Chapter 16: Lunch Time

The lunch hall always felt too bright.

Light poured from the tall windows, splashing across silver plates, wine glasses, and the carefully practiced smiles of lords pretending to enjoy each other’s company. Warm air rolled from steaming soup and roasted meat. My stomach was hungry enough to complain, but my spoon only pushed sauce around my plate, drawing useless little circles.

The Duke sat at my right. The Duchess at my left.

Gerald sat across from me, slightly angled, in the seat no one else ever used.

They always placed me like this when the hall was full: surrounded, boxed in by people who believed proximity equaled safety. They forgot I learned how to slip between their legs and vanish before I even reached the Duchess’s waist.

“…the east wing is ready?” the Duke asked, voice slipping between clinking cutlery.

“Ready,” Gerald answered. “Tharvane and Lysandrel envoys will be placed there. Separated by one corridor. I’m not risking a desert knight and a plains priest arguing over whose god owns the dirt under your roof.”

The Duke smirked. “You’re generous. You could put them in the same room and let them kill each other before the Rite even begins.”

Gerald shrugged. His broad shoulders lifted like invisible armor still rested there, muscle memory from too many years wearing it. “If they kill each other here, our floors stain. Better if they restrain themselves until they’re back on their own land.”

Duchess laughed softly, her wine rippling. “You always think of the servants.”

“The servants hold this castle tighter than stone,” he said. “I’d rather not offend them.”

I tore a piece of bread and chewed. Rosemary and salt clung to my tongue. Somehow it tasted sharper after this morning’s lesson, as if the world decided that after speaking of the First Breaths and vampire kings, I should also taste every grain of salt on this table.

At the far end of the high table, the priests clustered together. White, cream, and gold robes blending like candlelight against marble. The High Priest—Ylena—sat in the center, speaking to a younger priest who sat far too close to the wine jug.

Every so often she glanced my way, as if expecting to find me climbing onto the table rather than sitting properly. I raised a brow at her.

She frowned back, lifted her spoon, and pointed it with the force of a spear at my untouched food. Eat.

I bit a larger piece of bread, mostly to silence her stare.

Below us, at the long communal tables, Evrithall’s lords and ladies sat shoulder to shoulder. A few nobles from nearby villages had already arrived, wearing their family crests like invitations. Hoping for closer seats at the coming ceremony. Their chatter blended together like a stream: gossip, speculation, fear disguised as laughter.

Then I saw him.

Lord Zade Thalorian entered a heartbeat late, slipping through a side door rarely used. Not the grand entrance the others preferred.

His cloak was black, open behind him like a shadow being dragged. Under it, he wore light armor. Dark metal, scratched and worn, as if it knew violence intimately.

His hair was a mess. One strand stood up rebelliously, refusing to obey comb or hand. Like he’d dunked his head in water and decided he didn’t care enough to fix it.

His face wasn’t the face of someone powdered and perfumed for formal dining. Shadows clung beneath his eyes. His jaw locked once before he forced it loose. His mouth held that restrained tension people wore after a night spent wrestling sleep.

Still unfairly attractive. Far too attractive for someone walking into a royal hall looking like he’d been dragged from bed.

A black metal bed.

Starlight.

Lips—

I bit the inside of my cheek until iron chased the memory away.

Zade crossed along the wall, accepting nods from lords and lingering glances from ladies who stared too boldly at the lines of his shoulders. He returned their attention with short nods, no pauses, no small talk. He reached his seat a few chairs down from Gerald, directly in my line of sight if I turned my head even slightly.

I stared at my plate. Roasted lamb. Potatoes. Greens. A waiting pool of gravy.

“Castella.” Soft voice, sharp intent. The Duchess.

I glanced her way. “Yeah?”

“You’re slicing that bread like you’re deciding where to open someone’s throat.”

I looked down. The bread lay mangled, uneven cuts like a casualty of some tiny private war. I dropped my knife.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “I was… thinking.”

“If that thought is Lord Felix’s head, I won’t stop you,” Duke murmured.

The lords closest to us pretended not to hear and suddenly found the ceilings fascinating. The Duchess hid a smile behind her glass.

Gerald raised one brow in my direction. That alone was enough. A silent warning: don’t give the Duke ideas he would actually act on.

I stuck my tongue out at Gerald. Small, quick, invisible to everyone but him.

His eyes almost—almost—laughed.

“So,” the Duke’s voice swept down the table, louder this time, “the priests say we finally have a fixed date? Is that right, Ylena?”

The High Priest wiped a trace of broth from the corner of her mouth with a square of linen, then leaned forward slightly. “The sun will reach its highest line three weeks from now,” she said. “On the same day, twenty years ago, when—”

Every head turned, just enough to make it obvious.

I stared at my potatoes. “Go on, Your Eminence. I don’t mind being a footnote in your lecture.”

“Castella,” the Duke murmured in warning.

“—when the people of Evrithall named it the day the Sun Princess was born,” Ylena finished calmly. “Hannan and Elyra above, you below, and the bells nearly cracked by evening.”

“I was a baby,” I muttered. “I didn’t ask anyone to ring anything.”

“No,” the Duchess said, and her warm hand brushed my arm, “but you screamed as if you were the one giving orders.”

Soft laughter rippled across the tables.

My jaw tightened. Something small and sharp inside my chest twisted. Not at the memory, but at the part of it I’d never been given: whether my parents smiled when they heard me cry.

Ylena continued, sparing me the answer I didn’t want. “The Rite of Light’s Unification,” she said. “Three of our gods will be invoked: Hannan and Elyra for Caeloria, Vaelith representing Tharvane, Neryon for Mirenor, Lyris for Lysandrel, and Asterra—”

“Asterra will pretend to invoke all of them,” Gerald muttered.

A young priest choked on his drink. Ylena shot Gerald the kind of look that could exile a man from a kingdom.

“The gods do not require your commentary, Commander.”

Gerald lifted one shoulder. He wore his title the way he wore a sword: without preening, but always within reach. Commander of the Sun Guard. Keeper of patrol routes. Warden of the walls. The Duke’s right hand in every matter that smelled of iron and bone.

“The envoys will arrive two days before the rite,” Ylena continued. “Tharvane has already sent a courier. They bring the second son of King Ardan. Mirenor sends a sister of the Nerith line. Lysandrel—”

“Lysandrel sends wheat and prayers,” the Duchess cut in. “As always.”

“And Asterra?” the Duke asked. “Or are you still waiting for a carrier pigeon to find its way out of their sky?”

“They sent word by night flame,” Ylena said. “We saw three blue pulses from the northern altar. That usually means yes.”

The skin across my knuckles tightened against the table.

“Envoy from Velyndor?” one lord called from below.

The hall shifted. Cutlery paused.

The Duke straightened. “If Velyndor decides to step out of its shadows, they may come as guests like the rest. Until then, I am not adding an empty chair for ghosts.”

“Plenty of empty already,” I murmured. I bit bread again.

“The envoys will present themselves to Her Highness upon arrival,” the Duchess said, slipping formal tone back into the air. “You’ll receive their greetings in the small hall first. Not here. No envoy sits at this table before the rite.”

“Unless the King and Queen decide otherwise,” the Duke added.

One sentence.

One arrow slipping under bone.

I lifted my head. “They’ve answered your message?”

He didn’t respond right away. His jaw tightened—barely—and then softened.

“Not yet,” he said. “The royal court is preoccupied with harvest, apparently. Many matters require attention.”

“Really..?” I cut into my lamb. “Harvest is far more important than their daughter being used as the center of the first rite in twenty years. Perfect sense.”

“Castella,” the Duchess warned, no humor this time.

I shrugged. “I didn’t say anything.”

Gerald rotated his wine glass slowly. “They may still come,” he said quietly, just for the high table. “The rite… matters. Even to them.”

“If they come, I’ll prepare another chair,” Ylena replied. “If they don’t, we still have the altar.”

The Duchess exhaled hard and clapped her hands lightly on the table, breaking the tension.

“All right. Enough doom. Castella, you haven’t touched your vegetables. If you keep avoiding them, your gown will hang off your shoulders like laundry on a line.”

I eyed the green pile. “Maybe that would make me look dramatic.”