years, chasing another horizon, " Elias said. His voice softened. "What sort of love asks someone to spend their life waiting?"
He smiled faintly.
"So I never asked...I cannot tell you when my heart chose Veronica."
His smile became almost embarrassed.
"Nor why."
He looked toward the portrait above the fireplace. The painted Veronica stood beside his painted self, her stern face and betrayed eyes, loved in silence by an artist who must have understood more than either of them would likely admit.
"It simply did."
His gaze remained there.
"She was angry. So terribly angry. Careless with herself. She would throw herself into danger without hesitation because, somewhere deep inside, she had already decided her own life was worth less than everyone else's."
His expression grew thoughtful.
"Hatred narrows a person's vision. They stop seeing people. They begin seeing symbols. Enemies. Justice. Revenge. They convince themselves every wound they inflict serves a greater purpose."
He sighed.
"The innocent always pay for that kind of conviction...
For years, I merely observed her," Elias said.
"I had my own work. My own responsibilities.
My own journeys. There was no reason for our paths to become one.
" His eyes lowered toward the fire. "And then one afternoon...
" His voice changed. Not dramatically. Elias did not need drama.
The gentleness alone altered the room. "I found her sitting beneath a tree.
The woman entire battalions feared, crying where no one would ever think to look. "
"There was no audience," Elias said. "No soldiers. No armor. No war. Only a woman who had finally grown too exhausted to keep pretending she was unbreakable."
His voice became almost impossibly gentle.
"So I offered her what no one else ever had."
He looked back at me.
"Friendship."
The word was small. He smiled to himself. "It frustrated everyone."
Despite the tightness in my chest, I almost smiled.
"They assumed we would become lovers. They wondered why months became years. They believed I lacked courage."
He laughed quietly.
"The truth was much simpler."
His thumb brushed the glass bottle, slow and absent.
"I had already fallen in love."
My eyes lifted to him.
"It took me only a few weeks."
The admission carried no shame, no defensiveness. Only honesty.
"But love was never what Veronica needed."
He looked at me with quiet certainty.
"Traumatized people mistake safety for love every day.
I refused to let that become our story if we were to have one.
She did not need a lover," Elias said. "She did not need another person asking to become the center of her world.
She needed someone willing to remain beside her until she remembered she could become the center of her own. "
His smile held something infinitely older than happiness.
"You cannot build a healthy love upon self-hatred. It becomes worship. Dependency. Eventually resentment."
His gaze returned to the portrait.
"So I waited."
"I watched her heal," he said. "I watched her discover passions beyond surviving.
The world may call those passions cruel.
" His mouth curved faintly. "I never cared.
" His eyes met mine. "I have never judged someone for the shape their survival took.
" His smile became almost ironic. "Especially not when my own is far uglier. "
Elias leaned back then, though the mood between us did not lighten. It deepened, settling around the fire and the wine and the half-eaten food. "I have told you before, Ophelia," he said. "I possess no tragic childhood. No heartbreaking tale explaining what I became."
His eye sharpened slightly.
"I am not this man because fate cornered me. I am this man because, given every opportunity to become someone else..." He smiled faintly. "I chose this."
My hand tightened around the spoon.
There were many terrifying things about Achilles.
His violence. His authority. The way rooms obeyed him before people did.
But Achilles's cruelty had always carried scars beneath it.
Grief. Survival. A boy who learned fear before tenderness and control before trust. Veronica's darkness had roots in torture, in years of pain that no person should have endured.
Even my own softness had been shaped by absence and longing and a desperate need not to become cruel simply because cruelty surrounded me.
But Elias did not offer me a wound as an explanation.
He did not lift a scar and ask me to understand him through it.
He simply placed his choices on the table between us, clean and unadorned.
I found that more frightening than any tragedy.
"Do you enjoy it?"
The question escaped before I could soften it.
For the first time since I had met him, Elias did not answer immediately.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms upon his knees.
Firelight caught the silver woven through his long hair, and for a moment, he looked exactly like the portrait hanging above the mantel.
Only infinitely more tired. The wine bottle hung loosely from one hand.
The tattooed words along his skin seemed darker in the shifting light, every line a memory he had chosen not to let die politely.
"...Yes." The word was almost gentle. "I do...
I am the debt collector, Ophelia. There are people beneath this very roof whose debts cannot be measured in coin.
" His voice lost neither warmth nor composure.
"I do not pretend what I do is noble. I have never believed that cruelty becomes righteousness simply because it wears a good intention. "
He paused.
"But I also know something most philosophers refuse to admit."
His gaze turned toward the fire.
"Evil often grows old."
The words settled into the room with terrible patience.
"It dies peacefully. It raises grandchildren.
It is celebrated. Meanwhile, the children it buried remain beneath the earth.
" His eye darkened. "I have seen villages burned because powerful men desired amusement.
I have watched children cry beside bodies they were too small to bury.
I have listened to mothers apologize to corpses because they survived. "
He exhaled.
"And the men responsible... they laughed. They dined. They married. They inherited titles. They died surrounded by family. So yes," Elias said softly. "I enjoy taking that certainty away from them."
His voice remained warm.
"I enjoy watching monsters realize that, for the first time in their lives, someone stronger has finally arrived."
A faint smile crossed his face.
"But I am not delusional. Removing a man's limbs will never rebuild the village he destroyed. It will never return a murdered child to its mother's arms. It will never erase what was done...There is no punishment powerful enough to balance suffering. There is only consequence."
His expression became almost unbearably weary.
"And sometimes..." His voice lowered. "Consequence is all this broken world has left to offer."
I sat very still.
"Do not look so alarmed, little queen. You married Achilles. Your tolerance for terrifying men is already suspiciously high."
Despite myself, I almost laughed.
Almost.
But the room was still too heavy.
"And Ezra?" I asked. The question did not feel planned. It arrived because it had been waiting beneath everything else. Elias's expression changed.
Only slightly.
Enough.
"What will happen to him?" He leaned back, taking his time before answering. "As you requested, he will take his last breath a year from the day you sentenced him."
"So are they all down there?" I asked.
Elias knew who I meant.
His smile faded.
"Yes."
My father.
My stepmother.
Isaac.
The answer landed without shock.
Perhaps part of me had already known.
"If you wish to speak with the others," he said carefully, "you may."
"No."
The word left me instantly.
His mouth curved faintly. "Good."
I looked at him.
"I do not think Isaac can hold much of a conversation anymore.".
"What happened to him?"
Elias tilted his head, watching me with a care that seemed almost gentle. Then he shrugged. "Let us say one needs a tongue to talk." My stomach turned. "And hands," he added mildly, "are not useful things to possess when one has made a habit of touching what was never his."
I closed my eyes briefly.
No satisfaction came.
No pity either.
Only a tired, complicated relief I did not want to examine too closely.
A silence settled again, quieter now, more personal. Elias drank. I ate because I had to. The portrait watched over us. The office remained warm while the knowledge of the lower floor sat beneath every floorboard like a second foundation.
"How much longer am I supposed to stay here?" I asked finally.
Elias blinked.
Then his grin returned, quick and bright. "What? Not enjoying my company?"
I looked down at my hands.
They were pale against my lap. Thin. Marked faintly by bruises and needles. They looked like hands belonging to someone recovering, which felt insulting because recovery suggested progress and my heart still felt stranded somewhere between the palace door and this room.
"I want to go home."
The words were small.
Too small.
The teasing disappeared from Elias's face.
I did not look up at him.
"This place is beautiful," I said, because it was. "And strange. And warm. And frightening. ." My voice trembled despite my efforts. "I know I am safer here. I know why Achille sent me. I know he was right."
A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it.
I wiped it away quickly, irritated.
"But I miss my home. I miss the east garden. I miss the river I miss hearing footsteps outside the door. I miss knowing which ones are his. I miss tea arriving at the same hour. I miss the palace being too large and too cold and somehow mine anyway."
Another tear came.
I swallowed, but the ache remained.
"I miss my husband."
That was the truth beneath everything.
"I miss him so badly I feel foolish."
Elias leaned back slowly.
"Well," he said softly, "you really are homesick."
I laughed once, wet and embarrassed. "Very dignified."
"No," he said.
The firmness in his voice made me look at him.
"You are a woman forced to leave the first place that became home after years of surviving houses that never felt like one."
My face crumpled before I could stop it.
I looked away again, pressing my fingers beneath my eyes.
"I hate when people understand things."
"It is one of my more irritating gifts."
"You have many."
"An alarming number."
I gave a watery laugh.
He smiled, but only briefly, then set the wine bottle aside and leaned forward. "One more week."
I stilled.
"What?"
"I need you to hold out for one more week."
"One week?"
"One week," he said. "Your due date is too close for us to keep you here longer than that. This manor has physicians, supplies, trained hands, and more hidden exits than any building should possess, but it is not where you should give birth unless there is no other choice."
My hand moved to my stomach.
The child shifted faintly beneath my palm.
"If labor starts here," he continued, "Achille will either reach us in record time or personally destroy every road between here and the palace trying. I have no desire to explain to future generations why half the eastern route was rebuilt because their emperor experienced paternal panic."
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
"But more importantly," Elias said, and the humor faded, "you should be home before then. With your husband. In the room prepared for you. Surrounded by people who know your needs and fear Achille enough to obey them properly."
"What if he has not found who did it by then?"
Elias's expression changed.
Not much.
Enough.
"We can always just kill everyone in the palace."
"Elias."
"Just saying it solves all our problems."
I stared at him.
He held my gaze.
"Listen to me, Ophelia. Your task for the next week is not to solve the poisoning.
It is not to uncover every secret in this manor, confront every ghost from your past, emotionally devastate dying men," He pointed at me.
"Your task is to stay alive. Eat. Sleep.
Rest. Let your body remember that it is no longer under attack every hour. Let the child grow stronger.."
My fingers tightened over my stomach.
"And after one week?"
His expression softened.
"After one week, I'll take you home."
The words struck me harder than I expected.
I wanted to believe him so badly that it hurt.
Perhaps that was the worst part of hope. It did not arrive gently. It entered like light through curtains after a storm, touching everything whether one was ready or not
"One week," I whispered.
"One week," Elias said.
"You promise?"
His smile softened into something almost solemn.
"I promise."
I looked at him carefully.
The jester.
The soldier.
The keeper of secrets.
The tear that slipped down my cheek this time did not feel quite as humiliating.
Elias noticed it anyway and sighed dramatically, clearly deciding the moment had become too sincere for his personal comfort.
"If you cry into the soup, I will be offended. The seasoning is already delicate and extremel hard to find ."
I stared at him. He looked perfectly serious.
I wiped my cheek. "You are awful."
"i have been told frequently."
"I was having an emotional moment."
"I know. I saved you from it."
"You interrupted it."
"Heroically."
Despite myself, I laughed.