chapter seven

Constance

William didn't answer me. He stood at the balcony doors with his back to the room, his shoulders set in that hard, immovable line I was starting to recognize as the shape he wore when he didn't want me to see his face.

"William."

"Get some rest," he said. "The night is nearly gone."

"You just told me someone left a warning in this keep and you don't know who it's for, and now you want me to sleep?"

He turned then, and whatever he'd been holding behind his eyes a moment ago was gone, tucked away so completely I might have imagined it. "I want you to be sharp tomorrow. My uncle does not summon candidates to his private study for pleasant conversation, and you have an audience with him at midday.”

My stomach dropped."How do you know that?”

His mouth tightened slightly. “I heard Ferdinand's steward mention it when he came through earlier.”

He crossed back toward the bed, and for a moment I thought he might sit, might let himself be tired in front of me the way he had been for one unguarded second earlier. Instead, he stopped a few feet away, arms crossed, gold eyes assessing me like I was a piece on a board he hadn't finished placing.

“Ferdinand does not do anything without a purpose, Constance. If he's called for you specifically, it's because something about you has caught his attention.”

"He already met me. At the first audience."

"That was a formality. Every candidate got one." William's jaw worked. "This is different. This is him choosing you, out of everyone left in the Selection, to speak with alone."

The word alone landed in my chest like a stone dropped down a well. "You think it's about last night. The search."

"I think," he said carefully, "that it would be foolish to assume it isn't."

I pulled the quilt off my shoulders and swung my legs over the side of the bed, my whole body protesting the movement, still sore from the examination table and the potion and everything else this palace had already put me through in less than two days. "Then tell me what to say to him. If he's testing me, I want to pass."

Something shifted in William's expression, surprise maybe, or something closer to respect. "Most people in your position would ask me to make it stop. Not ask how to survive it."

"Making it stop isn't an option I have," I said. "It never has been. Not with my father, not with Elias, not with a regent who can have girls poisoned in a stone room for entertainment. The only thing I've ever gotten to choose is how I face what's already coming."

He was quiet for a long moment, studying me the way he had the night before, like I was a puzzle whose shape kept changing every time he thought he'd solved it.

"Tell him the truth," he said finally. "As much of it as is safe. Tell him you kept vigil because you were frightened and had nowhere else to be welcome. Tell him the guards searched the room and found nothing, because that's exactly what happened. Do not volunteer information he hasn't asked for, and do not fill silences just because they make you uncomfortable. My uncle uses silence the way other men use a blade."

"And if he asks about you? About whether I've noticed anything strange?"

"Then you tell him I am exactly what everyone believes I am." His voice had gone low, controlled in a way that made the hair on my arms rise. "A dying man who cannot hear you, cannot see you, and cannot help you. That is the only version of me that keeps either of us alive right now."

I nodded, even though something in my chest twisted at hearing him describe himself that way, as an absence, a shell, a thing to be managed rather than a person in the room with me. I understood why he'd built the mask. I was starting to hate how well it fit him.

"Can I ask you something else?" I said. "Not about Ferdinand."

He inclined his head, wary but not refusing.

"You said the anchor bond has surfaced eleven times in three hundred years. What happened to the others? The women it happened to before me?"

The wariness sharpened into something colder. "That is not a story for tonight."

"It's never a story for tonight," I said. "It's never the right time for you to tell me anything that actually matters. You want me to walk into a room with your uncle tomorrow and lie to his face to protect a secret I don't even fully understand. The least you could do is trust me with the truth about what I actually am to you."

"You are not a thing that requires a category, Constance." His voice had an edge now, sharp enough to cut. "You are not a title out of some old record. You are a woman who happens to share whatever this bond is with me, and I would rather you walked into that room tomorrow believing that than carrying the weight of eleven other women's fates on your shoulders before you've even had a chance to survive your own."

I opened my mouth to argue and found, for once, that I didn't have anything to say to that. It wasn't an answer. It was a wall dressed up as tenderness, and some small, exhausted part of me was too tired to keep hammering against it tonight.

"Fine," I said. "Keep your secrets. But I'm not going to stop asking."

Something almost like the ghost of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. "I would be disappointed if you did."

A knock sounded at the door, three soft raps, and my whole body went rigid before I recognized the rhythm of it. Julian's knock. William's face smoothed instantly back into its careful blankness, and by the time the door opened a crack, he was lying back against the pillows, eyes closed, breathing slow and even, every inch the dying heir the world believed him to be.

Julian slipped inside, a folded garment draped over one arm, his eyes finding me first. "My lady. You're still awake."

"I couldn't sleep," I said, which was, for once, the whole truth.

Julian's gaze flicked to William, then back to me, and I watched him decide, in real time, not to ask the question sitting behind his eyes. "I've brought you a change of clothes for your audience with the regent. Something suitable." He held it out, careful not to look at the bruise still darkening on my arm where Elias had grabbed me two nights before. "You'll want to look rested, my lady. Ferdinand notices things like that."

"What else does he notice?" I asked, watching Julian's face carefully.

Something flickered there, quick as a struck match. "Everything," he said quietly. "He notices everything. It's how he's survived as regent this long, and it's how he'll know if you're not being straight with him." His eyes held mine a beat too long. "For your sake, my lady, I hope you have nothing to hide."

The words landed heavier than they should have for something so simple, and I understood, in that moment, that Julian wasn't just delivering a warning about the regent. He was delivering one about himself. About how much longer he could keep pretending not to know what he knew.

"Thank you, Julian," I said carefully. "For the clothes. And for last night."

He nodded once, stiff, and turned toward the door, then paused with his hand on the frame. "Get some rest, my lady. Whatever else happens tomorrow, you'll want your wits about you."

The door shut behind him. The bolt slid home.

I sat there a long moment in the silence he'd left behind, turning his words over. *For your sake, I hope you have nothing to hide.* It hadn't sounded like a threat. It had sounded like something closer to a plea, one man begging another not to force his hand.

"He's going to break," I said quietly, not looking at William. "Not tonight. Maybe not for weeks. But something's pressing on him, and eventually it's going to press hard enough."

William's eyes opened. In the low candlelight, gold had gone dark and thoughtful again. "I know," he said. "I've known for longer than you have."

"Then why haven't you done anything about it?"

"Because the moment I move against Julian, I confirm his suspicions ," William said. "And because whatever my uncle is holding over him I want to know what it is before he uses it to bury us both."

I lay back against the pillows, exhaustion finally winning out over fear, and let myself imagine, for one reckless moment, what it might feel like to walk through this keep without watching every shadow for a blade.

I fell asleep before I could finish the thought.

I woke to sunlight slicing through the curtains and the sound of the door being unbolted from the outside, and for one disoriented second I forgot where I was, forgot the guards, forgot everything except the warmth of the bed and the ache still living in my bones.

Then the door swung open, and it wasn't Julian standing in the frame.

It was a woman I'd never seen before, dressed in the deep violet robes of the regent's household, her face arranged into a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"Lady Constance," she said. "The regent is ready for you now.”