Chapter 197: Penny in the fountain

LYSANDER

Bradley said nothing.

"This makes no sense." I lowered the paper onto my knee and pressed my thumb against the page, as if I could smear the ink into something more agreeable. "Ninety-nine percent. That is a father. That is..." I stopped. The room seemed to tilt a few degrees beneath me. "That would mean my uncle lied to me. He looked me in the face and told me Johann was not his son. He said he was certain. He said he had proof and that he was impotent."

"I know."

"Why would he lie?"

The question came out smaller than I intended.

I had spent years being the nephew who knew Cornelius, the one he trusted above his own son. I had believed I understood the man well enough to recognize the things he was capable of and, more importantly, the things he would never do. I could feel that certainty beginning to crack along an old fault line.

The uncle Cornelius I knew was blunt to the point of rudeness. He despised deceit. He had hanged a man for forging a letter. I could not reconcile that man with someone who had apparently maintained a lie about his own son, and done so with enough conviction to make me believe him.

I held the report out. Bradley took it and slipped it back into his jacket as though it were hot.

"So Johann is legitimate," I said.

"It would appear so."

"You were close to my uncle. Closer than anyone." I studied his face, searching for some hint of recognition, some flicker that might tell me he had already considered this possibility. "Do you have any idea why he would do this?"

His throat moved before he answered.

"I wish I had something concrete to offer you. I do not."

"Nothing?"

"He would not have done it without reason, Your Majesty. Of that, I am certain. Whatever his reason was, it was not carelessness, and it was not spite."

"I understand that." I pushed off the desk and walked a slow circle, because standing still was impossible. "He trusted me with his seat. He put his name on a will and a verbal declaration weeks before he died. And you, you were his most loyal man. Surely something was said. Surely he left a thread, a hint, a half sentence over wine. What is this about?"

"I wish I knew."

"Bradley."

"I wish I knew," he repeated, and his voice had a rasp in it I had not heard before. He drew a breath and set his shoulders. "But I do not believe that should be our focus right now. Whatever his reasons, I am certain his heart was in the right place. If nothing else is clear to me, that is. You are deserving of this throne. You are more deserving than I think you know."

I stopped walking.

It was an odd thing to say. It was something a father might say, or a man saying a goodbye he did not want to name. I looked at him hard, searching for the seam in the sentence, and found only the old iron composure, polished until it reflected nothing.

"Focus on Lily of the Valley, Your Majesty," he went on, quietly. "Settle the seat. Be seen. Let the rest come to us."

I nodded slowly. "I guess you are right. One step at a time."

I did not believe he had told me everything. But I had also learned, in a very short time, that men like Bradley were not pried open. They were waited out.

A knock came at the study door.

"Who is it?" Bradley demanded, one hand twitching toward his belt before he caught himself.

"It is Omega Delta, High Beta." The voice behind the wood was crisp and a little wry. "I was told His Majesty was here."

"Come in," I called.

The door opened. Delta stepped through with her hands folded in front of her dress and her chin up in the way she had when she wanted to look humble and absolutely did not mean it. She dipped a short curtsey to me and a shorter nod to Bradley.

"How is she?" I asked.

"Up and dressed, Your Majesty. Bathed, fed, and wearing something nice. She is waiting for you in the east wing. The luggage is already in the car."

"Then I suppose my time here is up." I glanced back at Bradley. For a moment I felt something that was almost guilt, the sense of leaving a man alone in a room with a thing he could not set down. "Keep the place sane for me, Beta Bradley."

"Of course, Your Majesty." He bowed, the full formal bow, deeper than the occasion called for. "Safe travels."

"If you need me, you know how to reach me."

"I do."

I took one last look at him standing in the pale morning light, hands behind his back, face unreadable, and then I followed Delta into the corridor.

The door clicked shut. The corridor was long and cool, the walls hung with the portraits I had never liked, and our footsteps fell into the hush between them. Delta walked half a pace ahead and to my left, as an escort would. After a minute, she slowed so that we were side by side.

"You can ask," she said, without looking at me.

"Ask what?"

"Whatever is sitting on your tongue, Your Majesty."

"Does it show?"

"Your Majesty, you have been rubbing your thumb along the inside of your wrist since you left that room. It shows."

I looked down. She was right. I stopped and slid my hands into my pockets.

"How does she look?" I asked. "Truly. Not the answer you would give a Regent."

Delta considered. "Better than yesterday. Yesterday’s hell seems to be behind her. I mean... she looked like she slept well, and she ate most of what was offered to her; she even laughed in the bath. I heard it through the door and pretended I had not."

Something in my chest unclenched. "She laughed?"

"Briefly. But she did." Delta’s eyes cut sideways. "That said, Your Majesty, she is still carrying a heavy load. She does not put it down. I know the look. It is the look of someone who has been holding a full cup for so long she has forgotten that her hands could rest."

I thought of the way Bonnie had said after dinner, and then tomorrow, and of Fia’s face in the drive. "I know."

"I think that is partly why she is joining you."

"She said she needed to confront her past."

"She said something like that to me too." Delta nodded. "But I think it is more than that. I think she is like me, a bit. She no longer trusts the system. But she wants to. Badly. She wants to see whether it can still work."

"And if it cannot?"

"Then she will find out," Delta said. "Better to know than wonder. It is Lily of the Valley, though. You put in an effort to make it better than it was left when your father died. I am sure it will do a fine job of convincing her one way or the other."

I walked on in silence for a few steps, listening to my own boots against the stone.

"I do hope it convinces her of the right one," I said.

Delta let out a short, humorless laugh. "So do I, Your Majesty. So do I."