Chapter 365 Negotations
ADRIANA
The argument had been raging for the better part of an hour, a low-frequency hum of grief and stubbornness that vibrated through the walls of Roy's living room.
I sat perched on the edge of an armchair, watching the two men circle each other like wolves negotiating territory. One broken by loss, the other immovable as stone.
"Roy, listen to me." Elijah's voice carried that particular timbre he reserved for moments when he intended to get his way, a blend of command and coaxing that had convinced armies to march and corporations to sign. "This isn't some diplomatic obligation. This isn't me checking a box because protocol demands I acknowledge your loss. You're my brother. You've been my brother since we were teenagers stealing cars and lying to your mother about where we'd been. You don't honestly think I'm going to drive away and sleep in my own bed while you're here alone in this house, do you?"
Roy dragged a hand down his face, the gesture scraping against stubble he hadn't bothered to shave. His eyes were hollow, red-rimmed, the eyes of a man who had stared into the abyss and found it staring back. "You're the King," he said, and the words sounded like an accusation. "You have responsibilities. The Elders will have my head if they find out I let you sleep in a guest room like some college dropout crashing on a friend's couch."
"Let the Elders complain." Elijah dismissed the concern with a wave of his hand, as if the governing council of their territory were merely inconvenient weather. "They can schedule an appointment with my secretary if they have concerns about my sleeping arrangements."
"Elijah—"
"Roy." Elijah stepped closer, invading the space grief had carved around his friend. "I'm not asking permission. I'm informing you of facts. I'm staying. Hazel is staying. Adriana is staying. You can either accept this gracefully or continue wasting energy you don't have trying to argue with me. Your choice, but I should warn you. I haven't lost an argument in fifteen years, and I'm not planning to start tonight."
I watched Roy's shoulders sag, defeat settling into his posture like a second skin. He turned toward me, his expression pleading, seeking an ally in a battle he was clearly losing. "Adriana," he said, my name cracking on the syllables. "Please. Talk some sense into him. Make him understand that this is insane. That I'm just trying to protect him from the political fallout."
I held his gaze for a long moment, reading the exhaustion there, the desperate desire to be left alone with his pain. I understood it intimately. Ihe urge to curl into the darkness and refuse the comfort of others because their presence required performance, required pretending to be grateful when all you wanted was silence.
But I also understood Elijah, perhaps better than anyone. I knew that his stubbornness wasn't about dominance or display. It was about love, expressed through presence, through the refusal to let Roy face the abyss alone.
Elijah had lost his father. He knew what it meant to grieve in isolation, and he wouldn't wish that particular hell on his closest friend.
"Elijah," I said, my voice cutting through the tension. "Do you want to stay here tonight?"
He turned to me, and I saw the flash of surprise in his expression—surprise that I would ask, that I wouldn't automatically side with practicality. "Yes," he said simply. "I need to stay."
"Then we stay." I stood, smoothing my sweater, already reaching for my phone. "Hazel, would you mind calling the house? Have the guards pack overnight bags for the children. Leo can help coordinate—he knows what the twins and Lorain will need. And tell them to bring Lana's portable crib."
Hazel nodded, already moving toward the kitchen where the cell signal was strongest. She moved with the efficiency of a woman who had spent decades translating impossible situations into manageable logistics.
Roy stared at me, betrayal flickering across his grief-numbed features. "You too?" he asked. "You're supposed to be the reasonable one."
I offered him a small smile, apologetic but unyielding. "I stopped being reasonable when I married him," I said. "You know that."
"The both of you are going to destroy me." Roy collapsed onto the sofa, his head falling back against the cushions. "Do you have any idea what the Elders will say? The King and Queen and their entire brood, camping out in a subject's home like we're having a sleepover. They'll call for my resignation. They'll say I've compromised the dignity of the throne."
"Who said anything about camping?" Elijah lowered himself onto the sofa beside Roy, the movement casual, deliberate, claiming space that grief had tried to reserve for solitude. "And who said we're staying just one night?"
Roy's head snapped up, his eyes widening. "Elijah—"
"Let it go." Elijah clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder, the gesture firm, grounding. "Come. Let's walk. The back garden, where Marie used to grow those tomatoes she was so proud of. I need air, and you need to stop thinking about what the Elders will say."
He pulled Roy upright with gentle insistence, guiding him toward the sliding glass doors that led to the backyard. Roy went reluctantly, casting one last desperate glance in my direction before Elijah steered him out of sight.
The silence they left behind was heavy. I rose from my chair, moving slowly, giving my eyes permission to explore the space that grief had transformed.
Her presence lingered everywhere. Above the fireplace, a large framed photograph captured Marie at a pack gathering, her head thrown back in laughter, sunlight catching the golden strands of the hair she'd lost to chemotherapy months later. She had been beautiful, with a warmth that radiated from within, a kindness that had made every person in her orbit feel seen.
I moved closer, my fingers tracing the edge of the frame. Beside it hung their wedding portrait. Roy in a charcoal suit, Marie in simple white, both of them glowing with a joy so palpable it hurt to witness now. They looked young, invincible, unaware that sickness and mortality were already stalking them, waiting in the shadows of their future.
The house itself bore her fingerprints in every detail—the carefully arranged books on the shelves, organized by color rather than subject in a way that drove librarians mad but pleased her aesthetic sense. The throw pillows on the sofa, hand-stitched with patterns of wolves and moons. The vase of fresh flowers on the side table, already beginning to wilt because no one had thought to change the water.
She had made this place a sanctuary. Now it felt like a museum, preserved but empty, the curator gone.
I turned away from the photographs, my chest tight with borrowed grief. Through the glass doors, I could see Elijah and Roy in the garden, standing near a raised bed of tomato plants that had begun to wither without her care.
Elijah was speaking, his hands moving in the animated way they did when he was trying to solve an unsolvable problem. Roy listened, his posture gradually softening, the rigid line of his shoulders dropping by fractions.