POV Selene
Morning council was torture. Casimir sat at the head of the table and never once looked at me—not when I entered, not while I delivered trade reports, not even when Master Alden asked for my assessment on grain allocations and I answered with a steady voice while my hands shook hidden in my lap. He was ice: removed, unreachable. The absence of his gaze burned more than any censure.
The others noticed. Glances slid between lords like cards in a rigged game; Kestrel watched with hooded patience, filing away each fragment of silence.
When the session ended I gathered my papers too quickly, the parchment rasping like breath in a sickroom. I needed distance—air not steeped in his deliberate indifference.
“Envoy. A moment?” Kestrel’s pleasant tone halted me at the door. He guided me to a windowed alcove where rain sheeted down the glass, blurring the city to watercolor. He stepped close—not touching, not overtly threatening—just near enough that I would have to push past him to leave.
“I wished to inquire about your son,” he said, conversational as a man discussing weather. “Significant medical care, I hear.”
“Treatment is ongoing.” I made my face a mask.
“Costly treatment. Beyond an envoy’s stipend, one imagines.” His head tipped, mild as a priest. “Expenditures from the Privy Purse to a certain sanctuary have… increased. All beginning when you arrived. One might wonder why the king takes such personal interest.”
Fear lapped coldly at my spine; I held still. “The king is generous.”
“Not like this.” The smile edged sharper. “I’ve served three kings. I recognize sentiment when it dresses itself as policy.”
“I don’t understand your implication.”
“A beautiful woman,” he mused, “a sick child, a king without an heir. The timing fascinates.” When I said quietly that my son’s father was dead, the lie tasted like iron. “How convenient,” he murmured, and inspected a thumbnail. “Royal Physicians possess old methods to establish paternity. Dragonblood assays. Remarkably reliable.”
My pulse hammered in my ears. “Invasive.”
“Prudent,” he corrected, smoothing his cuffs. “The Crown must be protected from impropriety. A ruler who sires bastards and hides them invites questions—judgment, loyalty, fitness.” He flicked a glance at the rain. “Good day, Envoy.”
He left me in the alcove with the rain drumming an accusation against the glass. The corridors felt narrower on the walk back, as if the palace had inhaled and not exhaled.
I worked until words refused to hold still, then fled to the sanctuary. Anya met me at the door, worry already in her face. She pulled me into the small office, shut us in with the soft click of a lock.
“A clerk came. Royal livery,” she whispered. “He asked about Ari’s condition, his treatments, his age—and who his father is.”
The floor tilted. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I said I’m only the nurse, not family. But they’re digging, Selene. They’ll keep digging.”
Through the narrow window I saw Ari curled in his bed, the carved raven tucked under his chin, sleep softening his mouth. Wolves circled lambs with less discipline than this court.
“No more visitors without my word,” I said. “If anyone from the palace comes—anyone—you send for me. Answer nothing.”
“I’ll be careful.” She squeezed my hand; I tried to anchor us both with that touch.
Night gathered early. When I returned to my quarters a document lay under the door like a snake. Ari’s birth certificate—copied, annotated. Neat marginalia, dates circled, the Night of Silent Lanterns marked with a star; nine months later, Ari’s birthday ringed twice. A case, being arranged like bones on a table. Kestrel’s work—no accusation, only a message: we know; we’re watching; we can prove it.
I burned the paper and watched proof turn to black lace, then ash. The smell clung. The threat did not burn.
Near midnight, a soft scrape raised the small hairs on my neck. The panel beside the wardrobe rotated inward on silent hinges. A figure stepped through, hooded and cloaked. He shut the wall and pushed the hood back.
Casimir. Drawn. Exhausted. Human.
“We need to talk,” he said.
I stood too fast; the chair leg skated. “How did you—”
“Passages. The old king liked options.” He crossed to the window, studied the dark garden where no one could overhear a thought. “Kestrel is investigating your son. He suspects royal blood.”
Fear surged fresh. “How do you know?”
“I have eyes in his household. He’s requested Lysaran records, sanctuary files. He’s bribing clerks.” Casimir turned. The blue of his eyes was winter-clear and furious. “He means to prove Ari an illegitimate royal. If he succeeds, he’ll use it to break you—declare you unfit, sever your rights.”
My legs forgot their purpose; I sank into the chair. “What do we do?”
“I move first,” he said, and the decision sat on him like armor. “I’ll acknowledge Ari publicly—as a ward of the Crown. Royal protection.”
“A ward?” I heard the scrape of fear under my own voice. “What does that mean for him, for me?”
“It means any threat to him is treason. Any attempt to remove him requires my signature. Legally, he becomes untouchable.”
“It paints a target,” I said. The thought of spotlights on Ari’s small body made my stomach clench. “Attention feeds men like Kestrel.”
“My attention starves them.” His jaw set. “I won’t let him harm either of you.”
“Why?” The question tore free, rawer than I intended. “Why risk your position? I’m a foreign envoy. He is a sick child. We are not—” I couldn’t finish.
“You’re not nothing,” he said, voice roughened, words scuffed by something like pain.
“Then what are we?” I hated the ache in the question.
A long look. Something moved behind his eyes—longing or memory or both—and was leashed. “Under my protection,” he said at last. “That is what matters.”
“It isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I can give.” He glanced toward the hidden seam in the wall, duty tapping its foot. “Be ready tomorrow. Protection will provoke Kestrel. It will get worse before it gets better.”
“Casimir—wait.” The name leapt out of me before I could recall it. He stilled. “Earlier. In the map room. When you saw my ribbon—you reacted like—”
“Nothing.” He put steel in the word and frost on it. “A mistake. Forget it.”
“But—”
“Forget it, Selene.” His palm found the hidden catch. “Some things are best left in the past.”
The panel turned; the wall became wall again. I was alone with the soft ticking of cooling stone.
Sleep did not come. I lay staring into the dark while the mind plays its cruel games: if he knew, he could destroy me, and he hasn’t. If he cares, he could confess, and he won’t. Kings do not act without reason; I could not see the angle. What could he gain from acknowledging a bastard son of a disgraced foreign princess?
Unless there was no angle. Unless he meant simply to do what was right.
That possibility frightened me more than the politics. A righteous king is harder to predict than a selfish one. A righteous king can break you without meaning to.
I touched the ribbon beneath my sleeve—the knot worn smooth by years, by need, by memory—and breathed until the room steadied around me. Tomorrow would sharpen like a blade. Kestrel would bare his teeth. Casimir would put a crown’s weight behind Ari’s name. The court would recalibrate to the new center of gravity.
I believed all of it. And I believed the worst would come first.
Morning would find me at the sanctuary before bells, counting dials, counting breaths, counting blessings like beads. Then at the palace, counting enemies. I would hold the line between those worlds with both hands and refuse to let it break. If the Crown wished to make my child a ward, then let the law bind itself as it never bound me. If Kestrel wished to test his knives, then let him learn the cost of cutting.
I lay awake until the window bled from black to pewter. Somewhere inside the walls, mechanisms whispered; servants woke the fires; corridors filled with the hush before performance. The palace loves a spectacle. Tomorrow, it would have one.
I pressed the ribbon again, the single true vow left to me, and told my fear to sit at my feet. It trembled, but it obeyed.