Do Not Forget What You Owe.

CHAPTER 12

RHAELEN'S POV

The smoke from the ruined table was still curling toward the ceiling when I ordered the soldiers to leave the room.

They bowed and walked out without a word, though both of them glanced back at the girl before the doors closed. Orren stayed where he was, crouched beside the side table with his eyes on the hole in the wood, and the only sound in the war room was the slow drip of water from the broken clay onto the stone floor.

"The water from the first pitcher is clean," he said at last, pointing at a wet patch on the floor that had left no mark at all. "Only the second one was poisoned."

"Who brought it in?"

"A maid. She came in through the far door a short while ago and left again at once. I did not see her face."

I looked at the girl. She had not moved from the spot where she had stumbled, and her wet skirt clung to her legs, and there was a smear of dust along her sleeve from the table. Her face was very pale, but she lifted her chin when my eyes reached hers.

"Did you see her?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "She was one of the maids who serves my chamber. She wouldn't look at anyone, and her hands were shaking so badly that she nearly dropped the pitcher."

"Orren." I did not take my eyes from the girl. "Find her. Take six men and search the kitchens and the servants' quarters, and bring her to me alive."

He bowed and left, and the heavy doors closed behind him. For a long moment, the girl and I stood at opposite ends of the room, with the burned table and the broken clay lying between us.

I had spent the whole morning telling myself that I did not need her. I had ridden back through the gates with my head clear for the first time in two days, and I had decided that it was only exhaustion. Then I had ordered her brought here so I could watch her and prove it.

Instead, I had very nearly drunk poison for the second time in three days, and she was the reason I had not.

"Come here," I said.

She walked down the length of the room slowly, stopping an arm's length from the end of the table. The ache that had begun to creep back behind my eyes quieted as she came closer, and I did not like how plainly I noticed it.

"You did not lose your balance," I said.

"I did."

"You struck both pitchers at once with your elbow. You looked at the second one before you moved, and you were watching Orren's hand, not the floor." I kept my voice low. "I have spent too many years watching men decide whether to run or fight to be fooled by a clumsy fall."

She was quiet for a few seconds, and I saw her fingers tighten against each other in front of her. "No," she said. "I didn't lose my balance."

"Then you knew the water was poisoned."

"Not for certain." She drew a slow breath. "The maid's hands were shaking, and she wouldn't look up. It felt wrong, the same way the room felt wrong the night you were poisoned. I've always been able to feel when something isn't right, even when I don't know why."

"Instincts," I repeated.

"I don't know what else to call them."

It was a careful answer, like all her answers, and I could not call it a lie. A frightened woman might have trembled and wept, and a spy would have prepared something cleverer. She had simply told me a smaller part of the truth than the whole of it, and I had known many men who did the same thing when they were hiding something that mattered.

But she had also stood in front of the King's own war council, knowing she might be hanged for it, and knocked a poisoned pitcher to the floor. A spy sent to kill me would not have done that.

I turned away from her and walked to the window. Far below, in the courtyard, a pair of grooms was leading my horse back to the stable.

"Twice in three days," I said, "you have stood beside poison and stopped it. I do not believe in coincidence, and I do not trust you."

"I know."

"Yet I cannot send you away. Your pack abandoned you, the council wants the marriage annulled, and the person who poisoned my medicine is still inside this fortress. If you leave, you become either a witness for my enemies or a weapon for them." I faced her again. "If you stay, I can watch you."

She blinked at me. "Are you offering me a choice?"

"I am offering you a bargain. You will remain here as my wife in name, nothing more, until the one behind this is found. You will stay in the eastern tower under guard, and you will tell me or Orren whatever your instincts tell you before you act on them, not after you have thrown the furniture across the room."

I saw the corner of her mouth twitch, though she did not smile. "And what do I receive?"

I had expected her to ask for her freedom, or for gold. I had not expected her to hesitate, her hands twisting in her skirt, as if what she wanted most was something she was afraid to say aloud.

"My parents' inheritance," she said finally. "They left an estate, and the Veyrdens have held it for ten years. They promised to release it once the marriage was finished, but I don't think they ever meant to."

"They sent you here to replace a bride who feared me," I said slowly, "and they kept your parents' property for a decade."

"Yes."

"Is that why you stayed in the first place?"

"It's the only thing my parents left me," she said quietly. "I won't let them keep it."

Something hot and unfamiliar tightened in my chest. I had known the Veyrdens were cowards, but I had not known they were thieves, and I had been shown a little more of what was behind her bitter, tired face when she spoke of her family in my study.

"I will write to their Alpha tonight," I said coldly. "He will release your inheritance, or his grain wagons will not cross my border road again. In return, you will keep our bargain."

She looked at me for a long time, and I could not tell what she was searching for in my face.

"I accept," she said.

The doors opened before I could answer. Orren walked in alone, a folded sheet of parchment in his hand and a frown pulling his brows together. He had not been gone long enough to have found the maid.

"Forgive me, Your Majesty," he said. "This arrived at the gate a short while ago, and the messenger who carried it is waiting in the courtyard. It is addressed to Lady Isolde, and it bears the Veyrden crest. You ordered that nothing from that pack reach her before you had seen it."

I took the parchment from his hand. The wax seal was dark green, pressed with the Veyrden crest, and a single line of neat handwriting ran across the front: Isolde.

The girl had taken a step toward me. "That's for me."

"It will be," I said, and I broke the seal.

The letter was short, and I read it twice.

Isolde,

My father has learned that the King has placed you under guard in a tower. This is exactly what we feared. You will keep the King calm, and you will make certain he does not blame the Veyrden pack for what happened at the ceremony. If he turns against us because of you, you will face the pack, and I will not be able to protect you this time.

Do not forget what you owe.

Caeldric

I knew the name from the contract. He was the eldest son of the Veyrden Alpha and the man who had signed the treaty on his father's behalf, and he had just ordered a girl he claimed to care about to keep a cursed king calm.

Twice in three days, her presence had eased the curse. Twice, I had wondered whether someone had told her to do it, and she had stood in my study and said that the Veyrdens were no longer her family. In all the time we had spent in the same room, she had never once told me that her pack was still pressuring her.

I lowered the letter and looked at her.

She was watching the page in my hand, and for the first time since the pitchers had fallen, she looked truly afraid.