Chapter 22: What the Wall Sees, and What He Does

Zade exhaled through his nose. “You read too many old scrolls, Captain.”

“And you spend too much time looking at a princess you’re supposed to avoid,” Daren shot back, bored.

“If you’re afraid I’ll bite her,” Zade said, rising from the chair, “sleep easy. I’m more busy counting Morvane than thinking about the shoulders of a woman who enjoys challenging half the hall.”

My shoulders burned beneath my dress.

“I’m not afraid you’ll bite her,” Daren sighed. “I’m afraid she’ll drag you along when she decides to jump something bigger than a staircase.”

Zade turned his face away, he clenched his jaw. “You have a watch schedule to distribute,” he said. “If the north watch falls apart, I’ll blame your mouth for being too busy commenting on other people’s lives.”

Daren laughed under his breath. “All right, Lord Thalorian. I’m going. Don’t burn the Morvane by yourself before the rite, we want a little spectacle for the others too.”

The Aegis captain gave a brief bow and walked off, his white cloak snapping behind him.

Zade stayed where he was for a few seconds, his solid back cutting a hard line against the late-afternoon light. The tattoo on his arm showed clearer now: a coiling wing pattern, and at its center a vertical line that looked like a crack, studded with tiny flashes, as if someone had preserved the shape of the Rift in his skin.

Aeshar.

The sky’s first breath. Maybe the old scribes hadn’t been entirely drunk when they wrote about Thalorian blood.

He rolled the watch schedule back up, tied it with cord, and turned, clearly about to leave the courtyard.

I chose the worst possible moment to move.

A row of small wooden stands used for training shields lined the side of the pillar. One had a bent nail jutting out. The hem of my dress, already smudged with dirt and dust, caught on that nail the instant I stepped out from behind the pillar.

The sudden yank snapped me backward. The satchel strap slid hard on my shoulder.

I lost my balance.

I fell.

The books inside the bag slammed; two of them flew out, landing open on the stone. One displayed a drawing of a river creature with black eyes, the other a page on Nyxthra and the circle of Vessaryn. My knees hit first. My palms followed, catching my weight before my face could.

Pain flared through bone. Breath punched out of my lungs in a sound I refused to claim.

Perfect.

Very graceful.

A shadow swallowed the light. I knew before I looked.

A pair of black boots stopped beside the open book. The long line of his shin rose into dark pants, then a black shirt, then his chest. I lifted my gaze. Blue eyes looked down, sweeping from my face to the snagged skirt to the books scattered across the ground.

Something sat on his features between irritation and amusement. “Wonderful,” his voice dropped, soft. “Of course it’s you.”

I gathered my breath. “Don’t stand there. You’re blocking the light.”

“The light?” One brow rose. “Are you talking about the sun, or the stolen scroll under my foot?”

It was humiliating that my first instinct wasn’t to defend myself, but to make sure the oldest book among them didn’t get stepped on. I snatched the nearest one and pulled it to my chest.

“I’m not stealing,” I said. “This palace belongs to my family. Everything in it is technically… mine.”

“So looting the library is just a more organized kind of tidying,” he drawled.

“Exactly.”

His eyes flicked to my skirt still pulled tight behind me. He leaned a little, spotting the bent nail hooked into the fabric. The corner of his mouth lifted.

“Interesting,” he said. “You managed to take yourself down without any help from an enemy.”

“I can stand on my own,” I hissed, tugging at the skirt. The fabric didn’t budge. The nail refused to let go.

“No doubt,” he replied. “The question is how much you plan to pull down with you.”

I wanted to throw something at his face. Unfortunately, both hands were busy keeping my body upright and holding a book like a shield.

He didn’t offer his hand. He just stood there, tall and dark, looking down like this was a small performance worth savoring.

“If you’re done watching,” I said, “you can leave.”

“I’m afraid to step,” he answered. “I might crush one of our forbidden texts and Hannan will strike my head off before Nyxthrad gets the chance.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re never afraid of Hannan.”

“You’re right.” He tapped the rolled watch schedule in his hand with one finger. “I’m more afraid of the High Priest if you get caught with those books.”

“You didn’t see anything,” I said. “You’re busy guarding the wall. You don’t have time to watch the keep.”

His gaze dropped to one of the books lying open near his left boot. From where I was, the title was perfectly readable: Vessaryn: The Lost Rift.

“Delightful,” he said. “This morning you’re studying the First Breaths. By afternoon you’re crawling through windows with Vessaryn in your bag. The priest will be proud... or faint.”

Heat crawled up the back of my neck. The High Priest would crack my skull with a scripture if he knew I’d touched texts from the forbidden room without him.

“Don’t stand there,” I repeated, and now the edge of exhaustion slipped into my voice. “You’re making me want to snap this nail off and drive it into your shin.”

“You can try,” he observed, his tone like someone enjoying a dangerous experiment. “But before that—”

He moved his foot. His boot touched the open book. With the edge of his sole, he closed it slowly, like snuffing a candle.

“Before that,” he repeated, “you’re going to tell me why you’re carrying Vessaryn and a list of Nyxthra creatures to your room, right when the rite and the new guards are about to arrive.”

I stared at him. Fine dust clung to my knees, and my wrist had started bleeding. Breath scraped in and out through my teeth.

“You really believe everything I do has something to do with chaos,” I said.

“So far you’ve been consistent,” he replied.

“Good.” I lifted my chin, still stuck in an unflattering half-sprawl. “Consistency is a virtue. Now you can walk away and pretend you didn’t see me, and we both save energy.”

“The problem is,” he said, weighing each word, “I’m assigned to find cracks. In the wall. In the keep. In people. Hard to look away when the Princess of Caeloria is sitting on the floor with books the priests keep behind three locks.”

“Hard to look away, or hard not to comment?” I asked.

“A bit of both.”

I yanked at my skirt again. The nail held. The fabric pulled tight against my calf. At this point, my pride hurt worse than my skin.

“Use your First Breath, Thalorian,” I muttered. “Melt this nail a little.”

“That’s not how my ability works,” he said flatly.

“You claim you have power from your god?”

“I don’t claim anything.” His pupils narrowed. “I’m only saying that if I burn something, I do it on purpose. Not to rescue someone’s window-jumping habits from a bent piece of metal.”

I blew out a hard breath. “Fine.”

I lifted one hand off the stone, twisted my body, and grabbed the nail directly. Its point bit into my palm. The pain came sharp and clean. I yanked back. The nail squealed, then tore free of the wood. My skirt snapped loose. Blood beaded on my palm, one bright red dot.

My skin stung. My heart hammered.

I kept my face still. Held the bloody nail like a trophy. Slowly, I stood. My knees complained. My spine groaned. But I got upright, head level with his chest.

“See?” I said, raising my bleeding palm. “I can stand on my own. The world didn’t collapse.”

His blue eyes dropped to the blood, then lifted back to my face. Something flickered there. A brief flash, too fast for me to name, before cynicism slid back over it like a shutter.

“Not yet,” he said.

I wanted to drive the nail straight into his boot. Instead, I opened my palm slowly, letting the blood run a little along the lines of my hand.

“You won’t tell anyone about this,” I held his gaze. “About these books. About me being here.”

He lifted his chin a fraction. “You’re giving orders to someone who hasn’t sworn himself to you, Your Highness.”

“The Duke said my safety is in your hands,” I shot back. “If the High Priest skins me alive over these books, I can’t guarantee the rite will go smoothly. Everyone loses.”

The corner of his mouth shifted. “You’re threatening me with the prospect of a ruined rite.”

“I’m threatening everyone.”

A brief silence. He weighed it, the small stones in his head settling into place. “I won’t report you,” he said at last. “But not because of your threat.”

“Then why?” I pressed.

Was this your chance to have something over me? Did you want to see how far I’d go before I broke?

“Because I want to see what happens when you follow a reckless plan all the way to the end,” he said, honest in a way that tied my stomach in a knot. “And it’s easier to keep an eye on someone who isn’t locked in her room.”

My body went rigid. “You’re watching me?”

“If I were stalking you,” he repeated what he’d said last night, “you wouldn’t know.”

“Thank you for admitting you’re a stalker now.”

“With all the voices starting to call your name,” he answered quietly, “it’s worse if no one is watching.”

There was too much behind that sentence. Too much pointing at gold threads, dreams, Vessaryn, the First Breaths. Too much to pry open here in this little courtyard with bruised knees and a bleeding palm.

I exhaled, lowered my hand, closed the nail inside my fist. “In that case,” I said, lifting the remaining books from the stone, “you didn’t see me. You didn’t see what I was carrying. You didn’t see me trip. And if you laugh, you do it later. Alone.”

“Maybe I’m already laughing,” he replied.

“You’re not smiling.”

“Since when are you an expert at reading a Thalorian’s face?”

“Since the last two days when you keep showing up wherever I step,” I said.

He went quiet for a beat, then shifted aside, clearing a path to the door. “Go before a priest finds you outside your room,” he said. “Or before Gerald comes up here looking for a bent nail and finds that one in your hand.”

I walked past him, close enough that our arms nearly brushed. The tattoo on his arm seemed to move at the edge of my vision.

“Zade,” I called, before my brain could tell my mouth to stop.

He turned slightly, one brow lifting.

“You need sleep,” I repeated the line I’d already thrown at him outside my door. “Those eyes… if you keep staying up, you’ll look terrible at the rite.”

“And you care because?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Because if you look terrible, everyone will blame me. I’m busy enough dealing with that.”

He looked at me a second too long. “Go,” he said at last, his voice dropping, almost rough. “Before I decide to read your Vessaryn right here.”

I didn’t let those words dig any deeper. I turned and walked fast to the door, the satchel heavy on my shoulder, my palm throbbing with blood, my back still feeling his gaze like a thin line of fire.

Out in the corridor, far from that little courtyard, I finally let my shoulders sink a fraction, breath slipping out through my lips.

Two days.

Two days packed with rites, First Breaths, gold threads, Jerome surviving, a nagging priest, capital guards who hadn’t even arrived yet, and Lord Zade Thalorian who, for some reason, kept standing at every turn of my life like an exclamation point drawn too large.

And night still hadn’t come.