All Chapters of Too late to want me Alpha: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The morning after the King's return brought no mercy from the sky, nor from Mistress Brida.By first light, a biting gale was screaming off the Frost-Pike peaks, whipping through the open archways of the lower courtyard. The air was so cold that moisture froze on the stone flagstones in slick, treacherous sheets.Brida had sent me to the lower laundry yard—a sunken stone amphitheater open to the elements, where the heavy wool blankets, linen shrouds, and armored cloaks of the thousands-strong garrison were washed and dried."Every single banner and blanket from the southern campaign," Brida had snarled at dawn, shoving a heavy wooden basket into my aching arms. "Rinse them in the lye tubs and string them up across the high lines. If they aren't dry and pressed by nightfall, I'll lock you in the ice house."My hands, already raw and weeping from yesterday's lye scrub, burned with a sharp, sickening fire as I hauled the soaking, ice-heavy wool out of the steaming cauldrons. Each blanket

The first grey light of dawn was just beginning to filter through the high lancet windows, casting pale, skeletal fingers across the mirror-polished floor of the Great Hall.I wiped the last trace of dirty foam from the bottom step of the obsidian dais, my breath ragged and hot in the freezing air. My knees were completely numb, the cold from the basalt floor having long since soaked through my thin dress and settled deep into my bones.I reached for the iron handle of my wooden bucket, ready to lift the heavy, filthy water and make my escape down the servant stairs before the castle fully awakened.A heavy latch clicked open.The sound was small, but in the cavernous, dead-silent throne room, it rang out like a hammer strike against an anvil.It came from the low archway behind the throne—the King’s private passage leading directly from the royal quarters.My blood turned to pure ice.Before I could even stand, a shadow stretched long and dark across the triple-tiered dais. The suffo

Mistress Brida had spent thirty years ruling the subterranean kitchens of the Obsidian Spire with an iron fist. She feared few things in this world—perhaps only the winter famine and the head seneschal’s audits.She certainly did not expect two giant Shadow-Guard warriors to appear at the door of her scullery office, their black steel broadswords clanking against their greaves as they barked her name."Mistress Brida. You are summoned to the King’s solar. Immediately."Brida’s heavy face lost all its color. She nearly dropped her brass ring of keys into the lard tub. She smoothed down her greasy apron with trembling, sausage-like fingers, her heart hammering against her ribs as she was escorted up the long, dark stairwells, out of her subterranean kingdom and into the pristine, freezing halls of the royal wing.When the massive oak doors of King Kael’s private council room groaned open, Brida felt as though she had walked straight into a blizzard.Kael stood near a high, lancet archwa

The upper gallery of the Obsidian Spire was a world built for giants and ghosts.Where the subterranean kitchens were a claustrophobic nightmare of suffocating humidity, screaming servants, and black soot, the high halls were vast, silent, and bitterly cold. Lance-like shafts of pale winter sunlight cut through tall, narrow windows, illuminating dust motes that hovered in the still air like suspended snow.I carried my small wooden basket containing soft flannel rags, a brass polish pot, and a cedar broom—the lightweight tools of my new, elevated existence. My hands, coated in the cool green salve Mistress Brida had been forced to give me, no longer throbbed with the blinding agony of lye burns. For the first time in months, I could flex my fingers without my skin tearing open.Yet, as I stood at the foot of the Grand Winding Stair, my heart hammered a slow, rhythmic alarm against my ribs.Mistress Brida had not given me the brass key to the ordinary linen closets or the spice pantrie

The shadows in the dark alcove seemed to stretch and twist, heavy with the weight of Kael’s unspoken warning.I remained frozen against the chained oak door, my heart hammering so hard against my ribs I was certain the King could hear it. His golden eyes lingered on the black padlock for a fraction of a second—a fleeting, pained shadow passing across his stoic features—before his gaze snapped back to me.He didn't raise his hand. He didn't call for an executioner.Instead, Kael raised two fingers, signaling to the dark archway behind him."Rurik. Vane," Kael called out, his voice a low, commanding vibration that cut straight through the gloom. "Remove the maid from the gallery."Instantly, the heavy, metallic clatter of iron boots echoed up the narrow spiral stairs. The two visored sentinels who guarded the tower threshold rushed into the upper gallery, their halberds drawn, their steel plate armor clanking loudly against the stone walls.When they saw me pressed against the warded, c