Chapter 274: You Again

Ingrid

“I heard that Starfall Mountain is behind the recent… deaths in the Som family,” an officious-looking noblewoman says to her friend as they scurry past me.

I drop my charcoal onto the ledge at the bottom of my easel. After a month and a half of everyone calling the murders accidents, this is the third person today I’ve heard attribute them to something other than cruel fate. And I may have heard something like that yesterday, but I thought I was losing my mind. The palace is still packed with nobles from all over, lingering after Kaloni’s coronation—we’ve got no shortage of people with no idea what they’re talking about.

But this is no longer a coincidence. And this woman is the first with a name, not just “another kingdom.”

The pair of noblewomen disappear out of sight, and I wonder if I should chase after them. Then, I consider my soot-stained hands and the filthy apron over my dress. I either need to clean up or seek different sources.

As always, the choice is an easy one.

I pack up my sketch—the Windy Ocean, as seen through a high window—and send all my art supplies back to my room before heading downstairs. At this time of day, I’ll be underfoot in the kitchen, but the maids should be between bursts of activity. I find three of them in a makeshift break room inside a linen closet, playing cards.

“Deal me in?” I take the final seat at their table.

“I’m Dilara.” The one I don’t recognize passes cards my way slowly, like she’s too scared to refuse but wishes I wasn’t here. “And this is—”

“Karya and Bengu.” I smile at them both. “This isn’t my first game of cards between the napkins.”

Dilara relaxes. “You’re that princess, aren’t you?”

“Ingrid.” I look at my cards. “If that’s the one you mean.”

Karya nods. “Nothing to worry about with her.”

“Well, I’m a decent card player.” I grin, and Bengu laughs sheepishly. I beat her badly last time.

“Prove it.” Dilara lays down her first set, and the game begins.

My luck is decent, but my bluffing is better. Lying usually isn’t worth the time, but I’ll say whatever I need to for a card game. In the end, I scrape out a win, two points ahead of Dilara, who has completely lost the hard shell she had when I came in.

“So, what do you want to know?” Karya asks.

Dilara raises an eyebrow.

“I never said I was playing for information.” But Karya knows me too well at this point. There’s no point in trying to maintain my innocence for long. “All right, but I know I didn’t make the bet, so you don’t owe me anything.”

She grins. “We know that.”

Goddess, this is so much easier than trying to worm details out of those noblewomen would have been. “Have you heard the rumor that some other kingdom caused the recent deaths?”

Karya covers her mouth in shock. Dilara shakes her head slowly from side to side, never taking her eyes off my face, like she’s trying to read whether I believe it or not. Bengu, though, just turns pale. I look at her.

“I heard it,” she whispers.

“Did they say who it was?” Karya asks before I can. “I need to know whether I’m cleaning a murderer’s room.”

Bengu shrugs. “I’ve heard a few different answers. Lilywind because they want territory on the mainland—”

“That’s ridiculous,” Dilara interrupts. “Whaleberry Harbor is much closer to Lilywind. They would start there.”

She’s right. Moonlight Beach is even closer to the island kingdom than Lightning Cape.

“Starfall Mountain?” Bengu offers. “I have no idea why.”

Karya scoffs. “That makes even less sense.”

“Anyone else?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

Interesting. Starfall is still rebuilding, and some people are having trouble trusting a former rogue as a leader. Lilywind is almost close enough to suspect, and they’ve been exclusively peaceful for a long time. Two kingdoms unlikely to actually try anything like this, but whom people could believe would.

So, the perfect kingdoms to start rumors about if you wanted to deflect attention.

“Who did you hear this from?” I ask.

Bengu leans in. “One of the soldiers. Recai.”

I spend half a day tracing the rumor through the palace. Recai, it turns out, heard it from one of the visiting Oakspring Dunes soldiers, who are of course leaving today. I just barely manage to catch one of them, guarding the last carriage in the royal caravan. He didn’t hear the rumor, but he did see the soldier Recai mentioned talking to a chef at a strange time. So I have to fight through the lunch rush to figure out which of Umit’s several dozen right hands spoke with Oakspring Dunes, only to be pointed in the direction of Redwood Nimbus instead.

The contingency from Redwood Nimbus is bizarrely still here with no plans for departure, despite the fact that they have no personal connection to Lightning Cape and not nearly enough political sway to get to do whatever they want. Raven and Kieran left last week; Finn and Xandra a few days after that. My gut tells me there is something to find at Redwood Nimbus, so I do what I’ve been resisting—stop at my room for a bath and a change of clothes.

An hour later, I knock on Redwood’s primary diplomat’s door. The Alpha and Luna aren’t public people, so Lady Evangeline and her daughter do most of their socializing, according to the book Candace made me that I quickly skimmed through. An older woman with an effusive smile answers the door.

“Princess Ingrid! What a lovely surprise!” She curtsies deeply. “I’m Lady Evangeline. Please, do come in.”

And she keeps talking as she sits me on the couch, pours tea, and summons “some after-lunch nibbles” from the kitchen. Somehow, she doesn’t actually say anything the whole time. I grit my teeth and try to make it look like a smile. She’s the worst kind of diplomat—an expert in worthless noise.

“Oh, I wept for days when I heard what happened to you,” she says, laying a hand over her heart. “I lost my mate after two long decades with him, and it is still painful every day. I can’t imagine him being taken from me after just one night.”

Taken from me doesn’t sound like how someone talks about illness. “It was terrible. I just wish I had someone to hold responsible.”

Evangeline glances around like someone may have snuck into the tiny sitting room. Goddess above, she’s all drama, isn’t she?

“I may have someone for you.”

And I’ve never really minded drama. “Who?”

“I heard a rumor, nothing solid…but apparently, Luna Aisha has some designs on Lightning Cape,” she whispers loud enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if they could hear her in the hallway.

“Luna Aisha?” I say. “Of Lilywind?”

She nods. “It surprised me as well, but what a perfect veil, isn’t it? Most people would assume Lilywind would reach for Whaleberry Harbor if they decided to attack another kingdom.”

I shake my head like this is new. The name is, I suppose, but it feels distinctly pulled out of a hat. Blaming the Alpha is too standard, the first lie anyone would reach for. Going a step further, calling out the Luna, almost verges on too strange to be fake—but Luna Aisha is coming up on her seventieth birthday, and she has tea with Raven once a month, at which she barely seems like she would kill a fly.

“Can I ask where you heard this from? I don’t want to go making accusations if I’m not sure.”

Evangeline’s eyes widen, like she never dreamed I’d do anything with this information. “Oh, just one of my staff.”

Stupid. Another wild goose chase. I sigh. “If you could tell me who—”

A door swings open, and I realize I wasn’t wrong at all.

Corwyn Hajni, wearing a steward’s uniform in Redwood colors, steps into the room. Thick, gnarled scars cover half his face, and he ducks his head like he’s trying to hide the rest of it, but Finn and Xandra made sure I would recognize him no matter what. He even smells like Corwyn, sea salt and balsam.

By all the stars, Astralis is involved in this.

“Lady Evangeline,” Corwyn says, disdain grating through his polite demeanor, “you have a tea in half an hour.”

“Oh, of course. Apologies.” She nods to me. “Kael here makes sure I don’t leave my head behind because I’m too busy chatting.”

I rip my gaze away from Kael before he can realize who I am. Technically, we never met outside of a brief political introduction. He has no reason to suspect I’d be the one to see through his disguise. “It’s no trouble at all.”

Lady Evangeline stands, obviously waiting for me to say we should do this again. I curtsy and leave. Diplomats like her are why I’m happy I have no future in politics.

Outside her rooms, I hesitate. I could go right to Amval—but this doesn’t prove anything about Kaloni, and I’m still so sure she’s involved. Corwyn couldn’t orchestrate this on his own, not from Redwood Nimbus, of all places. I’m sure he crawled there because it’s the last place anyone would look.

I need more. Amval will believe me, but not about the important parts. For that, I’m going to need to see Corwyn and Kaloni together.

I wait outside Redwood’s rooms, tucked away in an alcove, until my feet hurt, and my stomach starts rumbling for dinner. If only I hadn’t cleaned up; I’d still have my charcoal and a few scraps of paper in my pocket so at least I could doodle to pass the time. Damn Lady Evangeline and her standards.

Finally, though, Corwyn leaves the rooms. I trail behind him as he hurries away. Frankly, I’m not surprised Finn and Xandra didn’t spot him. The few times I saw him, he strutted around with so much confidence, he looked like as much of a prince as Xandra. This version of him has a servant’s scuttle down perfectly, dodging automatically around ignorant nobility with muttered apologies. If I hadn’t noticed his face, I wouldn’t have looked twice at him.

And it seems he’s counting on that because he doesn’t know how to lose someone. Even weaving like he is, I follow him easily through the bluestone halls. He never thinks to check behind him, either. His one remaining scrap of cockiness, I guess.

He leads me straight to a far corner of the palace, not too far away from the room Joli first put me in. The traffic slowly thins, becomes all staff and no nobility. My heartbeat kicks up the tempo. There’s a reason Joli put me here—if you need to hide something, it’s the best place in Som Palace to do it.

At the top of a tower, under a specific archway, I can just see someone marked with chalk or something else white. Corwyn stops. Alone. I gnaw on my thumbnail. There could be all kinds of magic he’s waiting for, secret messages like the ones he was using with Lord Denidor. None of that will be enough proof.

Then, maybe even quieter than Anwen was when he showed me what the wind could do to silence someone, a shape appears at the far end of the hallway. Corwyn straightens. This is who he was waiting for. I squint, begging the person to move a little faster so I can see who it is and confirm my suspicions.

In a dark dress, with her hair piled high to fit her crown once more, Kaloni floats up to Corwyn and murmurs something that sounds like a greeting.

I turn and sprint away as quietly as I can. Amval has to know.