Read Chapter 14: A Royal Confession

The candlelight in Alaric’s private chamber flickered against the stone walls, casting long shadows over the heavy oak table where two plates of roasted pheasant sat untouched. Elara had barely taken her seat before she heard the lock turn behind her, the heavy click of iron sealing them alone together.

“You cannot keep locking me in rooms,” she said, but her voice lacked its usual edge. Outside, the night watch had doubled since the crossbow had whistled past her ear an hour ago. Alaric’s guards now patrolled every corridor and the servants’ passages.

Alaric poured wine into two goblets, his movements deliberate. “I can, and I will. Until this is finished, you don’t leave my sight without four armed men.”

“Four armed men following me to the privy will draw attention.”

“Then use the chamber pot I’ve had placed behind that screen.” He nodded toward the corner of the room. “It’s more dignified than dying.”

Elara stared at him, then let out a laugh she hadn’t expected. It was rough, edged with exhaustion. She took the goblet he offered and drank deeply. The wine was rich and dark, warmed slightly from its place by the fire.

“That’s the first real laugh you’ve given me,” Alaric said, settling into the chair across from her. He was still in the dark tunic he’d worn to the walls, his hair disheveled from the scramble to her chambers. The crossbow bolt had shattered a window pane, embedding itself in the wood of her bedpost. He’d been there when it happened—they’d been reviewing Roland’s claims about his father’s strongholds—and he’d moved faster than she could blink.

Three guards had chased the assassin into the dark, but the man had known the castle’s secret ways. He’d vanished like smoke.

“Do you know why I learned to fight?” Alaric asked, breaking the silence.

Elara looked at him, surprised. He rarely spoke of his past. “Because you were a prince and it was expected.”

“Partially.” He swirled the wine in his goblet, watching the dark liquid catch the candlelight. “But the real reason was my mother. She was Valdris-born, you know. A lady of your court.”

Elara’s breath caught. She’d heard whispers, of course—that the King of Valdris had given his cousin in marriage to the Crown Prince of Aurenne a generation ago, a peace-bride like herself. But she’d never heard what happened to her.

“When I was eleven, my father’s men came to our chambers in the middle of the night. They claimed my mother was poisoning him—one of her serving girls had been caught with a vial of nightshade in her sleeves, ready to slip into his wine.” Alaric’s jaw tightened. “My father believed it. Or chose to believe it. He ordered her execution.”

Elara set down her goblet. “Alaric…”

“I was in the room when they came for her. I grabbed the sword from a guard’s belt and killed him. First man I ever killed. I was eleven.” His eyes met hers, and she saw something raw and unguarded there. “I fought three more before they overpowered me. They dragged her away, and I never saw her again.”

Silence stretched between them. The fire crackled, shifting the shadows.

“She died three days later,” he continued. “Executed by the same guard captain who’d trained me in the yard since I was six. He wept while he swung the axe. Then he came to apologize to me personally for the inconvenience.”

Elara’s chest constricted. She knew that calculus well—the way loyalty and duty could crush the innocent without a second thought.

“My mother never went to Valdris’s coronation,” she found herself saying. “The first time I saw the sea, I was nine years old. I ran down to the beach and nearly drowned because I thought the waves would respect a princess.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Alaric’s face. “Did they?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I have hated water ever since. But I have hated arranged marriages more.”

She paused, then pressed forward. The wine loosened something in her chest. “When I was fourteen, my father arranged my betrothal to a minor lord of the northern marches—a man named Voss, old enough to be my grandfather, with teeth like a horse and breath to match. I refused. He refused to listen. So I faked my own death.”

Alaric sat forward, his eyes sharpening. “You faked your own death?”

“Drowning is easy to fake,” Elara said. “A maiden’s favorite way to die. I bribed a serving girl to leave my cloak on the riverbank, swam downstream in a boatman’s clothes, and hid in a monastery for three months. My father mourned me publicly. The betrothal was dissolved. And when I returned—sun-browned, with my hair hacked short—he was so relieved to see me alive that he never tried to marry me off again.” She smiled, a hard, brittle thing. “He learned that I would always choose my own path, even if it cost him the mourning clothes.”

Alaric was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, so softly she almost missed it, “You are the bravest woman I have ever known.”

Before she could answer, a sharp crack split the air. Something whistled past her ear and embedded itself in the plaster inches from her head, sending shards of stone across the table.

Alaric was already in motion. He tackled her off the chair, rolling them both beneath the heavy oak table as a second bolt thunked into the wood above them. His body covered hers, one arm shielding her head, his breath hot against her cheek.

Outside the window, she caught a flash of movement—a dark shape dropping from the battlements.

“Guards!” Alaric bellowed, his voice shaking the rafters. Boots thundered in the corridor. More bolts—two more, then three—thudded into the table until the wood shuddered with the impact.

Then silence. The flash at the window was gone.

Alaric raised his head, his eyes scanning the room. His hand was bleeding, a crossbow bolt having grazed his shoulder in his leap to shield her. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Are you hit?” he demanded, his hands moving over her arms, her sides, finding only the fine wool of her gown.

“No,” she managed. Her heart was slamming so hard she could feel it in her throat. “I’m fine.”

He looked at her for a long moment, his face inches from hers, so close she could see the flecks of amber in his eyes. His hand came up to cup her cheek, wiping away something—dust, or blood, she wasn’t sure.

“This ends,” he said, his voice low and fierce. “I will burn the Duke’s whole house to ash before I let him touch you again.”

He withdrew, crawling out from under the table as guards burst through the door. Elara lay still for a moment, catching her breath. Her hand went to the map still pressed against her bodice, safe beneath her gown.

Alaric’s guards fanned out, securing the window, the corridor, the roof. But Elara barely heard them. She was staring at the crossbow bolt embedded in the plaster above the table.

Something glinted at its base. A mark stamped into the iron.

She crawled forward, plucking it free. Alaric turned as she rose to her feet, holding it up to the candlelight.

The sigil was unmistakable. A wolf’s head crowned with thorns.

The royal house of Valdris.

“That’s my father’s sigil,” she whispered. “Someone is hunting me with Valdris’s own arrows.”

The night outside had gone very silent. And somewhere in the darkness, Elara knew, the Duke of Ashford was smiling.