Chapter 196 Waiting
ELIJAH
Lorain found me first.
I had been in my study going over the updated troop positions with Hazel — she had moved the advance team two kilometers closer to Golden Blade’s eastern boundary after Adriana’s contact through the mind link confirmed she was inside and stable — when the door opened without a knock and my youngest walked in with a book tucked carefully under her arm and the particular look she wore when she had decided something.
She climbed onto the chair beside mine, settling herself with quiet precision, tucking one leg slightly beneath her the way she always did when she intended to stay, and opened her book. Not looking at me. Just — there. The way she communicated that something was wrong without wanting to talk about it being wrong yet, her fingers lingering a second too long on the edge of the page before turning it.
I let her sit.
Three minutes later, in a voice softer than usual, almost cautious, she asked. “Is Mama coming back today?”
“Not today,” I said. “Soon.”
“How soon?” her voice got even softer if that was possible.
I didn’t turn to look at her, knowing I didn't have the strength to fight whatever emotion would consume me if I saw tears in her eyes.
“Very soon, baby. You know she can’t stay away from you for long.”
I looked at her now. She nodded faintly, eyes still on the page, though her gaze wasn’t tracking the words. She turned a page she hadn’t been reading. “Okay. I miss her.”
I miss her too. But I didn't say the sounds aloud.
Hazel, across the desk, looked at the ceiling with a very controlled expression.
I sent Lorain back to her maid with the promise that we would eat dinner together and she accepted this with her characteristic grave seriousness, sliding off the chair with care, smoothing her dress absentmindedly before leaving without argument. I had always found her self-containment slightly heartbreaking.
The twins expressed everything loudly and immediately. Lorain held things quietly and waited to see if they resolved before investing emotion in them, carrying it in small, careful silences.
She had learned that from watching us. I was aware of that.
“She pressed the link about an hour ago,” I said to Hazel when the door was closed. “She’s inside. She’s not in danger. She’s made contact with whoever she needed to make contact with.” I paused. “He moved Leo. She confirmed it. Leo is not in the main palace. She’s working on locating the secondary facility.”
“Aiden’s contact inside the territory is still active,” Hazel said. “He reported unusual movement three days ago. What could have been a group transport. It was at nighttime, in the eastern interior. The secondary location is within about eight kilometers of the eastern boundary.” She pulled the map across the desk. “Here. This is my best estimate.”
I looked at the location. Stone construction, she had noted beside it. Old holding structure. Close to a geographic feature locals called Bouncy Jackson, which was an absurd name for what was apparently a significant gorge system that made the site strategically defensible.
“Leo knows about it,” I said.
“Almost certainly. He would have tracked the route.”
“And Adriana won’t be able to move on it until she has access to Leo. Which means we wait until she has that access.”
“Which he has apparently agreed to give her tomorrow.”
I stood up and walked to the window, slower than necessary, which was what I did when I was managing something that didn’t have a productive outlet.
My hand brushed briefly against the back of the chair Lorain had just vacated, the warmth she left behind still faintly there before it faded. The grounds were quiet, the afternoon moving toward evening. Somewhere in this building, my youngest was sitting with a book, waiting. Somewhere east of here, my fifteen-year-old was mapping walls and counting guards and waiting. And somewhere in between, my wife was having dinner with a man who had spent twenty years misunderstanding what she was.
“He’s underestimating her,” I said.
“Yes,” Hazel said.
“He thinks he’s seen her. He thinks he knows what she is because he knew her at eighteen with no wolf and no support and nowhere to go. He has no framework for what she is now.”
“No,” Hazel agreed. “He doesn’t.”
“That’s going to be very bad for him.”
“Yes,” Hazel said, and she sounded satisfied about it in the way she sounded satisfied about things that were both correct and just. “It is.”
I turned back from the window. “Send word to Aiden. I want him positioned at the eastern edge of the secondary facility by morning. Not visible, not active — just there. When Adriana calls, I want us moving in three directions simultaneously.”
“Already drafted,” Hazel said. “Waiting for your approval.”
I signed it.
“And the elders?” she asked. “The new cabinet is asking questions about the queen’s absence. The cover story about a personal matter is holding but it won’t hold past tomorrow.”
“Tell them what they need to know to keep the kingdom functioning and nothing else. When Adriana is back with Leo and the other children, they’ll get the full account.”
Hazel nodded and gathered her papers.
“How are you doing?” she asked, at the door.
I considered the question seriously. “I’m doing what I need to do,” I said. “Which is to wait. I’m very bad at waiting.”
“I know,” she said. “You’ve been staring at that same map for four hours.”
She left and I sat back down at the desk and looked at the map and thought about Adriana is there lying on a bed in someone else’s palace, completely alone and completely in control of the situation, and felt the particular combination of pride and terror that had characterized most of the time I had spent loving her.
She was going to bring Leo home.
She was going to do it her way, on her timeline, having allowed me approximately zero meaningful input in the plan.
I was furious and unsurprised and not remotely worried about whether she would succeed.
Those three things were apparently not contradictory when it came to her.
I reached into my pocket and felt the necklace that had come back to me through a frightened fourteen-year-old who had walked north through the dark to deliver it, and I held it in my closed fist for a while, pressing my thumb into the metal until it grounded something restless in my chest, and waited.