Chapter 194 What is Needed
ELIJAH
James was a good hunter and he knew his way around the forest. He looked like he had been riding through the night and it showed on every part of him, the dust caked into his collar, the redness around his eyes, the tight set of his jaw that came from a man who had been awake too long and was holding himself together through sheer obligation.
I had posted a guard at the eastern gate with instructions to bring him directly to me the moment he arrived, regardless of the hour. It was barely six in the morning when I heard a knock on the door.
I was already dressed. I’d barely gotten any sleep the night before.
“Tell me everything,” I said, before he had fully crossed the threshold. “From the moment you arrived at the boundary.”
He straightened despite the exhaustion, the instinct of a trained man in front of his king. “I presented myself at the Golden Blade gate formally, Alpha. I stated my purpose and gave them your name, then I requested an audience with the king. The reception was cold, which to be honest, I expected. They took my horse and told me to wait inside the outer courtyard. No food, no water, no seat. I stood in that courtyard for three hours.”
“Go on.”
“The aide came back out eventually. He said the king was unable to receive me at this time. I told him I would wait. He said waiting would not help, that the king had no interest in any negotiation with our kingdom.” James paused, and the pause had weight to it. “His exact words were that the king would soon have what he wanted and therefore had nothing to discuss with us. When I pressed him for more, he had two guards escort me back to the boundary and watch me until I was outside their territory.”
The throne room was quiet.
Soon have what he wanted.
Three days ago, Landon had been doing everything a man did who did not yet have what he wanted, sending letters, building pressure, calculating leverage, pulling Adriana toward him through every mechanism available. A man in that position did not turn away negotiators. A man in that position needed every avenue open, needed to keep the other side uncertain, needed the game to keep moving. Turning away a formal envoy from the Lycan King was not a move you made when you were still waiting.
It was a move you made when you had stopped waiting.
Something had changed on his end. Or something had arrived.
I dismissed James to eat and rest, and was alone in the throne room for approximately forty seconds before the door opened again and Hazel came in. I looked at her face before she opened her mouth and I knew.
“Adriana is not in the palace,” she said.
I breathed in through my nose. “Since when.”
“Early this morning. Martine has also been absent. The kitchen matron says she hasn’t been on palace grounds for close to a week.”
“A week.” I said it carefully. “And not one person in this palace thought to bring that to my attention.”
“That’s on me,” Hazel said. “I was focused outward. The tunnel surveillance, the external search, the troop positioning. I didn’t think to look inside our own walls. That was an error and I own it.”
I walked to the window because I needed to do something with my body and there was nothing useful to do. Outside the grounds were beginning to lighten, the first grey of early morning coming into the sky, guards moving through their rotation as though everything was entirely normal.
Adriana had gone to Golden Blade.
I knew it before I said it. One part of me that was her husband felt something that was approximately terror dressed up as fury. The part of me that had watched her handle everything that had ever come for her felt something that was approximately awe dressed up as more fury.
Both of those parts were furious.
“She came to me before she left,” Hazel said softly, from behind me.
I turned around.
“She told me what she was doing and why. She asked me to give you one hour before I said anything, so she would have enough of a head start that you couldn’t catch her on the road.” Hazel held my gaze without flinching. “She was right, Elijah. You know she was right. If you had gone after her, Landon would have seen soldiers coming over the horizon before she cleared his gate and everything she was trying to do would have been dead before it started.”
“I know that,” I grumbled, still annoyed. “I know she was right.”
“You’re furious anyway.”
“Of course I’m furious anyway. She walked into that man’s territory alone in the dark and didn’t tell me.” I pushed the fury down to where it needed to be, which was underneath the thinking rather than on top of it. “What’s the signal? What did she arrange for when she needs us to move?”
“She’ll use the mind link. She’ll contact you directly when she has Leo’s location confirmed and the children ready to move. She wants full troop deployment the moment she signals.” Hazel crossed to the desk and spread the map that had been sitting there for two days. “Aiden is already positioned at the eastern edge of the secondary facility. He confirmed last night that children are present and he estimates twenty to twenty-three by his count from the exterior surveillance.”
“And Leo.”
“A boy matching his description is being held separately from the main group. Brought to the primary palace compound every evening.” Hazel looked up from the map. “He hasn’t been harmed. Aiden’s contact inside says Landon has been treating him differently from the other children. He has better conditions, private meals. Leo has refused most of the conditions.”
“Of course he has.”
“He’s been requesting paper and ink.”
I looked at her.
“Aiden managed to get a copy of what he’s been drawing sent through.” She pulled a folded paper from inside her jacket and laid it on the map. A face. A child’s face. Notes around the edges in Leo’s handwriting, approximate age, identifying features, a mark near the left eye.
“He’s identifying the bait,” I said. “This must be the child they used to lure the pack children out.”
Hazel straightened. “He thought of it before any of us did.”
I stood there looking at my fifteen year old son’s handwriting. I felt something that didn’t have a clean name. Pride was part of it. Fear was part of it. The ache of a parent who sees their child doing things they should not have to do and cannot stop them and would not stop them even if they could because stopping them would mean the child becoming less than they were.
“Get the soldiers to the eastern boundary,” I said. “Quiet approach, full formation, hold at the tree line until I signal. I want us moving in under ten minutes from the moment she contacts me.”
Hazel nodded. “They’ve been ready.”
“Aiden does not move until he hears from me.” I folded Leo’s drawing and put it in my pocket. “And I want someone watching the mind link on my behalf through the night. If she contacts me while I’m sleeping—”
“You won’t be sleeping,” Hazel said.
She was right. I wouldn’t.
I went to find Lorain, because my youngest had been asking for me all morning and sitting alone in the throne room waiting was going to make me insane. Being with my children was the only thing that could make the waiting feel like something other than pure helplessness.
She was in her room with a book in her lap and her legs folded under her on the chair. She looked up when I came in. Her eyes were slightly red at the edges.
“Hey,” I said, and sat beside her.
She leaned against me without saying anything. I put my arm around her. We sat like that for a while, which was apparently what was needed.