Chapter 6 — The Veiled Prince

Elara Veyne

Two days after applying, the palace hired me.

For the kitchen.

I had requested corridor service, but apparently a foreign human with no noble-house experience belonged near sacks of flour instead of important doors.

Fine.

First I would get inside.

Then I would move.

The temporary workers gathered in a service courtyard. Humans and lupines stood together, which no longer surprised me in Namarra.

The woman commanding us was Samira Qadri, a lupine in her forties with tightly pulled hair and the expression of someone personally disappointed by the existence of inefficiency.

She inspected my documents.

“Aldervane.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Human.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is your Azhari sufficient?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She gave me instructions so quickly I caught half.

“Did you understand?”

“The part up to ‘east storeroom.’”

“You said you spoke Azhari.”

“I said I understood it. You need to go slower.”

She stared long enough for me to wonder whether she disliked foreigners, humans, or everyone equally.

“Kitchen.”

The work was hard, but after the Caldris, carrying crates did not impress me. Samira put me on burned pots, storerooms, deliveries, and every other job she seemed to think might frighten off a foreigner.

It did not.

What did impress me was a cook ordering me to sit after hours on my feet.

“Five minutes won’t bring the palace down.”

I sat because she looked serious.

Rest without earning it still felt suspicious. After that, the cook began leaving pieces of fruit near my station without saying anything. I never thanked her. She never asked me to. Maybe that was how normal people made friends.

The temporary workers slept in the palace quarters. My room had a small table, a clean bed, a small chest with its own key, and a narrow window. Another woman complained that her room was cramped. I had already slept inside a cage, in a house where I was considered part of the family, so I kept my opinion to myself.

Over the next two weeks, I learned the palace rhythms: guard changes, service corridors, ministers who talked too freely, doors I could not cross.

I heard little about Nythrium.

I heard plenty about Kian.

“My cousin says he hasn’t walked since fifteen.”

“Sixteen.”

“I heard he can walk, just not for long.”

“And none of that is the strangest part,” a lupine assistant said while chopping roots. “He’s a Varesh who never shifted.”

Another woman lowered her voice. “They say the illness started before his wolf could manifest.”

“My aunt says there was never one.”

“A Varesh without a wolf?”

“Apparently.”

The stories changed daily. Wounds. Weakness. A hidden face. A prince kept behind closed doors.

One fact never changed.

No one could cure him.

Then came the ball.

The service staff were given pale uniforms and thin veils to make us “visually discreet.” I approved. Being ignored was the reason I had entered the palace at all.

The grand hall glittered with pale stone, gold fabric, crystals, diplomats, and noblewomen who had crossed kingdoms to consider marrying a dying man.

King Rayan sat at the center of the raised platform.

Beside him, the queen.

And several steps away sat Kian.

He was covered from throat to fingertips in black. His body looked painfully thin beneath the layers. A dark iron mask hid his face, subtle golden ridges shaping it into the suggestion of a wolf.

Cruel irony for a prince everyone said had never possessed one.

Two prospective brides whispered near my tray.

“It’s worse in person.”

“They say his face is covered in wounds.”

“And he never manifested?”

“Not once.”

“A Varesh who can’t even shift. My father could have mentioned that.”

“They say his skin is falling apart under the mask,” one added.

“If my father tries to make me accept this marriage, I’ll run before the ceremony.”

They laughed.

I looked toward Kian.

His gloved fingers had curled slowly against the chair.

He was listening.

I knew what it felt like to be discussed as if your body belonged to the room instead of you.

Suddenly I disliked both women intensely.

Later, while serving another group, I heard something more useful.

“My uncle brought our family healer last year,” one woman said.

“They allowed it?”

“The Crown was desperate. Gold, trade rights... even a Nythrium concession if someone stabilized the prince.”

My hand stopped over the tray.

Nythrium.

“I assume he failed,” the second woman said.

“Four days. Then he left saying there was no cure. A doctor from Karthen failed too.”

Every healer had failed.

I stared at Kian behind the iron wolf mask.

Maybe I had been searching for the wrong path to the mines.

I had crossed the continent trying to discover how someone without a title could get close to the mines. Apparently the answer might be sitting a few meters away beneath an iron mask.

Yes.

I had found my pot of gold, and it was closer than I had imagined.

That night, hidden away in my room, I drafted a basic contract. In my previous life, I worked without any guarantees and ended up becoming a slave; this time, it would be different.

Payment in Nythrium.

Legal protection.

No confinement.

The right to stop treatment.

No questions about the origin of my ability.

Everything was almost ready; there was just one problem: being alone with Prince Kian.

I stayed alert, watching her every move, looking for an opening.

To my surprise, the opportunity arose the following afternoon, when a human servant twisted her ankle just before serving the royal dinner.

She tried to stand up, took two steps, and nearly fell into a basket. If she were a wolf, her body would already be repairing the damage. Human ankles were less cooperative.

I offered my help immediately.

I volunteered immediately.

Samira looked suspicious.

“You don’t work in the royal wing.”

“Someone has to take it.”

The cook who had told me to rest during my first few days there stood up for me.

Samira finally handed over the tray.

“Deliver it and come back. Don’t talk to anyone.”

I simply nodded, hiding my happiness behind a serious expression, and kept going.

Two lupine guards stood outside Kian’s chambers.

My heartbeat immediately became a problem.

“Leave the tray,” one said.

“I was told to deliver it directly.”

“By whom?”

That caught me off guard, so I improvised.

I described an employee I’d seen giving orders that afternoon; he seemed to be well respected—or rather, everyone seemed to be afraid of him.

“Master Farid?”

I nodded as if I knew the name. “He also said the west corridor needed reinforcements.”

The guards exchanged a look.

“You’re nervous,” one observed.

“My first time serving the royal wing.”

True enough.

One of them studied me a moment longer, as if deciding whether my pulse sounded too guilty for a servant carrying soup. Then both left to verify the order.

I counted three seconds after they disappeared, entered Kian’s chamber, and closed the door.

The first thing I noticed when I walked in was the smell of bitter medicine and metal.

Kian sat near the window, still masked, gloved, and almost completely motionless.

Without the ballroom around him, he seemed even thinner.

Yet something about the way he watched me felt strangely predatory.

Perhaps that was not a wolf.

Perhaps it was simply arrogance.

“Leave it and go,” he said.

His voice was deeper and stronger than I would have expected from someone who was dying.

I put down the tray.

Then I removed the folded parchment from inside my clothing.

The guards would return soon.

This was either the best idea I had ever had or one of the worst.

I turned the key in the lock.

The click echoed through the room.

The iron wolf mask turned toward me.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

I inclined my head.

“Making you an offer that will probably keep you from dying.”