Caelan
Dinner is the kind of quiet that is not actually quiet because it is full of things nobody is saying. Isolde sits across from me with her hands folded in her lap and her face arranged into the polite expression she wears when she is managing herself carefully. She has barely touched her food, just moved it around on her plate in small patterns that probably mean something if I knew how to read them. Marcus is to my right working through his food with the focused attention of a man who has decided that eating is safer than talking. He cuts his meat into precise pieces, chews thoroughly, drinks from his cup at measured intervals.
The candles on the table burn straight up in the still air of the dining hall. No wind. No noise from outside. Just the scrape of silverware and the occasional sound of someone swallowing. The servants stand against the far wall, waiting for the signal that we are finished, their faces blank in the way palace servants learn to be blank, like furniture that breathes.
I pick up my cup and hold it without drinking and watch the door. The wine inside is dark red, almost black in the candlelight. I can see my reflection distorted across the surface, fragmented into something I barely recognize.
I have been watching every door since last night. Since I saw Theron in the corridor with that servant. Since I walked back to my chambers with the cold feeling in my chest that has not left. I have been watching faces all day, watching hands, watching the small movements people make when they think no one is paying attention. The way Lord Danvers straightened his collar when I passed him in the hallway this morning. The way Lady Mirabel smiled too quickly when I asked about the wedding preparations. The way servants avoid my eyes now instead of meeting them the way they used to.
It is exhausting. It is also necessary.
"The preparations for the ceremony are going well," Isolde says, picking up her own cup. Her voice is careful, pleasant, the tone she uses when she is trying to pretend nothing is wrong. "The seamstress finished the first fitting this morning. She says another two weeks and the gown will be ready."
"Good," I say.
She waits for me to say more. When I do not, she sets her cup back down without drinking and folds her hands again. "It is a beautiful gown," she continues, still trying. "White silk with silver thread through the bodice. There are pearls along the hem. Your mother would have liked it."
My mother died when I was ten. I barely remember what she liked.
"I am sure it is perfect," I say, keeping my voice neutral.
Marcus looks up briefly and then back at his plate. He knows better than to jump into this conversation.
Isolde watches me with that careful, measuring look she has been using all evening, the one that tells me she is trying to figure out how much of a conversation I have available for tonight. She takes a breath like she is about to try again, then stops herself. Instead she reaches for her wine cup, turning it slowly between her fingers. "Lord Theron sent word this afternoon," she says, keeping her voice easy. "He wants to schedule a formal review of the guest roster for the wedding. He says the list has grown too long."
"Theron can wait," I say.
The sharpness in my voice makes her pause. She sets the cup down again without drinking. "Of course," she says quietly. "It can wait."
Marcus clears his throat softly, the kind of sound that means he is about to try to smooth things over. "The eastern border reports have been good this week," he says, looking at me. "No new rogue activity. The patrols are holding steady."
"For now," I say.
"Yes," Marcus agrees. "For now."
A servant comes in from the side door carrying a fresh pitcher of wine, a young boy I have seen in the halls before, quiet and efficient the way good palace servants are. He cannot be more than sixteen, still growing into his shoulders, his uniform a little too big on him. He moves around the table with his head down, refilling Marcus's cup first, the wine pouring smooth and dark. Then he comes to Isolde's side.
I watch him tip the pitcher. The wine runs out in a steady stream, filling her cup almost to the rim. He straightens and moves toward me.
My wolf moves before my mind catches up. Something cold and sharp rises under my ribs, an instinct, the kind that does not explain itself but does not need to either. My vision sharpens. My hearing focuses. Every sense I have pulls tight and points at that pitcher in the boy's hands.
I smell it in the same moment. Something underneath the wine, under the warmth of it, something bitter and chemical and wrong, faint enough that a human would miss it completely but clear as blood to a wolf.
I reach across the table and knock the cup out of Isolde's hand before she gets it to her lips. My arm moves fast enough that she does not have time to react. The cup flies sideways, spinning in the air, and hits the stone floor with a sound like breaking bells.
The wine spreads across the grey stone in a wide dark pool. Nobody moves. Nobody breathes. We all watch the floor because something is happening that should not be happening.
The stone under the wine starts to darken. Not the normal darkening of liquid soaking into porous rock. This is different. The grey turns black in the spots where the wine sits thickest. Small bubbles form at the edges, not fast like water boiling but steady like something dissolving, like acid eating through metal, and the smell that rises up is sharp and wrong and makes my wolf snarl inside my chest.
Everyone freezes.
Isolde stares at the floor with her hand still raised from where the cup was a moment ago. Her mouth opens but no sound comes out. Marcus is on his feet before I register him moving, his chair scraping back loud in the silence. The servant with the pitcher takes one step back toward the door and I am out of my chair before he finishes the step, one hand closing around his arm so he cannot go further.
"Put it down," I say, nodding at the pitcher.
He sets it on the table with shaking hands. The wine inside sloshes against the sides. Up close I can smell it more clearly, that bitter chemical underneath the fruit, the thing that does not belong.
"Now sit."
He sits on the floor right there because his legs give out before he can find a chair, which is almost answer enough but not quite. His whole body is trembling. His breath comes in short gasps. He looks up at me with eyes so wide I can see white all the way around.
"Who paid you," I say.
The boy is crying before I finish the sentence, tears running fast down his cheeks, his hands pressed flat against the stone like he is trying to hold himself together through them. He looks maybe sixteen, maybe younger, with the kind of soft face that says he has not had to survive much hardness yet. He looks terrified in the way that is not performance, not the careful fear of someone who planned to get caught, but the raw, broken-open fear of someone who thought they would get away clean and just realized they will not.
"Please," he says. His voice breaks on the word. "Please, I did not want to. I swear I did not want to."
"I am not asking what you wanted," I say, keeping my voice level but hard enough that he knows there is no escape in begging. "I am asking who paid you."
"A man," he says, his voice coming out in pieces between sobs. "I do not know his name. I swear on the Moon I do not know his name. He found me outside the east gate three days ago when I was leaving to visit my mother. He knew my name. He knew where I worked. He knew my mother was sick." The words spill out faster now, tripping over each other. "He gave me silver, more silver than I have ever seen, and he said to put it in the king's cup at dinner tonight and then leave the palace before the meal was finished."
"And you believed him when he said it was harmless," Marcus says from behind me, his voice flat.
The boy looks at Marcus and then back at me, his face crumpling further. "He said it would not hurt anyone. He said it was just something to make you sleep so you would not notice when they moved the prisoner. He said nobody would get hurt, it was just politics, just something the council needed done quietly."
He lowers his hands slowly, his face wet and red.
"You are going to tell me everything about this man," I say. "What he looked like. What he wore. How he spoke. Every detail you remember. You are going to tell me where you were supposed to go after you left the palace. You are going to tell me if he mentioned anyone else, any names, any places, anything at all."
The boy nods frantically. "Yes, Your Majesty. Yes, I will tell you everything. I will tell you whatever you want."