Chapter 197 How it Would End
ELIJAH
The new cabinet convened in the morning.
I had made the change three days ago, moving through the process faster than it was designed to be moved through because I did not have the luxury of patience and the previous cabinet had demonstrated, repeatedly and comprehensively, that their primary function was to slow things down and express concern.
I had replaced them with people Hazel had identified and I had interviewed. They were younger, sharper, and less invested in the way things had always been done, and critically, people who understood that the kingdom’s current situation was not a moment for deliberation.
They sat across from me now and I looked at them and felt the particular difference of being in a room where the people were actually going to do the things I asked them to do.
“The queen’s absence,” said the woman at the end of the table, Sola, she’s a former military and now heading internal security. “How long can we maintain the current narrative?”
“One more day,” I said. “Possibly two. By which point it won’t be necessary.”
“You’re expecting her back by then?”
“I’m expecting things to move.” I kept the statement at that level because even this new cabinet did not have full clearance on the details of what Adriana was doing inside Golden Blade.
The fewer people who knew, the fewer opportunities for that information to travel in the wrong direction. We had already established that our information security had a problem. I was not creating new openings.
“What I need from this cabinet today is confirmation that the kingdom functions normally from the outside. No indication that anything is unusual at the leadership level. We are present, we are governing, and there is nothing to see.”
“The children are asking about their mother,” said another member, Pren, who handled household and family affairs. “The younger one specifically.”
“I’m managing that directly,” I said.
“And the pack membership? There are whispers.”
“There are always whispers. Whispers don’t govern. We govern.” I looked around the table. “Are there any actual operational issues requiring my attention today?”
There were several, none of them dramatic, all of them the ordinary business of a large territory that did not pause because its leadership was managing a crisis. I worked through them steadily and efficiently, which was the only way to work through them, and when the cabinet was dismissed I sat alone in the room for a moment.
Martine had still not been found.
This bothered me more than I had communicated to anyone. Martine had been with Adriana for years. She had come from Adriana’s former pack, had made the transition when the packs merged, had been a quiet constant in our household in the way of someone who understood their role and executed it without drama.
The fact that she had been absent from the palace for a week without anyone noticing until I went looking for Adriana pointed to a gap in our household security that I was going to address comprehensively when this was over.
It also raised a question I hadn’t fully answered yet.
Martine had been coordinating the cover for Adriana’s absence. Martine had been gone before Adriana left. Which meant either Adriana had sent her somewhere ahead of the departure, or Martine’s absence was not voluntary.
I did not yet know which and it was sitting uncomfortably in the back of my thinking.
Hazel appeared in the doorway and she gave reports from Aiden. Which were all positive. But one thing made me raise my brow.
“He’s eating with Landon,” I said.
“Yes. Every night, apparently. According to the contact, Landon is very invested in this particular captive.” Hazel’s mouth was doing something careful. “The contact says Leo has not been harmed.”
“That sounds right.”
“He’s apparently been requesting paper and ink. The contact says he’s been drawing something.”
I thought about Leo with paper in a hostile environment and felt a surge of something that was not quite pride because pride implied surprise and I was not surprised. I was just full of it. Full of him.
“When Adriana contacts me,” I said, “I need to be moving within ten minutes. Everything and everyone should be in position. We’re staying ready and alert. I don’t want to have even a second's delay.”
“It is,” Hazel said. “It has been for two days.”
I nodded.
“And the spy problem,” I said. “Shawn’s network. Have we identified everyone?”
“We got six names,” she said. “Four are lower-level staff who were being paid for information and probably didn’t understand the full picture of what they were providing. One is a guard in the outer perimeter rotation. One is—” She stopped.
“Tell me.”
“It’s Martine,” she said.
The room was quiet.
“Martine,” I said.
“Yes.” Hazel sat down across from me. “She wasn’t absent because Adriana sent her somewhere. She left because she knew we were going to find her. She has been feeding information to Shawn for approximately eight months. The communications went through a contact in the Jameset district who was paid to pass messages. When Shawn left through the tunnels, Martine followed two days later.”
I sat back in my chair.
Martine had been in our home, in Adriana’s confidence, carrying our children and managing the household. But she’d been feeding information to the man who had been feeding it to Landon, for eight months.
“Does Adriana know?” I asked.
“No. She left before I found out.”
I thought about Adriana in Golden Blade, believing Martine was here managing things, not knowing.
“We’ll tell her when she’s home,” I said. “Not before. She doesn’t need that in her head while she’s in there.”
Hazel nodded.
“Find Martine,” I said. “Wherever she went. I want her back here.”
“Already underway,” Hazel said.
I looked at the map still spread across the desk and thought about all the pieces of this thing, how long it had been building, how many hands had been involved, how something that had started as one man’s inability to accept rejection twenty years ago had grown roots into my household, my security, my family.
Then I stopped thinking about how it had gotten here and started thinking about how it was going to end.