Princess Evelyne's Warning

Chapter: 4

"Duty before desire," Evelyne recited to the mirror.

Behind her, Reyna paused mid-stitch on the hem she was mending. "You sound like you're rehearsing for a funeral, Your Highness."

"A wedding and a funeral have one thing in common."

"And what's that?"

"Everyone expects you to smile through it." Evelyne set down the ceremonial parchment and studied her own reflection composed, unbothered, exactly as it needed to be. "Is my father still in the east hall?"

"Complaining about garrisons, last I heard."

"Of course he is." Evelyne stood, smoothing her skirts. "Tell him I've gone to finalize ceremony details with the Alpha King. Tell him nothing else. He'll only try to attend."

Kael was already at the council table when she arrived, papers spread before him, Sarn hovering at his shoulder with the particular tension of a man delivering bad news he hadn't finished delivering yet. Both of them straightened when she entered.

"Am I interrupting?"

"No," Kael said, a beat too fast.

Sarn gathered his papers with the efficiency of someone who'd been dismissed before the words left anyone's mouth. "I'll return within the hour, Alpha King."

Evelyne watched him go, filing the exchange away Sarn's haste, the papers he'd angled carefully out of her sightline, the faint crease still sitting between Kael's brows.

"Ceremony logistics," she said, taking the seat across from him. "That's what we're here for, correct?"

"Correct."

"Then let's begin with processional order. My father wants the Ashwood banners displayed alongside the crown's during the entrance."

"Denied."

"You didn't let me finish the request."

"I didn't need to. Your father wants his house visually equated with the throne before we've even exchanged vows. The answer is no." Kael's tone stayed even, almost bored. "What's the actual question, Evelyne?"

She allowed herself a small smile. He wasn't wrong to suspect one. "Fine. The actual question is whether the ceremony proceeds on schedule, given how distracted you've seemed since our last meeting."

"I'm not distracted."

"You signed the wrong parchment twice during the Ashwood negotiation. You corrected it before my father noticed, but I noticed." She tilted her head. "That's not nothing, for a man known for precision."

Kael's expression didn't change, which told her more than if it had. "The kingdom has demands beyond our wedding, Evelyne. Forgive me if not every hour of my day revolves around processional banners."

"I never assumed it did." She let the silence stretch, watching him not fill it another data point. "You've had Sarn investigating something. He's been seen in the temple archive three times this week. That's unusual, for a Beta who typically handles border patrols."

"You've been tracking my Beta's movements."

"I track everything that might affect my marriage. It's not personal." She leaned forward slightly. "What's in the archive, Kael?"

"Old records."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the answer you're getting."

Evelyne studied him a moment longer, recalibrating. Direct pressure wasn't working. She changed angles instead, voice dropping into something more idle, more careless the tone of someone making conversation rather than conducting an interrogation.

"There was a girl at the inspection," she said. "Caused something of a scene with the healer, from what I heard. The wolfless Veyne girl."

She watched him the way she watched everything carefully, without appearing to.

It was small. Barely there. A stillness in his hands where there hadn't been stillness a moment before, a fraction of a pause before he answered.

"I wouldn't know," Kael said. "I don't concern myself with servant gossip."

"I didn't say you did." Evelyne kept her voice light, but her mind had already caught the thread and pulled. "I only mentioned it because Yssa apparently used an odd word during the examination. Sealed, rather than absent. Strange thing to say about a girl with no wolf at all." She paused. "You've gone very quiet, Alpha King."

"I'm listening. That's usually what quiet means."

"It's also what hiding something means." She said it pleasantly, almost affectionately, the way one might point out a stain on someone's collar. "You don't have to tell me what interests you in a servant girl's medical examination. I only find it curious that the mention of her name did more to your composure than my father's demand for military garrisons."

"You're imagining things."

"I imagine very little, Kael. I calculate." She rose, gathering her gloves, satisfied she'd gotten as much as she was going to get today which, admittedly, was more than she'd expected. "I'm not marrying you for love. We both know that. But I am marrying into whatever this kingdom becomes, and I intend to know everything that might destabilize it before it does." She paused at the door. "Including servant girls whose names make kings go still."

She left before he could answer, which was, she'd learned, usually the more effective exit.

Reyna was waiting in the corridor, and Evelyne didn't slow her pace as she spoke.

"Find out everything you can about a palace servant. Elara Veyne."

"The traitor's daughter?"

"That's the one." Evelyne's mind was already three steps ahead, assembling the pieces Sarn's archive visits, Yssa's strange word, Kael's stillness, all of it circling the same unremarkable name. "I want to know her duties, her movements, who she speaks to, and whether anyone visits her who shouldn't."

Reyna's brow furrowed. "Forgive me, Highness, but why would a servant matter to"

"Because the Alpha King, who did not so much as blink when my father demanded an army," Evelyne said, "went very still at the sound of her name." She stopped walking, turning to face her attendant directly. "I don't yet know what she is. But I know what stillness like that means in a man like Kael Draven."

"What does it mean?"

Evelyne's expression settled into something calm, and cold, and entirely certain.

"It means she isn't nothing." She resumed walking, voice dropping to something quieter, meant for no one but herself. "And in this palace, the things that aren't nothing are usually the things that get people killed."

Behind her, Reyna hesitated only a moment before falling into step, already turning over how, exactly, one begins quietly watching a girl no one else in the palace had ever thought worth a second glance.