“There is someone helping her.” Lyel said.
His voice lowered.
”Someone with full access to the official search process.
Someone who found what I placed before the search reached her chamber, and moved it.
Whoever it is, My lady, they know how the palace works from the inside.
Not just the corridors.” A pause.
“I don’t know who yet.”
Elyndra said nothing for a long moment.
She looked at the window.
The morning light was unchanged, still bright.
She turned to him fully and opened her mouth to talk then…
The bell rang.
Three strikes.
Low and commanding.
Elyndra turned to the window.
The sound was coming from the direction of the main court, not the hall where the tests were held.
Somewhere further inside the palace.
Somewhere more formal.
She looked at the window for a moment.
Then she looked at Lyel.
”Leave,” she said.
He bowed and with that he left.
She crossed to the wardrobe and opened it, she stood looking at the contents for a long moment.
Then she reached in and drew out the darkest thing she owned.
Deep charcoal grey corseted dress, almost black layered.
She dressed quickly and without looking in the mirror she walked out into the corridor.
—
She was the last to arrive.
She knew it before she stepped through the doors, could feel it in the silence that greeted her entrance, the particular stillness of a room that has been waiting.
She stepped inside and let the doors close behind her.
She just stood there, took a moment to read the room.
It was the main court.
The room was different from the hall where the tests were held.
Larger.
More formal.
Tall pillars stood on both sides of the hall, stretching all the way to the high ceiling above.
Sunlight poured through the long windows, lighting the marble floor under her feet.
Rich black and gold banners hung from the walls, each carrying the imperial crest of Azra embroidered in gold thread against black silk.
It felt powerful.
The room was full.
More faces than she had seen gathered in one place since arriving.
Court officials, advisors, senior attendants, the full formal body of Azgareth’s court assembled and waiting with composure.
Her eyes moved.
She found the king first.
King Vaelor sat in the throne.
The throne itself was carved from dark black glass and silver-veined stone.
It was neither delicate nor fancy.
Its beauty came from its presence.
Two massive dragons rose along either side of the backrest, their wings spread behind the seat as though guarding it.
He was older than she had imagined from what Senna had described, pale, the kind of pale that came from illness.
But his eyes were sharp enough.
Power lingered in the air around him and he was watching the assembled room attentively.
Beside the throne, the queen.
Then on the other side of the throne, Zyran.
Zyran sat straight-backed, his expression calm, Vaemond beside him in royal blue, Denyro on the queen’s other side.
Her eyes moved around the room from face to face without pausing.
And then her eyes stopped.
Her gaze fell somewhere behind the queen, there, stood a man.
A royal Chamberlain.
For one terrible moment, she forgot how to breathe.
She could feel the world tilt beneath her feet.
’No.’
Her pulse thundered.
’No.’
’Not him.’ She thought.
Years had passed his hair carried strands of silver now.
His face looked older.
She knew his face.
She had known his face for as long as she had known her own.
She had spent years learning not to look weaken, years teaching herself to pass through that particular door in her memory and keep walking without stopping.
She had been careful.
Yet, none of that preparation was available to her now.
Something happened in her chest.
Not a flutter, not the small unsettling thing she felt sometimes when Zyran looked at her.
Something different.
Something that seized.
She breathed.
She kept her face still through everything still trying to catch her breathing.
—
Across the room Zyran watched her walk in.
He had noticed her the moment she stepped through the doors.
He had been aware, somewhere in the back of his attention, of the fact that she had not yet arrived, and then she had.
Something in him settled slightly in a way he could not explain.
She was wearing dark today.
Almost entirely dark, layered, the kind of clothing that didn’t ask for attention but somehow it drew his.
She was always composed.
He had noted that from the first day, so when it changed he noticed immediately.
It was small.
It would have been invisible to anyone who hadn’t been watching her as carefully as he had been watching her since the day she arrived at his gate.
A stillness that was slightly too studied.
A breath that was slightly too controlled.
The way her eyes moved to the floor for exactly one second before coming back up.
He followed her gaze.
Across the room.
Past the assembled princesses.
Past the officials.
To the side where his mother say and behind her was…
The Royal Chamberlain.
Cáhir Valerius of Daekhar.
Zyran looked at the man.
Then back at Elyndra.
She was looking at nothing now.
The careful middle distance she retreated to when she was trying to steady her breathings.
Her hands were folded in front of her.
Her breathing was slowly going even.
He looked at the Royal Chamberlain again.
Then back at her.
He said nothing yet he had wondered why she had seem to be moved by just looking at the royal chamberlain.
And he watched.