Darron shifted.
"What I call it, is a risk."
"Everything is a fucking risk," she snapped. "Breathing is a risk. Going to ground is a risk. Pretending neutrality is not risk...it's complicity. If you want to discuss policy, bring me proposals. If you want to gossip, send it to the kitchens. They have better stories and sharper knives."
His mouth pressed into a thin line.
"You would threaten a lord for expressing concern?"
"I would threaten anyone," Ann said pleasantly, "who uses 'concern' as a mask for sabotage. Treachery does not always wear armor. Sometimes it wears pearls and whispers."
Maeve clapped slowly in her head.
"YAS QUEENIE!" she howled happily.
Darron lifted his hands, all false softness now that she had stood her ground.
"I mean no treason."
"Then stop acting like it," Ann said. "And if you truly fear wolves at my gates, perhaps stand with me at the gates instead of behind a hedge, muttering."
His jaw worked. He bowed, stiff, and left without another word.
"Next?" Ann asked the room, to no one, rubbing at the ache between her eyes.
Coral closed the door gently and blew out a breath.
"That was handled with… surgical precision, my Queen. Well done..."
Eva poured tea like she hadn't cared the whole time.
"You keep this up, and Maren will float rumors about 'intimidation' by nightfall."
"She can float what she likes, preferably her own bloated corpse down the river," Ann hissed, "I'm done coddling poison."
They cut back toward the east wing...the quieter corridors where the palace's noise didn't dig under her skin as easily. She'd barely taken ten steps before a messenger intercepted them, breathless and nervous, with a seal in his shaking hand.
"For you, Majesty," he stammered. "From Alpha Brad."
Something hot and complicated flared in her chest. She didn't open it there. She tucked the letter into her jacket and kept walking.
Uh-huh, Maeve purred. Read it. Go on. Let's see if the ghost can still bite.
Not yet.
In the smaller lounge...the same one Brarthroroz had burned with his grief...Ann finally broke the wax to see just three lines, neat and restrained.
Border is quiet. Reinforcements posted. Liaison reporting hourly to Coral. Tell your guards to stop looking at our scouts like a disease. I won't have one of mine snapped at because they breathe wrong.
...B.
No flourish. No plea. No apology.
Ann folded the page sharply and slid it into her pocket. His words echoed anyway...I'll stand in it if she needs me to.
He had. For once, she let herself admit it...he had stood there, and she had needed someone, and he had been useful in the exact way that would haunt her now.
"Updates?" she asked, voice crisp to scrub the echo out.
Coral rifled papers.
"The resettlement is… tense, to put it mildly. The new Lycans haven't retaliated once against the provocations, but the refugee complaints keep coming. Nobles are sending 'private concerns' about 'security optics.' Translation: they want them gone."
"Of course they do," Ann said. "Easier to call it 'optics' than to say 'I'm a coward.'"
Eva set the tea down untouched.
"We can publish a code of conduct. Clear penalties for harassment, no matter who starts it. If nobles 'accidentally' incite violence, we dock their privileges. Access limits. Luxury ration cuts, you know, hit them where it hurts."
Ann's mouth twitched.
"You want me to take their wine don't you?"
Eva's eyes glinted.
"Nothing motivates a lazy noble quite like thirst."
Steal their pearls while you're at it, Maeve said. Choke them on their own necklaces if they don't behave.
"Do it," Ann told Eva. "Plain language. No loopholes. If the Lycan King wants to test us, fine. He doesn't get to watch us eat each other first."
Eva nodded and left like a woman on a mission.
Coral hung back.
"Your Majesty… a note for the record." She hesitated. "You can keep shutting them down, and I'll keep writing statements that say nothing with authority, and we'll buy time. But time only buys more whispers. At some point, there will have to be a moment. Not a speech. A… something. You, visible, decisive, and not just about policy. About you."
Ann stared at the window, where the yard broke into scaffolds and chalk and tents.
"What more do you want me to do, Coral. Hold a rally? Kiss babies? Kick Maren into a fountain?"
Coral stifled a smile.
"Tempting. But no. I mean… Adam will be back soon with the Dark Moon. Let them see you together. Not staged. Real. Even the snakes know when to shut up if the wolves are in the same room looking like they might bite."
Ann's throat tightened at his name.
"He'll be back when the perimeter's set."
"And until then," Coral said gently, "I'll keep the letters coming and the lords at bay."
Ann's hand found the pocket with Brad's note all on its own. She took it back out and set it on the table, flattening the crease.
"Make sure his liaison is fed well," she said. "And make sure nobody snarls at them unless they want to explain it to me personally."
Coral's brows lifted.
"Consider it done."
The rest of the day passed in the slow grind that she'd come to hate, nothing but inspections, interruptions, signatures and quiet ambushes in corridors dressed up as friendly conversation. Whispers slid like snakes under doors. Her guards bristled and Maeve paced, offering colorful solutions she couldn't legally use.
By late afternoon, Ann needed air before she chewed the gold leaf off the moldings. She crossed the inner yard with two guards at her shoulder, boots scuffing dust, breath ghosting in the cooler shade. A cluster of nobles had wandered too close to the refugee tents, watching like patrons at a tragic play.
One of them...a boy too young to have the balls for the sneer he wore...pointed at a Lycan woman lifting a crate and said something that made the older men smirk.
The woman kept lifting. She didn't look up and she didn't bite.
Ann changed direction.
"Is there a problem?" she asked, all pleasant edges, stopping at the boy's shoulder.