Chapter 4: The Return

The Citadel looked smaller than I remembered.

That was the first lie I told myself as I crossed the outer courtyard, my satchel on my shoulder and a borrowed name sitting in my mouth like a stone. Seven years ago these walls had seemed to touch the sky. Now they were only walls.

Elowen Rook, I reminded myself. Hired hands don't stare at the towers. Hired hands keep their eyes down.

I kept my eyes down.

It was receiving day, when the Citadel opened its gates to anyone seeking work inside the household. A long line of us shuffled forward through the entrance hall. Nobody spoke. The steward at the head of the line read from a scroll, and a servant ahead of me was waved through with barely a glance.

My heart beat so hard I could feel it in my fingertips.

I had planned this for weeks. New hair, darker and cut short. A plain dress. Seven years had thinned my face and hardened my mouth.

He won't know me, I told myself. He didn't even look at me when he sent me away.

"Elowen Rook," the steward called.

I stepped forward. My hands were folded at my waist, my chin lowered. At the far end, up a short flight of steps, sat the throne.

It was occupied.

I didn't look. I did not look. Every instinct I had screamed at me to keep my eyes on the floor, on anything but the dais.

"Rook," the steward read, frowning at his scroll. "From the southern borders. References from... a wool merchant." He sniffed. "Not much to recommend you, girl."

"No, sir," I said, in a voice that was nothing like mine.

"I'll place you in the laundries, I suppose. Or the..."

"No."

The word cut through the hall like a blade.

I froze.

It was a voice I knew. I'd heard it say I reject you in the echoing silence of this very room. It hadn't changed. It was deep and quiet and unhurried, with an edge beneath it that made the hair rise on my neck.

Footsteps descended the dais. They stopped a few paces from me, and I saw the toes of black boots in the periphery of my vision.

"Look at me," said Kaelith Veyr.

I lifted my head.

I had told myself I was ready, and I wasn't.

He was older. That was the first thing. There were new lines around his mouth, a tiredness under the eyes. The silver of his eyes, though, was exactly the same. Cold as moonlight on a frozen lake.

And he was looking at me.

Not at Elowen Rook. At me.

I saw the instant he knew. It wasn't a flicker, or a smile, or any of the dramatic things I had braced for. His face didn't change at all. But his hand, hanging at his side, curled slowly into a fist, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. The entire hall seemed to have stopped breathing.

The bond was dead. It had been dead for seven years. I felt nothing from it, not a spark, not a whisper.

So why did my wolf lift her head?

Careful, she warned.

"My king?" The steward cleared his throat, uncertain. "Is there a problem with the girl?"

A long, terrible moment passed. I stood perfectly still, my face a mask, and waited for the words that would end me. This is Seraphine Veyra. Seize her. I could already feel the guards moving.

"No," Kaelith said.

He didn't take his eyes off me.

"No problem. Not the laundries." His voice was perfectly even. "She'll serve in the inner Citadel."

The steward blinked. "The inner... my king, the inner household is for those with proper..."

"She'll serve in the inner Citadel," Kaelith repeated, "where I can see her work."

It wasn't a request.

The steward bowed so quickly his scroll nearly fell. "Of course, my king. As you wish."

I stared at Kaelith. He stared back. Neither of us said a word, and in that silence, a thousand questions passed between us, and not a single answer.

Then he turned and walked back up the steps. He sat on the throne, folded his hands, and looked past me as though I were already forgotten.

They gave me a narrow room on the third floor of the inner Citadel, with a washstand and a bed and a window that looked out over the northern wall. I sat on the edge of the mattress for an hour and didn't move.

He knew.

He had known, and he had said nothing. He hadn't exposed me. He hadn't thrown me out. He had put me in the one place in the Citadel where I'd be close enough to touch.

Why?

I'd come here to find out who killed my mother. I had never planned on having to ask the question twice. Why did he reject me, and why is he keeping me now?

Night fell. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, and listened to the wind scrape the stones.

Somewhere past midnight I gave up on sleep.

I pulled on my cloak, slipped out of my room and went down the corridor with my boots in my hand. I told myself I only wanted air.

I was lying.

The inner Citadel was a labyrinth of torchlit passages, each one narrower than the last. I took a turn I didn't know, then another, and found myself at the end of a long hallway lined with locked doors. Faint light seeped from beneath the last one on the left.

Voices.

I stopped breathing. I pressed myself against the wall and edged closer, until I could hear.

One of them was Kaelith's. Low, tight, strained in a way I had never heard it in the throne room.

"She cannot find out what happened seven years ago."

A silence. My fingers dug into the stone.

And then a second voice answered, calm and quiet and certain.

"She already knows"