Chapter 290 Connection
ADRIANA
I didn’t sleep.
I tried, I lay in the dark and I closed my eyes and I breathed the way you breathed when you were attempting to convince your body that sleep was an option, but my mind wouldn’t cooperate. It kept running the same circuit of Lana somewhere unfamiliar, the deadline in the letter that had come and gone without me leaving, Roy’s contact running the fingerprints somewhere, Simone in the annex with her son, the specific tightening in my chest that came from having too many open threads and not enough answers.
I gave up around three in the morning and made coffee.
I was sitting at the window with the second cup when Hazel knocked and came in without waiting, which meant she’d seen the light under the door and knew I was awake, which meant she was also awake, which meant neither of us had slept.
“Roy called,” she said.
I put the cup down. “Results?”
“He’s coming here in person. He said he doesn’t want to say it over the phone.” She sat across from me. “He’s two hours out.”
Two hours. That was two hours of sitting in this chair with the circuit running and the threads unresolved. I looked at Hazel and she looked at me and we both understood that two hours was what we had and there was nothing useful to do with the anxiety except set it aside and think about something else.
“Simone,” I said.
“What about her?”
“Elijah thinks someone sent her here. Engineered the timing.” I looked at my cup. “I think he’s right. The question is whether she knows she was used or whether she came here entirely of her own volition and someone just made sure the conditions were right for her to arrive exactly when she did.”
“Does it change anything if she knew?”
“It changes what I do with her afterward.” I stood up and moved to the window. Outside the grounds were quiet and dark and the annex light was off, which meant Simone and her son were at least pretending to sleep. “If she’s innocent in it — if someone found her and told her the King was here and she came on her own terms — then she’s a complication, not an enemy. But if she was briefed. If someone told her what to say and when to say it and specifically told her to go to the Elders first.” I turned back. “Then she’s part of it.”
“How do we find out which?”
“We talk to her. Properly. Not in a courtroom with the Elders watching.” I sat back down. “After Roy’s results come back and we have a name. I want to sit across from Simone alone and have a conversation.”
Hazel nodded slowly. “And Leo?”
“What about him?”
“He was in his room when I passed it. He wasn’t asleep either. He’s been very quiet since yesterday.”
I set the cup down and went.
Leo’s room was at the end of the east corridor, and the light was on and visible under the door, and I knocked once and pushed it open without waiting. He was at his desk with his laptop open but not looking at it, and he turned when I came in with the expression of someone who had been waiting for this and wasn’t sure what form it was going to take.
I came and sat on the edge of his bed, the way I’d done when he was small and something had gone wrong at school.
“Talk to me,” I said.
He closed the laptop. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Start wherever it is.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then: “The people in the ballroom. The ones I kept bowing. Some of them were saying things about me. About who my father is and whether I have the right to—” He stopped. “And then this woman arrives with a son who actually is his son and I just keep thinking—” He stopped again.
“Leo.” I waited until he looked at me. “Your father made me a promise tonight. In this house, in front of me. Leo’s crown stays where it is. Those were his exact words.” I held his gaze. “And I am making you the same promise right now from my side. Nobody is taking what is yours. Not because of sentiment — because you have worked for it, you have trained for it, you understand what it means in a way that boy in the annex will never understand just by sharing a bloodline.” I leaned forward. “Are you hearing me?”
“I’m hearing you.”
“Do you believe me?”
A long pause. Then: “Yes.”
“Good.” I stood up. “Now tell me — and I mean actually tell me, not what you think I want to hear — how are you doing with Lana being gone?”
Something in his face shifted. The composure he’d been maintaining cracked just slightly.
“I keep thinking about the moment I turned around,” he said. “Replaying it. Trying to figure out what I should have done differently.”
“There was nothing you should have done differently. Someone was waiting for an opportunity and they took one. That is not your fault and it will not be your fault no matter how many times you replay it.” I sat back down. “She is coming home. I am working every available angle to bring her home and she is coming home.” I looked at him directly. “What I need from you is to hold that as fact. Not hope. Fact.”
He pressed his lips together and nodded.
“Roy is coming with information in a couple of hours,” I said. “When I know something, you’ll know.” I stood. “Try to sleep.”
“Are you sleeping?”
“I’m trying.” I moved to the door. “Leo. Your father is going to come talk to you in the morning. Let him.”
I went back to my room and sat at the window with the third cup of coffee and waited for Roy.
He arrived just before six. I heard the car on the gravel and I was downstairs before he reached the door, and Elijah appeared from the direction of his study which meant he hadn’t slept either.
Roy looked at both of us with the expression of someone about to say something that was going to change the shape of the morning.
“The fingerprints came back,” he said.
“Tell me,” I said.
He looked at Elijah first. Then at me. Then he said a name.
And suddenly every thread I’d been holding connected.