Aelith closes his eyes for one second too long. When he opens them again, there’s murder in them. “She knows,” he says.
And that changes the room all over again.
For a long moment after those words land, nobody says anything.
The silence doesn’t feel empty. It feels strained, packed with implication that breathing in it takes effort. Iris keeps stitching Aelith’s side with steady, efficient hands, but even she is listening. Around the room, every face has hardened. Every body has adjusted without moving very much at all.
She knows.
Not suspects. Not worries. Not guesses.
Knows.
The distinction between those things is the difference between being hunted and being marked for execution.
“What exactly does she know?” Varek asks.
His voice stays even, but I can feel the bond pull taut around the words. Not with emotion. Not yet. Control sharpened down into an edge.
Aelith’s mouth twists. Whether in pain, anger, or humiliation, I can’t tell.
“That I was passing information.” He breathes in carefully when Iris presses near the wound. “That I was not returning to her court in good faith. That Dawson matters and can be used as a bargaining chip.” His jaw flexes. “That I matter less.”
The last line comes out dry and cruel enough to count as a joke if there were anything funny about this.
Kael speaks before anyone else can. “How did she discover it?”
Aelith’s one good eye cuts to him. “I am unsure which answer would please you more. That I made a mistake, or that your queen has become more competent than any of us allowed for.”
“She is not my queen,” Kael says.
No volume. No drama. Just fact.
Aelith’s face shifts in a way that might once have been amusement, then pain and exhaustion drag it elsewhere. “No,” he says, quieter now. “Apparently not mine either.”
Sonny folds his arms and leans one shoulder against the wall, all false ease wrapped around very real tension. “Can someone explain the bit where you turned up here half-dead and alone? Because from where I’m standing, that looks less like strategic retreat and more like spectacular disaster.”
“That is because it was both,” Aelith says.
Iris ties off the final stitch with more force than necessary. “If he keeps talking instead of lying down, it’ll become just the second one.”
He ignores her.
Varek doesn’t.
“You will answer,” he says, and there’s no room in those words for princely ego or badly timed sarcasm. “Then you will rest.”
Aelith stares at him for a beat too long. The old version of him—the prince, the heir, the male who expected obedience as a birthright—still flickers under his skin. But Dawson isn’t here, and he’s bleeding on a rebel table in a hidden settlement only because he had nowhere else left to run. Some truths strip rank right out of a person.
Finally, he exhales. “She baited the trap,” he says. “I simply failed to see it before it closed.”
The room stays still.
“She let us believe we retained freedom of movement within the palace,” he continues, eyes fixed on the ceiling now as if the words are easier said to stone than to faces. “Limited, watched, but still present. Dawson and I were… useful as spectacle. A sign that all was forgiven. That the prince had returned. That his human had been accepted.”
Sonny lets out a short, humourless breath. “Yeah, that sounds exactly like the kind of nightmare dressed up as a family reunion I’d expect from her.”
Aelith doesn’t respond to that. He’s beyond humour now.
