Going to the bathroom in an unmapped, high-fantasy wilderness was an administrative nightmare. There wasn’t an app for this. No clean, tiled stalls with automatic flushes, and absolutely no running water.
When the carriage finally pulled over at noon beside a patch of overgrown brush for a stop, Haviel had practically bolted. He needed a moment away from the suffocating, silent tension of that leather-lined cabin. Especially after the whole biscuit incident. His fingers still felt faintly warm where Jevon’s mouth had made landfall, a highly irregular occurrence that he was currently trying to delete from his temporary cache.
He stepped deep into the overgrown brush, far enough to ensure compliance with basic public decency codes, and sighed as he finally relieved himself against a very ordinary tree. The sun was hot now. It baked the pine needles on the forest floor, releasing a thick, resinous scent that made his eyes water.
Right. Zip up, adjust the tunic, check the perimeter, Haviel thought, shaking his head.
He was just about to step back onto the main trail when the heavy, rhythmic thud of armored boots crunching through dry leaves made him stiffen. Voices. Distinctly demon, low-pitched and carrying that weird, gravelly resonance that always made the hairs on his arms stand up.
Instead of doing the normal, socially integrated thing, like stepping out and saying hello, Haviel’s body made an executive decision on its own. He dropped like a stone. He crouched down into a miserably cramped squat behind a clump of wild ferns, his knees instantly protesting the unergonomic posture.
Stupid. Incredibly stupid, he scolded himself inside his own head, his hands grabbing his ankles for balance. Why did you hide? You’re the Demon King’s bride. Technically. If they see you crouching in the weeds like a feral raccoon, how are you going to explain this? You should have just walked away.
"The residue diluted before we could map the origin," one of the vanguard troopers grunted, his voice hovering barely ten feet from Haviel’s hiding spot. A heavy sword hilt clinked against iron plate armor. "Lord Sevrin tracked the mana threads through the fence, but the caster snapped the connection the second the others broke their formation."
"Shadow puppets," a second soldier spat, the sound followed by a wet thud as he apparently kicked a rotten log. "Dirty, low-grade conjuring. It’s an insult to a proper warrior’s blade. You hit them, they turn into soot, and you’re left holding a handful of gray ash like a bloody chimney sweep."
Haviel’s breath caught in his throat. Shadow puppets? What is that?
"The King, Lord Jaeric, and Lord Sevrin dealt with them before they could cause any real trouble," the first soldier continued, his voice dropping into a rough, respectful murmur. "Dropped the lead puppet with a single kinetic spike. Didn’t even blink. But a few of those ink-stained bastards managed to reverse their loops. We lost the trail near the creek bed."
"Right, but did you hear where they were angling?" The second demon’s voice took on a sharper, more ominous edge. "One of the scouts from the roof watch said the constructs were clustering right under the western wing. Lingering right by the human’s window."
Haviel froze. His knuckles turned white where he was clutching his knees. He slowly pointed a thumb at his own chest, his mouth dropping open in a silent, horrified gasp. The human? The western wing? That’s my room. They mean me. They were looking at me?
"They were definitely sent with foul intent toward the human bride," the first trooper muttered, his boots shifting on the gravel as they began to turn back toward the road.
"Well, whoever holds the strings is going to find out what happens when you mess with the King’s bride. Come on, let’s finish the perimeter sweep."
The heavy crunch of their footsteps slowly faded into the distance, leaving behind nothing but the buzzing of a few flies and the sound of Haviel’s own frantic breathing.
He didn’t move for three full minutes. His brain was completely offline, stuck in an infinite loop of pure survival panic. Foul intent? Why me? What did I do wrong? He hadn’t even been here a full week, and someone had apparently opened a formal project dedicated to his removal?
When he finally crawled out of the brush, bits of leaves and clingy seed pods were stuck all over his tunic and his knees were shaking so hard he nearly tripped over a root. He practically ran back to the carriage, scrambling inside and pulling the door shut with a rattle that made the driver curse.
The rest of the day was a complete blur. The carriage rolled away from the noon stop, eating up miles of smooth road, but Haviel didn’t look at the scenery anymore. The rolling hills and sparkling mountains had lost their high-definition charm.
By the time the high-security convoy finally made a hard stop at a fortified wayside station, the sun had long vanished behind the peaks of the border mountains. The stay was brief, strictly operational. Haviel spent the entirety of that quick dinner break completely locked inside his own head. He didn’t taste the food. He simply pushed a piece of roasted meat around his plate with a heavy iron fork, his thoughts spinning through a hundred different worst-case scenarios. Was Duke Elsher pulling the strings from afar? Oh, Haviel’s enemy?
When the horn blew to signal the journey, Haviel practically scrambled back into the carriage, eager to hide behind the thick wooden doors.
"Haviel."
Haviel snapped his head up, his knuckles instantly turning white against his trousers. He had been staring blankly at the floorboards for the last three leagues, his chest tight. Jevon was sitting directly across from him, leaning back with a terrifying, unbothered stillness that always made the small space feel incredibly narrow. The dark monarch’s golden eyes were fixed entirely on the human’s pale face.
"You’re staring at the floor," Jevon said, his tone low but carrying that heavy, resonant vibration. "There’s nothing there."
Haviel swallowed hard, his throat dry as parchment. He looked up, meeting that intense gaze. The careful filter of polite compliance that usually kept his tongue in check had been completely worn through by twelve hours of solid, unadulterated terror.
"I... uhh.. Just... thinking about the route," Haviel lied, his voice sounding a little too thin, a little too breathless to be even remotely convincing.
Jevon didn’t even blink. He folded his arms across his chest with a slow, deliberate movement that made the heavy dark fabric of his cloak rustle softly. "Your words say one thing, but your face says another."
Haviel leaned forward slightly, his hands bunching into tight fists on his lap to stop them from visibly trembling.
"Your Majesty... what exactly is a shadow puppet?"
Jevon’s straight eyebrows flattened instantly, a dark, heavy frown settling over his sharp features. The dim lantern light inside the carriage seemed to die down by a fraction, the shadows in the corners stretching out like ink. He didn’t answer immediately, which only sent Haviel’s pulse into another uncoordinated sprint.
"Before you tell me to drop the subject," Haviel rushed on, the words tumbling out in a desperate, breathless heap before he could think to censor himself, "I overheard soldiers talking about it. They said... they said there was an attack last night. About shadow puppet or something. They were lingering right beneath the western wing. Right outside my bedroom window."
Jevon merely watched him, the heavy frown slowly fading back into that impenetrable, marble-carved mask of absolute sovereignty. He reached up, his long fingers trailing over the dark silver clasp of his cloak, before letting his hand rest flat against his knee.
"It is an irrelevance," Jevon said calmly, his deep voice leveling out into something remarkably steady and flat against the rumble of the wheels. "A minor intrusion meant to test our defenses. You have no need to concern yourself with it. The matter has already been dealt with."
"But they were there for me, weren’t they?" Haviel pressed, his voice cracking slightly as the raw panic finally leaked through his defenses. "Did someone send them to hurt me? Am I a target?"
Jevon didn’t answer right away. Instead, he slowly shifted his weight, leaning across the small space until the distance between them was entirely cut in half. The broad, massive silhouette of the King completely blocked out the window, locking Haviel inside his immediate field of vision. His eyes were incredibly bright in the dim lantern light, burning with an intense, absolute seriousness that made Haviel forget how to breathe.
"Perhaps." Jevon leaned forward slightly. "But they never reached you."
He paused, his gaze dropping briefly to Haviel’s trembling hands before rising back to lock fiercely with his eyes.
Haviel stared at him, completely frozen by the sheer, unyielding weight of the man’s presence.
"Anyone who wishes to harm you will have to go through me first."," the King said, his voice carrying the finality of an imperial decree. "And that is not a fight they are likely to win."