Chapter 201: Tea 1

EDELINA

I held the smile until the last car had rolled through the gate and the trees had swallowed its taillights. Then I let it fall off my face like a mask set down on a vanity.

The hug had cost me more than I expected. Lysander’s shoulder was solid and warm, and for a single second I had felt the boy he used to be, the one who sat at the far end of Cornelius’s table and never once asked me for anything. I had put that second in a box and nailed it shut. A Judas embrace was only worth the trouble if the one giving it fucking relished it.

Croak out there, I thought, watching the empty drive. Let the road take you. Let some fucking disgruntled rogue finally do what I could not.

The wish sat in my chest like a coin I had swallowed, small enough to carry, too heavy to forget. Hope was a luxury I could not afford. Heaven had never been in the business of saving those who refused to fight for their own lives. I turned away from the steps and found the Omega who had followed me down from my quarters lingering two paces behind, her hands clasped before her, her gaze fixed on the floor.

"Well?" I snapped. "Do you intend to stand there until the frost comes?"

She flinched and held out my phone. I had given it to her before the Regent’s departure, because a queen who sees someone off does not do it with a device in her hand. The screen was already lit.

A message sat under my own from the night before.

Thank you for the mercy, Your Majesty. I will be there early.

Amaranthine. The little fool had answered within the hour, I noted, and she had used the word mercy, which told me she was already afraid. Good. Fear made the best soil. I let a real smile touch my mouth for the first time that morning, and I tapped a small heart onto her message, a gesture cheap enough to seem warm and cold enough to mean nothing.

She had to stay guessing.

"Walk with me," I said.

I moved up the steps and into the house. The Omega followed, her slippers whispering on the marble. The foyer was cool and bright, the chandelier throwing little rainbows across the floor, and the sentinels at the doors straightened as I passed. I did not look at them. I had a list in my head, and it was growing.

"Take a simple breakfast to my son in the cell," I said, not slowing. "Bread, cheese, boiled eggs, whatever is in the kitchen that does not look like an event. And water. A full flask."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Also... do not be stupid when you go in. Ask for the sentinel Raymond. He is on the day rotation, and he has been well compensated. He will let you pass without a fuss." I glanced at her sideways. "If anyone keeps digging, if some officious little guard wants to know why a tray is going down, you tell them it is for Alpha Yannis Chonto. They share a cell. It will seem like a kindness to a powerful man who is being held without charge. Nothing more."

The girl nodded quickly. "For Alpha Chonto. Yes, Your Majesty."

"If you say anything else, I will know."

"I will not."

"Go."

She bobbed a curtsey and fled toward the kitchens, her footsteps fading until the foyer was quiet again.

I stood alone in the middle of the marble and let my shoulders drop.

Then I scrolled to my contacts.

My biggest ally and false father’s number was saved under a cheerful, meaningless name. I had never trusted a phone to keep a secret after all.

I had known him for years. I knew the exact pitch of his sigh when I asked for something unreasonable, the particular silence he lapsed into when he wanted me to feel guilty, and the stubborn pride that made him treat every favor as a personal insult to his dignity. I knew he would answer. I also knew he would hate what I was about to ask him to do.

The proud little bastard.

My thumb hovered over the call button.

I looked up.

Across the foyer, at the foot of the grand staircase, stood a man with his hands loose at his sides. Tall, amber-eyed, silver at the temples. Lycaon was smiling at me.

Not the warm smile he had worn in the meadow. The other one. The one that came just before he did something unforgivable, when the decision had already been made, and all that remained was for me to discover what it would cost.

He couldn’t be here.

I knew that. Some part of me understood it even as the rest of me seized up, my body remembering the claw at my throat before my mind could make sense of what I was seeing.

The phone slipped from my fingers.

It struck the marble with a crack like a small bone breaking, and a sound tore out of my throat that I would have denied under torture. I staggered back, one hand flying to my neck, to the place where his claw had touched me.

The thin scab pulled beneath my fingertips.

Across the foyer, Lycaon tilted his head, his smile never wavering. The light from the high windows fell across the marble at his feet, bright and unbroken.

There was no shadow beneath him.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, you are not..."

The face before me shimmered.

It shifted like a reflection disturbed by a tremor, the features sliding out of place before settling into something painfully ordinary. The sharp lines of Lycaon’s face softened. His jaw narrowed, his nose became unremarkable, and silver at his temples gave way to the dull, unmemorable appearance of a man I should never have mistaken for anyone else.

A gray sentinel’s uniform came into focus, one I had somehow failed to notice before. Then his eyes, brown, wide with alarm, and utterly, thoroughly mortal.

"Your Majesty!" The young man rushed forward, hands raised. "Your Majesty, forgive me. I did not mean to frighten you. I was only coming down. I did not see you. I am so sorry, so sorry..."

I stared at him. My heart was a fist inside a cage.

"You," I managed.

"I am so sorry." He continued, dropping to a crouch and scooping up my phone with both hands, turning it over and thumbing the screen. "Please, it should be fine. I do not think it is broken. Here." He held it out, and I noticed he was trembling worse than I was. "Not a scratch. I swear."

I took it. The glass was whole. He was right. There was not a single line.

I made myself breathe.

"I did not sleep well," I said. The words came out thin. I hated how thin they were.

"Of course, Your Majesty." He took my elbow with the careful touch of a man helping an elderly relative, and I was too unsteady to shrug him off. "Please, let me take you to your quarters. You should rest."

"I do not need..."

"Please."

I let him lead me. The stairs seemed longer than they had yesterday. Every shadow on the wall had an edge. Twice I glanced at the sentinel’s profile, searching for anything amber, anything knowing, and twice I found only a boy of twenty-something concentrating on not tripping over the carpet.

He stopped at my door.

"Will you need anything else, Your Majesty?"

"No." I pushed the door open and stepped through. "Thank you for the help."

I shut it in his face before he could answer.