Whispers In The Corridor

Chapter 8

"He overruled Bellamy himself. Right there in the office."

"For the wolfless girl? The traitor's daughter?"

"Quoted the decree at him. Word for word, apparently."

Evelyne caught the third version of the story before she'd even reached the breakfast hall this one claiming Kael had raised his voice, which she doubted, and that Bellamy had nearly wept, which she doubted even more, though she found herself hoping it was true out of sheer spite.

By the time she sat down, she'd heard five variations. None of them agreed on the details. All of them agreed on the outcome.

"You look like you're solving a puzzle," Reyna murmured, pouring tea she hadn't asked for.

"I am."

"Which puzzle?"

"The one where a king who has never involved himself in a servant dispute in two years suddenly develops strong opinions about decree language." Evelyne didn't touch the tea. "Find Kael. Tell him I'd like a word before the council convenes."

He was in the map room, unsurprisingly, papers spread across the table like a wall he could hide behind.

"I hear you had an interesting day," Evelyne said, closing the door behind her.

"Word travels fast."

"Word travels badly. I've heard five versions. I'd like the real one."

Kael didn't look up. "Bellamy denied a petition based on his own opinion rather than the actual wording of the decree. I corrected him."

"That's the version everyone's telling. I asked for the real one."

"It is the real one."

"Kael." She crossed the room, stopped across the table from him, and waited until he finally met her eyes. "You've let Bellamy deny a hundred petty petitions over the years. Servants asking for a day off, an extra ration, a moved shift. You've never once cared."

"Those weren't matters of decree."

"This wasn't either, until you decided it was."

He set down the paper he'd been holding, and for a moment she thought she'd actually get something honest out of him.

"The decree says every unmated subject of eligible age. Bellamy tried to narrow that to shifted wolves specifically, which isn't what it says. I don't like watching people bend law to suit cruelty. That's the entire explanation."

"Fairness."

"Fairness."

"For a girl whose name you apparently know well enough to write into a guest list yourself."

Something in his jaw tightened small, quick, gone almost before she caught it.

"I read a petition. I read a name. That's not intimacy, Evelyne. That's literacy."

"I didn't say intimacy." She kept her voice level, though something underneath it had begun to fray. "I said you remembered it. That's different. And a little strange, for a servant you claim not to think twice about."

"You're building a conspiracy out of a paperwork correction."

"Maybe." Evelyne studied him a moment longer the careful stillness of his hands, the way he'd angled himself slightly away from her, small things she'd catalogued across two years of watching him perform composure for councils, for her father, for her.

"Or maybe you're the one who hasn't examined why a servant's petition mattered enough to interrupt your morning."

He didn't answer that.

Which was, in its own way, an answer.

"I have council," Kael said instead, gathering his papers. "We're finished here."

"Are we?"

"I'd like to think so."

Evelyne let him go. There was no benefit in pushing further today she'd learned that much about him, at least, that pressure only made him retreat further behind precision and procedure.

But she stood in the empty map room a long moment after the door shut behind him, turning the conversation over, searching for the seam.

Fairness. It was a reasonable word. A believable word. She might have believed it entirely, if not for the half-second pause when she'd mentioned Elara's name like he'd had to decide, deliberately, not to say something else first.

That pause bothered her more than any of the gossip had.

She found Reyna waiting exactly where she'd left her.

"Well?"

"Fairness," Evelyne said. "That's the official answer."

"But you don't believe it."

"I believe he's convinced himself of it. That's almost worse." Evelyne started walking, and Reyna fell into step without being asked. "A man who's already lied to himself is harder to catch than one who's lying to me."

"Highness forgive me but is it not possible it truly was simple fairness? He's known for it. It's half of why the border lords respect him."

"It's possible." Evelyne's voice stayed flat. "It's also possible that in two years of engagement, he has never once corrected a steward's cruelty toward a servant and then did, the exact week her name came up in conversation."

She stopped at the corridor's turn.

"I don't like that coincidence."

Reyna hesitated. "What would you like to do?"

Evelyne didn't answer immediately. She knew, distantly, standing in that corridor, exactly what this feeling was.

Jealousy had a particular shape, and she wasn't foolish enough to pretend she didn't recognize it settling in her chest. She didn't love Kael. She'd never expected to, never built her plans around expecting to. But she had built two years of careful architecture around this marriage every concession wrung from her father, every hour rehearsing composure in a mirror and the thought that some unaccounted variable might already be shifting beneath that architecture, without her permission, without her knowledge, was intolerable in a way that had very little to do with affection.

This isn't about him, said a small, unwelcome voice.

This is about control.

She ignored it.

She usually did.

"The ceremony is in three weeks," Evelyne said. "Elara Veyne will be attending, thanks to our generous king."

"I heard."

"I want eyes on her that night. Someone among the temple attendants someone who won't be noticed, won't draw questions. I want to know exactly where she stands, who she speaks to, how she behaves when she touches the Moonstone. Every detail."

Reyna's brow creased. "It's a coming-of-age ceremony, Highness. Every unmated wolf touches the stone. It's tradition."

"Then it will be an uneventful report, and I'll have spent nothing of consequence." Evelyne's expression didn't shift. "But if I'm wrong if there's a reason a servant girl no one has thought twice about in fifteen years has suddenly captured more of the Alpha King's attention in a single week than I've managed in two years I intend to be the first to know it. Not the last."

"And if it upsets her? Being watched so closely?"

"She won't know she's being watched." Evelyne resumed walking, the matter, in her mind, already closed. "That is rather the entire function of a spy, Reyna."

Reyna said nothing further. She rarely did, once Evelyne's voice dropped into that particular register decision made, argument finished.

She simply nodded, already turning over which of the junior temple attendants could be trusted to stand quietly near a servant girl and report back everything they saw.

Neither of them knew what the attendant would witness in three weeks' time.

They only knew that Elara would be standing before the Moonstone.

And Evelyne intended to know everything that happened when she did.

Reyna nodded once. "I'll find someone."

"Good."

Evelyne turned toward the window overlooking the distant temple towers.

Three weeks.

She had no idea what Elara was hiding.

But she intended to find out.

And this time, she would have someone watching from the shadows.

Someone who would see everything and report directly to her.

Across the palace, Elara knew none of this.

She was carrying a stack of folded linens through the servants' corridor when something beneath her ribs pulsed once.

Thump.

She stopped.

Her fingers tightened around the linens.

Nothing.

Then

Thump.

Elara's breath caught.

The strange sensation was back.

She looked toward the distant temple towers through the corridor window.

Three weeks.

Something inside her seemed to remember that number.

And for the first time, Elara wondered if the Sacred Moon Ceremony wasn't simply something she had been fighting to attend.

Maybe something inside her had been waiting for it too.