Chapter 274 Watching
ADRIANA
Leo sat beside me with the particular composed satisfaction of someone who had decided not to rush this, sipping from his glass like the evening was going exactly as planned, which from his perspective it largely was.
Other guests moved past the bowing couple with careful indifference, registering the situation and making the calculation that whatever had led to it was not something they wanted to replicate tonight.
I was watching the room. Every person who approached, every exchange at the edges of my peripheral vision, every guest who looked toward the main entrance a beat too long or moved through the space with the specific purposefulness of someone with a destination they didn’t want to appear to have.
Nothing yet. But the night was still moving.
The time for my address arrived and I made my way to the center of the room with the composure I’d been practicing since I came downstairs. The room settled into attention.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my warmest welcome and genuine appreciation to every one of you for being here tonight to celebrate with our family. Leo has worked with extraordinary commitment to earn what he achieved today — graduating at the top of his class, earning commendations from his commanding officers — and none of that happened by accident.” I paused, looking at Leo where he sat. “He may not share the King’s blood, but no one watching him today could question that he is his father’s son in every way that matters. The King and I are more proud than we can put into words.”
I looked out at the assembled faces, reading them the way I’d been reading rooms for months.
“The King unfortunately couldn’t be with us tonight — he’s attending to something urgent — but I promise you his pride tonight is equal to mine.” I lifted my glass slightly. “To Leo. To the Crown Prince.”
“To Leo,” the room responded.
I was turning back toward my seat when a guard appeared at my shoulder and bent toward my ear.
“My Queen. The King has arrived.”
I scanned the room immediately and found him making his way through the crowd from the east entrance. Elijah was in a suit that told me he’d gone back upstairs and changed, moving through the assembled guests with the particular quality of a man who had made a decision about something and had arrived at the decision’s consequence. He looked tired. He also looked like he was here and intended to stay.
I turned back to the room. “My apologies — I’m told the King has in fact joined us.” A ripple of reaction moved through the room. I let it settle. “Which means everything I’ve said about his pride tonight he’ll have to confirm himself.”
The applause started and Elijah reached the front of the room, and he put his hand on my shoulder briefly before I sat down, pressing down gently to keep me in my seat, and leaned to my ear.
“Don’t get up. I’ll stand.”
“You’ve been on your feet all day—”
“I’m aware. Don’t get up.”
He straightened and turned to the room and did the thing he did — the thing that had taken me years to fully understand, the way he could simply be present in a space and have the space reorganize itself around him without him doing anything overt to cause it.
Leo appeared at my other side. “He came,” he said quietly.
“He came,” I said.
Leo looked at his father for a moment with an expression he didn’t try to manage, and then he looked at me with the same expression, and I understood that whatever happened with Lana tonight, this moment, it was something Leo was going to always remember.
Elijah eventually came to stand beside my chair and bent slightly. “Have you found anything?”
“Not yet.” I kept my voice level. “The night isn’t finished.”
He looked at me for a moment, then straightened and accepted the approach of the next group of guests who were circling for the opportunity to greet the King. I returned to watching the room. Leo, beside me, was doing the same.
I’d been holding the information about the man near the east corridor in my mind, and Hazel had confirmed through a guard that he hadn’t left the building. Which meant he was still in this room somewhere, watching, trying to understand why the evening was unfolding the way it was. He had expected panic and shutdown and visible grief and he had gotten a party, and that confusion was making him careless.
Careless people made movements.
I watched for them.
The bathroom was the last place I expected to learn anything useful.
I’d excused myself from the table after the third glass of wine made the choice for me, and I’d used the visitors’ bathroom off the main corridor rather than going all the way upstairs, which Elijah would have had opinions about later but was simply the practical decision in the moment.
I was about to push the stall door open when the outer bathroom door opened and two men came in mid-conversation, which meant I stayed exactly where I was and breathed very quietly and listened.
“I thought you said it went according to plan.”
“It did. We have the baby.”
A sharp sound — a slap, open-handed, landing hard. “Then why is she in there laughing? Why is there a party? Why does she look like nothing happened?”
A pause. “Maybe she doesn’t know yet.”
“She knows.” The second voice was harder, lower, the voice of someone used to being the final word in a room. “That baby is never out of her sight. She knows. Which means this is deliberate.” Another pause. “What about the child? Is she quiet?”
“She’s been crying since we got her. She won’t stop.”
“Give her something to eat. She’s an infant, she’s hungry.” the person huffed out a breath. “Don’t touch her otherwise. She’s leverage, not a casualty. You understand me?”
“And if they come looking?”
“They won’t find anything tonight. But I need to know what they’re thinking. I need to know if there’s any movement we haven’t seen. I’m going to speak to the King. Gauge his reaction. You go back and handle the child.”