Chapter 208 Normal Tuesday and an Addition
ADRIANA
Leo burst into my room at a speed that told me something was wrong before he said a word.
“Mum.” He was breathing harder than the distance from wherever he’d been warranted. “The Chief Guard. He’s back. He just walked in like nothing happened.”
I stared at him.
I had been half asleep, the late afternoon kind of sleep that isn’t really sleep but isn’t really wakefulness either, and it took my brain a full two seconds to catch up with what he was saying.
“He’s here?” I pushed myself upright. “In the palace?”
“In the east corridor. Talking to one of the door guards like it’s a normal Tuesday.”
I looked at my leg. The crutches were leaning against the wall and I hated them with a genuine personal hatred — they dug into my armpits and threw off my balance and made me feel like a problem that needed solving rather than a person who was moving through the world.
“Go get your father,” I said. “If he’s near the Chief Guard, wait until he isn’t. Don’t say anything, don’t look suspicious, just get him here.”
Leo’s eyes were sharp. “How do you know it’s him for certain?”
“I saw him at Landon’s. They were talking in the palace before Landon died. He had something over Landon, I don’t know the full story yet but your father will get to the bottom of it.” I met his eyes. “Now go. And Leo — be normal.”
He nodded once and left.
I sat there and thought about it while I waited. The Chief Guard. A man who had been in this palace, had access to every corridor and rotation and schedule, who had been standing inside our security structure while things moved around him that he was apparently facilitating. The kidnappings. The attack on the road. The information about Elijah’s route to Golden Blade that had reached the wrong people.
It had a shape now that it hadn’t had before.
The door opened and Elijah came in with Leo two steps behind him.
“Lock it,” I said to Leo.
He did.
Elijah sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me with the focused attention he brought to things that required immediate action. “Talk to me.”
“The Chief Guard is the spy,” I said. “I saw him at Landon’s house. I watched them together. He was the one directing things — Landon was being used, not leading. Whoever this man is and whatever hold he had, he was the one pushing Landon toward me, toward the forced marriage, toward all of it.” I paused. “I should have told you sooner. I’m sorry.”
“How do you know it wasn’t coincidence? Him being at Landon’s?”
“Because of how Landon reacted when he saw him. Like a man who owes something he can’t repay.” I looked at him steadily. “And because nothing else accounts for how our route to Golden Blade was known. The circle was too small for a leak to happen any other way.”
Elijah was quiet. His jaw moved once.
“I’ll handle it,” he said.
“Find out why,” I said. “Not just that he did it — why. There’s something underneath this I can’t see yet.”
He nodded and stood and Leo followed him out without being asked, which was a quality Leo had been developing recently that I found equal parts admirable and slightly alarming. He understood when his place was beside his father rather than beside me.
The room went quiet.
I had been feeling off for two weeks now and it was starting to annoy me in the way of something that should have been resolved and hadn’t. I had assumed it was the accumulated physical trauma — the leg, the fight, the stress, the travel — and that my body was simply running behind on recovery. But I was eating and sleeping and the leg was healing and I still felt wrong in the mornings in a way I couldn’t explain.
Hazel came later that afternoon and sat beside me and looked at my face with the focused assessment of a woman who had seen a great deal and missed very little.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Good afternoon to you too.”
“What’s going on? You’re on bed rest but you look worse than someone who’s just been resting.”
“I feel irritated,” I said. “Everything smells slightly wrong. I can’t eat anything without immediately wanting to eat something else. My stomach is doing things it has no business doing.”
Hazel looked at me for a long moment.
“Adriana,” she said.
“Don’t.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“I have four children.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“I have a broken leg and a spy in my palace and a son who killed someone for the first time three nights ago and I have three other little children already.”
“And you are also,” Hazel said, completely unmoved, “pregnant. It’s written all over your face. I’ve seen it before. On you, specifically, when you were carrying the twins.”
I looked at the ceiling.
“How,” I said, to no one in particular.
“You and Elijah are both—”
“I know how. I mean—” I pressed my hands over my face. “Not now. This cannot be now.”
“Babies famously don’t consult schedules,” Hazel said. She was trying not to smile and not entirely succeeding.
“Why are you almost smiling?”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m happy for you,” she said. “You can be overwhelmed and I can be happy for you simultaneously. Those things can coexist.”
I dropped my hands.
“Tell me what’s happening with Mark,” I said. “Elijah was going to deal with him and now I’m hearing he had Martine—” I stopped myself. That was a different conversation.
“Change the subject if you need to,” Hazel said. “But it doesn’t change what it is.”
“I know what it is. I just need a minute.”
“Take your minute.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. “Then we’ll deal with it the way we deal with everything.”
I took my minute.
Outside somewhere, Elijah was dealing with the Chief Guard. Leo was probably right beside him. My children were in this house and alive and safe, which was more than I had been sure of a week ago.
One more. One more person to love.
I could do that.