Chapter 74 Chapter 74

Chapter 74 Chapter 74

Isla's POV

I went looking for Twilight an hour after Devonye finished stitching her up, and I found her in the corridor outside the small council room, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, looking like she was trying to talk herself into resting for five whole minutes.

"You're supposed to be sitting down." I said.

"I sat down for an hour. That's enough sitting."

"That is not how stitches work."

"Devonye already gave me this lecture." She said. 
"I don't need it twice in one day."

I let it go because arguing with her about rest has never once worked in the history of us knowing each other, and honestly I had bigger things sitting on my chest than her stubbornness. I'd just come from the east wing, where half the court had gathered to talk in the particular hushed way people talk when they think no one important can hear them.

"Alexandro's stirring things up." I said.

She straightened off the wall. "What kind of stirring."

"The kind where he's telling anyone who'll listen that you walked in here playing hero while ignoring everything you've done to this kingdom. He's bringing up Darla in every room he's in." I paused. "He's also bringing up us."

That landed the way I knew it would. Her jaw tightened, the same tightening I'd seen a hundred times before whenever something threatened to touch the part of her life she protected hardest.

"What's he saying." She asked.

"Nothing confirmed. Just enough to plant doubt. Enough that people who already suspected are talking about it openly now instead of just wondering." I said. "He's smart about it. He's not saying it's true, he's just saying it loud enough that people start asking why nobody's denying it."

"Has anyone denied it?"

I held her gaze. "No."

She let out a breath through her nose, frustrated, and looked down the corridor like she could see Alexandro through several walls if she stared hard enough.

We found him in the courtyard near the old training yard, surrounded by a small cluster of nobles who'd clearly been hanging on every word. 

He saw us coming and didn't even pretend to stop talking, just let his voice carry a little further so we'd hear the end of whatever he was saying.

"And somehow she's the one standing in the throne hall giving orders. After everything. After Darla. After all of it."

"Alexandro." Twilight said.

He turned to face her fully, and the nobles around him took a few careful steps back, sensing exactly what this was about to become.

"Here she is." He said. "Come to defend herself again."

"I'm not here to defend myself." She said. "I'm here to ask you to stop using a dead woman to score points in front of people who don't know better."

That hit something in him. I watched it land, watched the grief flicker underneath the anger for half a second before the anger swallowed it back up.

"Don't you dare." He said, voice low and shaking. 
"Don't you dare talk about her like you have any right to her memory."

"I'm not talking about her memory. I'm talking about you using it as a weapon."

"She's dead because the world decided someone like you mattered more than someone like her." He said, louder now, loud enough that more people in the courtyard turned to watch. "The kingdom bent itself around keeping you contained and people like Darla just got swept up in the cost of it. Nobody asked if that cost was worth paying."

"That's not on Twilight." I said, stepping forward before I'd fully decided to. "That's on the people who built the system you're describing."

Alexandro's eyes cut to me and something sharpened in them.

"Of course you'd say that." He said. "Of course the general who threw away her rank for her would jump in front of every accusation.”

"Watch it." Twilight said, low and warning.

"Or what." He said, stepping closer, close enough that I felt Twilight's whole body shift slightly, ready. "What are you going to do, Twilight. Burn me down the way you burned down everything else that got near you?"

"Alexandro, that's enough." I said.

"Is it true." He said, ignoring me entirely now, eyes locked on her. "Is it true what people are saying. You and the general. Is that why you came running back the second she said the word."

The courtyard had gone very quiet. I could feel people watching, feel the weight of how many ears were suddenly very interested in the answer.

"That has nothing to do with Darla." Twilight said, and her voice had gone careful in a way I recognized, the tone she used when she was holding something very tightly so it didn't show on the outside.

"It has everything to do with why you're standing in that hall making decisions for the rest of us." He said. "If it's true, that's two crimes you're walking around with instead of one."

"It is not a crime." I said, and I heard my own voice come out harder than I meant it to, sharper, the sound of something I'd been holding in check for longer than just this conversation. "Loving someone is not a crime, whatever this kingdom has decided to call it."

The silence that followed was the loudest silence I've ever stood inside.

I hadn't meant to say it like that. I hadn't meant to say it at all, not here, not in front of a courtyard full of people who hadn't asked and didn't need confirming, but Alexandro's voice had gotten under something old and tender in me and it came out before I could stop it.

Twilight looked at me. Just for a second. I couldn't read everything in her face but I could read enough to know it wasn't anger.

Alexandro looked between the two of us slowly, and something settled into his expression that was worse than the anger had been. Something satisfied.

"There it is." He said quietly. "Thank you for confirming that."

"Get out of my way." Twilight said, voice flat now, done.

"This isn't over." He said, stepping back, but not before throwing one more look my way, one that promised this conversation was going to keep happening whether I wanted it to or not. "Darla's memory deserves accountability. And apparently so does the law you two seem to think doesn't apply to you."

He walked off through the small crowd, and the nobles who'd been watching scattered quickly, suddenly very interested in being anywhere else, the way people scatter after witnessing something they're going to talk about for days.

I stood there in the quiet that followed, heart going too fast, replaying what I'd just said and how plainly I'd said it.

"Isla." Twilight said quietly.

"I know." I said. "I shouldn't have said it like that."

"I didn't say that." She said. "I was going to ask if you're okay."

I looked at her. Really looked at her, away from the crowd, away from Alexandro's voice still echoing somewhere in my head.

"I'm tired of hiding it." I said, and the words surprised me even as I said them. "I'm tired of managing every glance and every word and every room we walk into together like we're committing a crime just by existing near each other."

"I know." She said softly. "I am too.

"Then why does it still feel like something we have to be careful about."

"Because it is." She said. "The law hasn't changed just because we're tired of it."
"Maybe it should."

She didn't answer that right away. She just looked at me, and there was something so open in her face in that moment, something she usually kept locked down tight, and for a second neither of us said anything at all.

"One thing at a time." She said finally. "Right now we have a kingdom to stabilize and a king and his son under guard and a creature in the sky that we still don't know how to deal with. That has to come first."

"And after that."

"After that." She said, and reached out, just briefly, just enough to touch my hand before letting go again, careful even now, even after everything that had just been said in front of half the court. "After that, I don't want to hide anymore either."

I held onto that. I held onto it the rest of the day, through every meeting and every report and every careful conversation about wards and guards and what to do with James, because it was the first time either of us had said it plainly, out loud, without dressing it up as something smaller than it was.

Alexandro's words were still going to cause problems. I knew that. Grief like his doesn't just go quiet because someone tells it to, and now he had something real to hold onto, something that wasn't just suspicion anymore. But for the length of that one conversation in the courtyard, with the whole kingdom still unraveling around us, it felt like something had finally been let out into the open air where it could breathe.