31. Dandelion
Dandelion
SERAPHAE
Maerith was startled when she saw me.
Which was as unsettling as watching Riven host a birthday party.
She had been staying in Caelan’s estate since we returned with a temporary position as my healer.
Caelan had also felt the need to inform me that Maerith, had the same ridiculous salary expectations as I did and that we would get along splendidly.
According to Brie, she had been an absolute delight, on account of sharing Brie's enthusiasm for day drinking.
That was exactly where I found her. Stretched across a stone bench in the courtyard like she owned it, runes blazing amber, head tipped back, pouring wine directly into her mouth.
She turned her head and half choked, half screamed. Startled an entire flock of birds out of the trees.
“I didn't mean to scare you,” I said, slowing my approach.
Her dark eyes fluttered. “I wasn't scared.”
I looked at the trees. The birds were still leaving.
“Migration,” she said simply.
I sat at a careful distance. Her eyes swept over me once.
“I wanted to thank you,” I said. “For saving me.”
“Don't thank me yet, love.” A slow smile. One that meant she knew something and wasn't planning to tell me.
“What were you doing in Winter?” I asked.
“Frostblooms.” Maerith lifted a finger, and an unnaturally iridescent butterfly perched on it. “Delicate little white flower that grows in the snow. Makes a good alternative for heartvines, which are triple the price now thanks to Verdant’s trade restrictions.”
The butterfly took flight and hovered to my right.
“That’s some luck,” I said, swatting as the butterfly came close.
She watched me get assaulted by insects with great interest.
“Fate,” she corrected. “Luck would imply something good had happened.”
Another butterfly had joined the assault, and I had decided that I disliked spring.
Maerith was observing me, and the attention the witch was giving me made me scoot back.
“Where did you say you were from?” She reached out and ran her fingers through a strand of my hair as if personal space was a concept she didn’t understand. I held perfectly still and mentally praised myself for it.
“Thalvarn.”
Her eyes lifted from my hair to my face, and made a thoughtful sound.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“The east.”
“There’s nothing in the east.”
She didn’t correct me. Just offered a slow curve of her mouth before lounging back on the stone bench again.
“Now that you're healed, we can do the ritual as soon as the next full moon.”
Her words lodged somewhere between my ribs.
“When would that be?”
She looked up at the sky, squinted, and counted on her fingers.
“A fortnight or so.”
A fortnight. Then nothing tethering me to Caelan.
I looked down at the cobblestones. At the dandelions growing at the base of the fountain, yellow faces closed, one of them gone entirely to white.
The season had shifted without me noticing.
When I first arrived in Primoria, I'd wanted him dead.
That felt almost distant now. The kind of thing you remember happening to a different person.
Somewhere between the Hollow and a garden at seventh bell, someone I'd wanted to end had become someone I had wanted to stand in front of.
Maerith didn't speak. She only watched me.
The dandelion cycle, I thought. First, a weed you cut down on principle. Then something you find yourself guarding against the wind.
I didn't say any of that out loud.
“What was the cost of saving me?” I asked, tearing my gaze from the dandelion and turning toward Maerith.
She was gone.
A wine bottle sat where she'd been, label facing out like a taunt.
I stared at it for a moment.
Rude.
As the days passed, I fell back into the routine of a personal guard. Caelan had told me I didn't need to be, and I had told him it was what he was paying me for. Which was true. That was the only reason.
The throne room was first. Tariffs, border disputes, a promotion for an advisor that Maelor had opinions about.
Caelan did not pay much attention to any of it.
My place was to his right, a couple of steps behind the throne. Clear sightlines in every direction. He had physically moved me to stand beside him where he could watch me instead. He did this in the middle of an advisor’s speech, without comment.
A stack of parchment was presented by Councilor Persius.
“What's this?”
“Petitions, Your Highness.”
Caelan took the stack. Thumbed through it and handed it to Riven, who tucked it under his arm without a reaction.
“The people—“
“Do not need to concern themselves with this matter.” Caelan stood. “Court is dismissed.”
Persius went pale and bowed low before he filed out with everyone else.
Maelor looked at him with pity and followed.
Riven glanced at me once on his way out.
The look lasted longer than usual. He had been doing that more often since Mirror Lake. Soft looks and brief checks that were barely noticeable, but I noticed. As if a part of him still expected to find me bleeding in his arms.
“What was the petition about?” I asked, falling into step beside Caelan.
He turned to me with an easy smile. “Nothing important.”
It wasn't an answer. I filed it away and let it go. If it was something I needed to know, he'd tell me. I was choosing to believe that.
Xander found us in the courtyard after we left the throne room.
His hands tucked in his pockets, a smile on his face. “You look better,” he said.
“I am excellent.”
“Good.” He looked at Caelan. The smile went out like a snuffed candle.
I watched them both. Caelan, entirely unbothered. Xander looked at the prince in a way that technically constituted treason.
“What is going on with you two?”
“Nothing,” they said simultaneously.
Caelan asked about the investigation. Xander straightened, professionalism reassembled.
“No leads yet on who hired them. But.” He held up a finger. “The rock assassin had a lover. Courtesan in Twinreach, south of Thalvarn. I'm heading there now.”
Caelan nodded. “That's something.”
“It's something,” Xander agreed. He looked at me. Then at Caelan, with significantly less warmth. “Be good to her. Don't give me a reason to come back early.”
Caelan's lip twitched. “I'll try not to ruin your travel plans.”
Xander made a face, blew me a kiss, and left.
We watched him go.
Caelan leaned in, and I stepped back, eyeing the courtyard. Affection in front of his guards was one thing. Doing it during the day in front of wandering advisors was another.
He looked surprised.
“You're going to start rumors.”
His head tilted. “It's not a rumor if it's true.”
I had no words.
He watched me come up empty and smirked. Then he closed the distance again. Someone gasped sharply behind a column.
“You're making me appear scandalous.”
I didn't move. Just looked up at him.
He leaned in, lips at my ear. “Did you know,” he said quietly, “that all I could think about during court was how you looked when you came undone?”
Heat shot straight to my face, and I smacked his chest. The sound was somehow obscenely louder than I intended it to be. It earned looks from every direction in the courtyard.
I froze.
I had just physically laid hands on royalty. In front of witnesses.
I turned, smiled the wide one I kept for emergencies, and gently brushed his chest where I'd hit him.
“Goodness. Enormous one.” Still brushing. “Very fast. You wouldn't have seen it.”
Caelan chuckled. Adjusted his crown with great theatrical dignity.
“Come,” he said, nodding toward the estate. “Everyone is waiting.”
He offered an arm. I walked past it. He fell into step beside me and I mouthed behave, which he ignored completely.
Dinner was what dinner always was. Too much food. All of it offensively good. Maelor complaining about things he was actively being compensated to do.
Then the plates cleared and the real conversation started.
Riven's notes spread across the table. Xander's beside them. Brie retrieved a bottle of wine and placed it at the center like a witness who wasn't going to offer testimony.
Three attempts now.
“Obsidian Hand was the first attempt.” Caelan tapped the note on the table.
“Five assassins from four different northern syndicates after,” Maelor said.
I crossed my arms and leaned back. “Then Sir Pain in the Ass and Admiral Stoneface at Mirror Lake.”
Everyone looked at me. Caelan and Brie amused. Maelor proud. Riven’s lip twitched.
Maelor rubbed his chin. “So whoever hired Sera is a total dead end.”
“No paper trail. Nothing,” Caelan confirmed.
“Last attempt has a lead.” I tapped Xander's notes. “Stoneface’s lover in Twinreach.”
The smell of tea drifted across the table. Caelan added dried tea leaves into a cup and poured from a steaming teapot. We all watched him as he stirred with great focus. He ignored the attention, finished stirring, and tapped on a separate note on the table.
“The stoneface one,” he said, tapping a separate note. “He’s from Crown, or had recently been.”
Skills like that, operating out of Crown. He had to be high-stationed.
Brie made a frustrated sound and blew her dark bangs away from her face.
Maelor spread his hands. “Alright. Who would want Caelan dead the most in Primoria?”
Caelan shrugged. “At least half the continent.”
“Fantastic,” I muttered.
“Some with coin,” Riven said. “Power. Both.”
Everyone nodded.
“The list is still too long,” I said. “Who can wipe records, pay off multiple syndicates, and risk hiring fae assassins? That's a political liability. A fae wouldn't take the job for a human, no matter the coin.”
I let that sit.
The look on Riven's face told me he'd arrived at the same place. One that Caelan may have also arrived at but was refusing to acknowledge.
We both looked at Caelan.
He looked at the teacup. “I've thought about it. Mallas, I can trust. Winter and Twilight relations are good. Elion has always been the mediator in the family. Kingdom of Tide tends to stay neutral.” A pause. “Luceris, however.”
“Verdant has the coin,” I said.
“And Luceris has the power,” Brie said softly. Her eyes distant and her lips pressed into a thin line the moment the sentence ended. The possibility of betrayal settling all over her face.
Caelan nodded and moved to add slices of lemon and honey into the teacup. He gave it another stir before setting it in front of me.
Maelor was staring at him.
“What?”
“Just watching you get domesticated in real time,” Maelor said.
Brie snorted.
I smiled into the cup and took a sip. Two slices of lemon. Two teaspoons of honey. Exactly the way I liked it.
“Luceris hates you,” Riven stated. “That alone isn't enough.”
“He wouldn't commit treason for it,” Caelan agreed. “There's a larger goal.”
“Rebellion?” Maelor asked.
“He's already crown prince,” Brie said. “The throne is already his.”
I turned my cup in my hands. “Unless he's worried Caelan might take it back.”
Caelan met my eyes. Then looked at everyone. “He knows I have no intention of that.”
I had never thought to ask. Caelan had been sent here when Twilight was nothing but borderlands. His army had grown, and they had put down roots and built families. When the treaty was signed, the land thrived. The people needed a leader, and Caelan had been it.
I never once wondered if it had been a choice.
“You never wanted it,” I said. Not quite a question.
A pause.
“No.” He took a breath. “But it never mattered what I wanted.”
The silence that followed had weight to it. My shoulders slumped under it.
“Who wants more wine?” Brie stood.
Maelor followed her to the sideboard. Their voices dropped low, occupied with something that had nothing to do with treason.
I looked at Caelan.
He gave me a smile. It didn't reach his eyes.
We finished the bottle and didn't talk about crowns again.
Maelor stretched and looked across the table at Brie. Something unspoken passed between them, and I watched as Brie smirked and looked away.
We ended the night with the conclusion that Luceris was most likely plotting Caelan’s death.
Caelan’s response was to look at me across the dinner table with a smile that meant trouble and say, with complete sincerity, “Honestly, I should probably thank him. It’s how we met.”
Riven retired first. Seemingly done.
I let myself think about it. Caelan without Twilight. Without a borderland to hold, without a century of war to build something out of. Just a prince in exile, quietly forgotten.
No contract on his life.
No serpents on our wrists.
No us.
I found I didn't want to know what that looked like.