Chapter 52: Because You Matter

Josh looked at Olivia steadily.

"You wanted to tell me something?" he asked.

Olivia cleared her throat and began.

She told him plainly and without decoration everything Reta had told her in the garden that morning. She kept her voice even all the way through.

When she finished the room was quiet.

Josh had not moved. He clenched his hands slowly on the desk, jaw tight.

"How certain is she?" he asked. "Of what she saw."

"Certain enough to carry it for three years," Olivia said. "And certain enough to seek me out this morning when she did not have to."

Josh looked at her for a long moment.

Then he stood up and went to the door.

"Dan," he called into the corridor.

Dan appeared within seconds. He always did.

"Bring Reta to the study," Josh said. "Now please."

Dan nodded and left.

Josh came back and sat down.

The room settled into quiet again. Olivia looked at her hands. Then at the desk. Then at Josh who was watching her with that expression she had learned to recognise.

"I am sorry, your majesty," Olivia said quietly. "I did not intend to burden you with my problems. But I did not know who else I could bring this to."

Josh looked at her steadily.

"If you will allow me," Olivia continued, "I would go in search of her myself. I do not want to create unnecessary work for–"

"And if you get hurt?" Josh asked.

Olivia almost smiled. "I have my wolf now. I can fight back."

Josh gave her a look that was not quite a smile but was close to one. "Do not get carried away. Shifting twice in one week does not make you prepared for everything the road throws at you." He paused. "Besides, do you know about the wolf ban?"

Olivia shook her head. "No, your majesty."

"Then you are not going anywhere alone," he said simply. "I will handle it. What I need from you is your mother's name and a description, something clear enough that my men can identify her."

Olivia gave it to him. Every detail she could remember.

Josh wrote nothing down himself. He just listened, the way he always listened when something mattered.

When she finished he looked at her.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

He looked at her.

"Because it matters," he said. "And because you matter."

Olivia held his gaze.

She had heard those words from powerful people before. Usually they preceded something that cost her. But Josh said it the way he said most true things, plainly, without performance, with no apparent interest in what she did with it afterward.

She said nothing.

But something in her face shifted in a way she could not have stopped even if she had tried.

++++

Reta came in five minutes later.

She stood in the doorway and looked at Olivia first, then at Josh. Something in her posture adjusted, the composure from last night returning, settling over her like something she had learned to wear.

"Please sit," Josh said.

She sat.

Josh asked his questions carefully and precisely, one at a time, each one building on the last, leaving no space for confusion or misremembering. Dan sat to the side with his pen moving steadily.

Reta answered everything.

The timeline of the raid. Where she had been standing. What she had seen in the immediate aftermath. The direction the carts had taken. The number of people loaded into each one. The road they had used leaving Yesmar.

And Olivia's mother. What she had looked like. Where she had been when Reta last saw her. How far they had travelled together before the separation.

Josh listened to all of it without interrupting once.

When Reta finished he looked at Dan. Dan nodded, he had everything.

"Thank you," Josh said to Reta. "You will remain here as our guest for the time being. You are safe."

Reta nodded. She stood.

She was at the door when Josh spoke again.

"I will send trackers to the last location you described," he said to Olivia. He held her gaze steadily. "It will take time. I cannot promise what they will find. But I will look."

Olivia looked at him.

She had spent three years carrying the weight of something she believed was finished. A door she had walked away from because there was no handle left on her side.

"Thank you, your majesty," she said.

The words were quiet and simple and carried everything she did not have other language for.

Josh nodded once.

Reta moved to leave.

"Your majesty."

She had stopped in the doorway. Her hand rested on the frame and she was looking at Josh directly with the expression of someone who had made a decision and had decided now was the moment.

"There is one more thing," she said. "Something I did not say last night. I was not certain it was relevant."

Josh looked at her. "Say it."

Reta took a breath.

"The man who gave the order for the Moon Shadow raid," she said. "I told you about the organisation. The Shademaster." She paused. "But I also heard something else. Two of the cart men were talking between themselves, not knowing I was close enough to hear. One of them said, with the way Lord Harris handles things, no one will ever suspect anything. And that they had been doing it for six years."

The study was completely silent.

Dan's pen had stopped.

Olivia looked at Josh.

Josh was looking at Reta. His face was very controlled.

"Lord Harris," Josh said. His voice was perfectly level.

"Yes, your majesty," Reta said. "I am sorry."

She left.

The door closed behind her.

Dan looked at Josh.

Josh looked at the closed door for a long moment.

Then he looked at Olivia.

She was sitting across from him with her eyes wide and her face very still. She had heard it. He could see that she had heard it and was sitting with it the way she sat with most difficult things, quietly and without falling apart.

Harris.

The name that had been sitting in this room since the survivors arrived was now spoken out loud by a second witness. Independently. Unprompted.

There was no longer any reasonable doubt.

"Olivia," Josh said.

"Yes, your majesty."

"What I am about to do next will affect this palace and the people in it." He looked at her steadily. "I need you to say nothing about what was said in this room. To anyone."

Olivia looked at him.

She thought about Cassandra waiting in her room.

She thought about Harris laughing at breakfast about Greywood.

"Yes, your majesty," she said quietly.

Josh nodded.

He looked at Dan.

"Close the door," he said. "And sit down."