Fauna slipped into the sleeping Alpha King’s room because he was ill and no one came to see him, and it broke her heart. She never imagined she’d end up confessing her love to him, and she certainly never expected him to hear every word. The first night, she was passing by when she noticed the guards at his door were asleep. He was only a few meters away, and her chest ached with a longing so fierce it hurt.
Ryden was always guarded, always surrounded, because he was the king. But now he lay gravely ill, alone in his bed. Fauna was a scullery maid. He was the king.
She told herself to leave. But her feet wouldn’t carry her away from him. They never had. The sickness had come on him a week ago.
He’d gone to bed strong and healthy, and by morning he hadn’t woken. No one sat with him. That kept Fauna awake at night. All those people who bowed and smiled and needed things from him—not one of them sat at his side in the dark.
It made her furious. She wanted to scream at all of them: *Do you not see what you have? Do you not know what he is worth? *
She had loved Ryden since she was a child.
How could she not have? He was everything. Not just beautiful—though he was that too—but kind. She knew because he’d saved her once.
She had been thirteen when they said she stole a ring. Three grown men backed her against the wall in the yard, cruel and certain. She couldn’t get a single word out. She just stood there shaking, tears burning behind her eyes.
“I saw her,” one of them said. “She had it in her apron. ” She wanted to say she didn’t, but nothing came out, and they laughed. Then a shadow fell across them, and the men went stiff.
Fauna looked up. It was him, the young king, barely twenty then. He crouched down in the dirt, right there in his fine clothes. “Tell me what happened,” he said, his voice so gentle it made her throat ache.
“Go on. I’m listening. No one will interrupt you. ” He waited until the words finally tumbled out, shaking.
And he believed her. He never even asked her name. To him, it was a small thing on an ordinary day. To her, it was the first time in her whole orphaned life that anyone had made her feel like she mattered.
She had loved him for it every day since. And now he was dying, slowly slipping away behind this door, and she was out here doing nothing, same as everyone else. The guards were asleep. Someone should check on him.
She stepped between them, moving as quietly as she could, and slipped inside. He lay in the great bed, hands folded on top of the blankets like he was already laid out for burial. He was so pale her throat squeezed. Ryden, who filled a room just by walking into it, had gone gray and still in the dim candlelight.
“Oh, your majesty,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve this. You’re a good king.
You’re kind, truly kind. It’s not fair. There are cruel men in this palace who sleep fine every night. It should not be you lying here.
”
She lifted her hand before she knew what she was doing. She only wanted to touch his cheek, just once. Her fingers were a breath away from his skin when she heard voices in the hallway. Panicked, she spun and pressed herself into a dark corner behind a tall carved panel.
The stone gave way. A seam in the wall, hidden to any eye, swung inward under her shoulder. She tumbled back into pitch darkness and pulled the panel shut just as the chamber door opened. She stood there, hand pressed over her mouth, heart wild, until the voices faded.
The passage ran narrow and cold and airless between the walls, down and down, until it let her out through another hidden seam into a small, forgotten courtyard under the open sky. And then she understood what she had found. A way through the walls that no map showed and no servant knew. A secret road for royals, built for escape.
Only royal blood was ever told these ways. Only them. And now her. Fauna knew she shouldn’t go back.
She told herself so all the next day. But that evening, Berta wouldn’t stop talking about him. “That poor man,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Dying alone in the dark.
Dying alone in the dark. ” The words turned over and over in Fauna’s head until she couldn’t bear it anymore. So she went back. But this time the guards were awake, so she used the secret passageway.
The second night, she sat on a little stool beside his bed and didn’t know what to do with herself. The next day, she brought a book. “I thought I might read to you, if that’s all right, your majesty,” she whispered, cheeks burning. She read to him low and soft by the single candle.
She came back the next night, and the next. After the first week, she stopped bringing the book because she found she would rather talk to him. They said the healer from the coast had cured a sleeping sickness in a village near the sea. Everyone had such hope.
She told him the court missed him. “They love you, your people. You should hear how they talk about you. ” She grew bolder.
“You have to wake up. The whole kingdom is holding its breath, waiting for you. What are they all going to do without their king? ” She swallowed hard and added, “What am I going to do?
”
The next day, she was carrying linens past the healer’s room when she heard his name through the gap in the door and stopped. “At this rate, Ryden will never wake,” the healer was saying. “And he will not last much longer, I’m sorry to say. He’s an alpha, and that’s the only reason he’s lasted at all.
But he’s fading. ”
“Surely there is something we could try,” came an urgent voice. It was Alistair, the king’s beta. She recognized it.
“No, I’m sorry,” the healer sighed. “In the coming days, we will lose him. Perhaps tonight. ”
The linens slipped from her hands.
She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t. She waited for the palace to sleep, and it was the longest waiting of her life. The instant she dared, she half-ran through the passage in the dark.
When she stumbled out into his chamber, she sank down at the edge of the bed and took his hand in both of hers. “Please do not go,” she whispered. “I know I have no right to ask you for anything. I know I am no one.
But please, I… I love you. ” The words hung in the air. “I love you, Ryden. I have loved you since I was thirteen years old.
Since the moment you crouched down in the dirt. ” Her voice shook, but she didn’t stop. She told him everything. How his whole face changed when he smiled.
How he visited the stables when he couldn’t sleep and talked to the horses like old friends. How he was good because he chose to be every single day, even when no one was watching. She pressed her forehead to his. “Please do not go.
Please, the world needs you. We all need you. ”
Then she heard a sound. Coming from behind the wall.
From her passage. The one no one else knew. She barely had time to dodge behind the curtains when the hidden door swung open and a figure stepped through. A man dressed head to foot in black, hood pulled low.
He moved without a sound to the king’s bed and drew a small vial from inside his coat. He leaned over Ryden, tipped his chin down, and held the vial above those parted lips. “Goodbye, your majesty,” the man murmured. Fauna didn’t think.
Her hand closed on a heavy candlestick, and she flung it across the room at him, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Help! Help! The king is being attacked!
”
The candlestick cracked against the man’s shoulder. The vial jerked, liquid splashing onto the sheets. The man wheeled toward her. For one frozen heartbeat, she stared into the black hollow where his face should be.
She saw two eyes glowing gold. Then boots and shouting, the whole palace waking at once. The man bolted back through the open passage. Fauna ran after him, knowing it was madness, but if she could only see where he went, Ryden would be safe.
She burst out into the little forgotten courtyard under the cold stars. Empty. The man was gone. Then boots and lights swung over the far side of the courtyard as guards poured out, searching for whoever attacked the king.
Fauna suddenly understood she was a complete fool. The assassin was gone, and here she stood, a scullery maid out of her bed in the dead of night in the very courtyard the attacker fled into. If they found her, they wouldn’t thank her. They’d think she was helping the assassin, or worse, that it was her.
She melted back into the shadow of the wall and made herself small and invisible. The guards swept the courtyard with their lamps. They did not find her. Fauna didn’t sleep.
She lay rigid until gray light came, turning it over and over. The man in black. The vial. The king was still in danger.
That man came through her passage like someone who had done it before and meant to again. She had to tell someone. But to tell what she saw, she had to explain how she saw it. A scullery maid where she should never have been.
They wouldn’t hear the part where she saved him. Only the part where she was there. She had almost worked up the nerve to go tell someone when Berta burst in, cap askew. “He’s awake.
The king. He’s awake. ”
They were all summoned to the grand hall. Every servant packed shoulder to shoulder.
Then Alistair stepped out, and the room fell silent. “As of this morning, our king is awake. ” The hall erupted with joy. Alistair lifted a hand.
“Now the grave news. The king did not simply fall ill. He believes someone tried to take his life. While his majesty slept, he was not truly gone.
He could not move or see or feel, but he could hear. And more than once, he heard a man come to his bed to poison him. So there will be questions. You will each speak with him in small groups and answer honestly.
”
Fauna shook with fear. If he could hear everything, then he heard her. Every night she held his hand and kissed his temple. And the last night, she told him she loved him.
The king of the realm heard a maid sneak into his room, not once, but for weeks. She thought she might be sick right there on the flagstones. The line shuffled forward toward the king’s office. Fauna shuffled with it, her heart climbing higher with every step.
Hers was nearly the last group. The great door closed behind her. She lifted her eyes, and there he was. Ryden, awake, sitting behind the broad desk, Alistair standing close at his shoulder.
He lifted his head and looked straight at her, and her heart forgot how to beat. “Thank you for coming,” the king said, his voice rough and scraped raw. “I have one question. In these past weeks near my chambers, did any of you see or hear anything strange?
”
The first maid shook her head quickly. The second stammered a frightened “No, no, your majesty. ”
“Think carefully,” Alistair said, his voice gentler than the king’s, warm and coaxing. “A face you did not know.
A sound out of place. Anything at all. ”
This was the moment. Fauna opened her mouth and nothing came out.
Her throat clamped shut around the words like a fist. “Please,” the king said, and there was something raw in his voice now, almost pleading. “If any of you saw anything…”
Her eyes stung with tears of pure frustration. He was begging, and she had the answer he needed, and still she couldn’t make a sound.
“Your majesty,” Alistair murmured. “Perhaps we might rest and continue tomorrow. ”
“I do not have time to rest,” the king snapped. “Someone is trying to kill me, Alistair.
He came more than once. And last night, before it all went to chaos, he leaned close and said, ‘Goodbye, your majesty. ’”
Fauna gathered herself and tried again. Then the king’s gaze landed on her.
“You,” he said. “Is there something you wish to say? ”
Every eye in the room turned to her. “There was a woman,” the king said, leaning forward.
“Last night. She screamed for help. I have been trying to find her all day. ” His gaze searched her face.
“Was it you? ”
Fauna’s heart stopped. He was looking for her. The voice in the night.
The girl who saved him. All she had to do was open her mouth, make a sound, and he would know. “Your majesty,” the maid beside her said apologetically. “She’s mute.
”
The king frowned. “Mute? Can you speak at all? ”
Fauna realized what a true wallflower she must be for people to think her mute.
She couldn’t make herself speak, but she could show him. She made a small writing motion in the air. “You can write,” the king said, his brow drawing down. “And you know something.
”
She nodded hard. “Bring paper,” the king said. “Quickly. ”
She took the pen in an unsteady hand and wrote: *“Last night I saw a man all in black, a hood over his face.
He was running away. ”*
“Where? ” the king said. She beckoned and led them to the courtyard, pointing to the seam from which the assassin went through.
The king stared, Alistair at his elbow. “You saw him come through here? And did you see where he went after? ”
She shook her head.
“Your majesty,” Alistair said, not unkindly. “Perhaps she saw someone. But how can we be sure that was even the assassin? ”
The king swayed, lifted a hand to his brow.
“Yes,” he sighed. “She might have simply seen a shadow in the dark and made a murderer of him. Perhaps I did dream some of it. I am so very tired.
We will continue tomorrow. You may all go. ”
Fauna was left standing by the wall, horrified. She had held it right in front of him, and she couldn’t make him believe it because she couldn’t make herself speak.
Certain now that he only dreamed it all, that no one was coming for him. When someone was, and she was the only soul alive who knew it. Fauna stared up into the dark of the maid’s quarters. Ryden was not safe.
The assassin was still out there. She had to find a way to make him believe. And there was only one way left. She had to tell him she was the woman in the room.
Which meant telling him she was also the girl who told him she loved him. Her whole body went hot with shame just thinking it. But shame was a small price. Shame would not kill him.
She was about to get up when a hand closed over her mouth. She thrashed, a scream trapped behind the fingers. “Quiet,” a voice breathed against her ear. “It’s all right.
Come with me. ”
She went still because she knew that voice. She would know it anywhere. The hand eased off her mouth.
In the dark, she could make out the shape of him, tall, cloaked. She slipped out of her cot and followed. He led her silently through the sleeping palace to a small, unused room where a single candle already burned. Then Ryden pushed back his hood.
“Forgive me for scaring you,” he said quietly. “But I couldn’t risk you crying out and anyone knowing I’d come for you at all. ” He studied her face. “You’re frightened.
I’m sorry. ”
She shook her head quickly. “You’re not scared? ” A faint, tired smile touched his mouth.
“Good. ” He took a breath. “I know someone tried to kill me. And I know you saw him.
I never doubted it. But I cannot hunt him. My senses have not come back to me. My scent hasn’t returned.
And by the time it does, his trail will be long cold. I cannot be sure of his face, and I cannot track him. ” He stepped a little closer. “And I cannot trust anyone.
Someone in this palace wants me dead. But you saw the man come out of a secret passage you couldn’t possibly know exists. And you’re a poor maid who has no reason under heaven to want me gone. You are the one person in this whole palace I am certain did not do it.
”
She could only stare at him. “This afternoon, I pretended to believe you because I don’t want anyone to know I’m still looking for my killer. If they think I believe it was all a dream, then my would-be murderer will not panic and rush to try again before I have any hope of catching him. So I let them think I let it go.
” He held her eyes. “In any case, I need your help. ”
She pointed at herself. *Me?
*
“Yes, you,” he said, a wry smile tugging at his mouth. “People do not notice you. You are mute. And from what I’ve heard, half my household could not tell me your name.
They will speak freely in front of you because they will forget you are there. ”
Fauna felt her cheeks go hot. Something must have shown in her face because his own fell at once. “Oh, I’m sorry.
I did not mean to offend. ” She shook her head fast. “No, no, you didn’t offend me. ” He asked, “Or no, you won’t help me?
” She held up a single finger. The first. “Ah. ” His mouth curved.
“Then you’ll help me find who has been poisoning me. ”
She nodded. Ryden smiled at her, relieved. “Thank you.
” Then he paused, hesitating. “When you saw the assassin come out of the passage… you didn’t happen to see anyone else, did you? ”
Fauna went very still. Did he mean her?
The woman he heard? She hesitated, but shook her head. “Right,” he said, and something in him dimmed just slightly before he masked it. The thought sat cold in Fauna’s chest.
But telling him she was there by his bedside wouldn’t save his life. It would only make her small in his eyes. No, better to leave that girl in the dark where she belonged. So Fauna held his gaze and said nothing and let the woman stay a mystery.
The first time Ryden met her at the tavern, Fauna stopped dead in the doorway and stared. It was unreal to see him sitting on a bench in a plain brown cloak, hood up, looking enormously pleased with himself. “No one will ever recognize me here,” he told her, grinning. Fauna gave him a long, dubious look.
In her opinion, he was simply too beautiful not to stand out. She kicked him under the table. “Ow! ” He startled so hard she had to bite down on a laugh.
She reached for the scrap of paper and stub of charcoal he brought and wrote: *If you gape at everything like a fish out of water, you’ll attract attention. * He read it and laughed out loud, head back, a real laugh. Here was the plan. By day, Fauna watched and listened because no one ever once thought to lower their voice around her.
And every second or third night, she slipped out to the tavern to find the king already waiting in that ridiculous brown cloak to read about what she’d seen. They made no progress at all. She noticed nothing that helped, and neither did he. After a few nights of this, and a few bottles of wine she pointedly did not help him drink, he grew loudly, cheerfully despairing.
“All of my food has to be tasted now,” he complained. “Every room I enter has to be searched first. That is no way to live. ”
She raised a brow.
*And yet you’re alive. *
“It’s only that I don’t understand it,” he went on, refilling his cup. “Why anybody would want me dead. I do not think I have wronged anyone.
Not truly. I try very hard to be liked. You understand? It’s rather the whole job.
” He looked up at her suddenly. “What reason could someone have to kill me, do you think? ” Fauna considered him. Then she wrote: *Talking too much.
* He read it and snorted. “Do you know,” he said, delighted, “this is the only place in the world I feel at ease anymore. Here, away from the palace, with you. ”
She blinked, surprised, and pointed at herself.
“Yes, you,” he said, smiling. Then the smile faded a little. “The truth is, I always thought I was well-liked. But people don’t really like me, do they?
They have to make it look as though they do, because I’m the king. And at least one of the faces smiling at me is planning my murder. ”
Without thinking, Fauna reached across the table and laid her hand over his. Color rose along his cheekbones.
“I’m sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’m being terribly rude, rambling on about myself. You must have places to be. Friends waiting.
” She smiled, shook her head, and wrote: *Believe it or not, people don’t notice much someone who doesn’t speak. * He looked at the note for a long moment. Then he looked at her, almost sad. “Well,” he said at last with sudden forced brightness.
“I think this calls for another bottle. ” *Absolutely not,* she wrote, and took the wine out of his reach. He laughed and let her. As the weeks went by, they took it up a notch.
He arranged to have her near him more often, cleaning his study, pouring at his smaller councils, being quiet in the corner while lords and ladies came and went. She listened to all of them, and afterward he wanted to know everything she thought. At first, it was all business. “Do you think Lord Aldis seemed suspicious?
Could he be the man? ” But somewhere along the way, it stopped being only that. “Do you think Lady Marin meant it when she said that? ” And then, “Was that not the most ridiculous coat you have ever seen in your life on Lord Petrund?
Tell me honestly. ” And then one night, with no pretense of the investigation at all: “There’s a supper tomorrow. I cannot decide between the gray and the blue. Which should I wear?
” Fauna stared at him. Then she pointed. The blue. “Really?
” He considered this with enormous gravity. Then he nodded. “Good. Then I shall definitely wear the other one.
” She scowled at him, and he burst out laughing. Somehow, without her ever noticing quite when it happened, she had become the person the king wanted the opinion of about everything. And somewher, she too was learning him. The man she loved from across a hundred rooms turned out not to be perfect at all.
He was a little vain about how he looked. He talked far too much when he had too much wine. He was lonely, a bit ridiculous at times. And the way he said her name, low and warm, did the most ruinous things to her foolish heart.
So she wasn’t surprised to find that knowing him hadn’t cured her of him at all, and that she loved him every day a little bit more. Sometimes she wondered if she ought to tell him it was her, that she was the woman at his bedside. She no longer thought he’d have her flogged for it. But what if it changed things?
What if he was so embarrassed he couldn’t look at her the same way again? So she said nothing. One night they were by the fire with a chessboard between them. She had already given her report, and he was being so very cheerful about it that she knew exactly what it meant.
She set down a piece and tilted her head to ask what was wrong. “Oh, nothing. I’m perfectly well,” he shrugged. She gave him a flat look.
They had a language now, built of glances and small movements. He sighed. “It’s only… I have been thinking. Perhaps the assassin is long gone.
Perhaps he has given up. It’s been weeks, after all, and nothing. Perhaps it’s all right to simply live like a normal man again. ”
Her heart dropped.
She knew what that meant. No more reason to meet a mute scullery maid in a tavern in the dead of night. “I don’t know,” he rubbed a hand over his face. “It just feels as though I have done nothing but hunt my own killer for weeks when all I want is…” He stopped, and she watched bewildered as color climbed into his face.
“You see,” he murmured, almost shy. “I’m in love. I realized it while I was ill. I realized there was a woman I loved and that if I ever woke, I would go to her at once and tell her.
And now I have woken and I cannot because someone is trying to kill me. I could not go to her. Not now. It would only put her in danger.
Anyone close to me is in danger. ”
Fauna did her best not to let her despair show on her face. Of course. Of course there was a woman, some lady, some highborn beauty worthy of a king.
“And I already have you in danger,” Ryden added, turning back to her, his eyes so earnest it was almost unbearable. “That’s bad enough. It keeps me up at night, if I’m honest. You are one of the truest friends I have ever had, and I have pulled you into the middle of this.
”
Fauna held herself together by main force and gave him a small smile. One of the truest friends he’d ever had. That had to be enough. He could never know it was her.
Fauna was halfway through wrapping a bolt of blue thread around her fingers when a cook pressed a list into her hand and told her to take it to market. The market was loud and bright and crowded. As she was paying, her eye caught a tall man in a plain dark cloak moving slowly through the crowd. It was odd to see Alistair, the king’s beta, here in the market, cloaked like a common man.
Then his gaze swept past her, stopped, and came back. “Fauna,” he said, coming toward her. “Forgive me. I didn’t expect to see a familiar face out here.
” It was Fauna’s turn to be surprised. She wasn’t aware the king’s beta knew her by name. He tipped his head toward a quieter gap between the stalls. “I am glad of the chance,” he said once they were away from the worst of the noise.
“I have been meaning to speak with you. It seems his majesty trusts you a great deal, which is why I’d like to ask for your help. ” She frowned, intrigued. “I am worried for him.
He will not accept protection. He will not be made a prisoner in his own house. And every day that passes without another attempt on his life, he grows more convinced there will not be one. I do not share his confidence.
I have found a man, the finest guard in the realm. A wolf, quick, silent, exactly what the alpha needs at his side day and night. And Ryden will not have him. ” Fauna’s chest tightened.
Alistair was voicing the exact fears that had kept her awake most nights. “You have his ear in a way I no longer do. If you were to tell him it would be wise for someone strong to watch over him day and night, I think he would listen. ”
She hesitated.
But Alistair must have taken her hesitation for something else because he added, “He’s actually right here if you would like to meet him yourself. ” And he lifted a hand. A figure detached itself from the crowd and approached, tall, quiet on his feet. He inclined his head to her.
“My lady,” he said. Two words, utterly ordinary. But Fauna’s whole body went cold at once, because she knew that voice. She had heard it in the dark, low and certain, leaning over a sleeping king with a vial in its hand.
*“Goodbye, your majesty. ”*
The bodyguard was the assassin. She glanced quickly at Alistair. He was watching her face, patient, faintly curious, as if wondering how she would react.
He knows. Alistair was the one who sent the assassin. And now he wanted her help convincing Ryden to let him stay by his side so he could strike again. Fauna did not let any of it show.
She had spent her whole life making her face into a wall. She nodded as if to say, *Consider it done. * Alistair beamed and thanked her. Then she left, trying to keep her pace unhurried.
The moment she was swallowed by the crowd, she moved quickly, cutting between stalls, doubling back. She had to get to the king. Now. Then a hand closed around her arm.
There was no time to scream before something cold and sharp pressed into her side, hidden from view. “Walk,” the assassin said pleasantly, his mouth close to her ear. “Quietly, and to the back, and you’ll be fine. Make a sound and I’ll open you up right here.
” She would have screamed anyway if she could. But fear made her quiet. It had made her quiet all her life. He kept the knife close and his voice closer.
“You were there,” he said conversationally. “The night I came for him. I marked your scent at once, and I have wondered about you ever since. You were supposedly mute, so for a while, I wasn’t sure.
” He prodded the knife sharply against her belly. “That’s why you were sent to market today, and why I happened to be here, to see whether the mute little maid would know my voice. And you did. Your fear spiked the moment you heard it.
I could smell it on you. ”
He walked her out past the last stalls into a narrow gap between two buildings. “We can’t risk you finally telling the king you were there that night, you understand? Alistair thinks he’s half convinced him now that this was all in his head.
He won’t let me strike again until he’s sure the king doesn’t suspect a thing. And I don’t get paid until he’s dead. So, no hard feelings. ”
The last thing Fauna saw before the cloth came down over her mouth and a bitter scent flooded into her lungs was a strip of ordinary blue sky above the rooftops going soft and gray and very far away.
Then nothing. Fauna woke slowly, and the first thing she understood was that she was paralyzed. She tried to move, to turn her head, to lift a hand, but nothing. She was awake.
She had managed to open her eyes, but that was it. The irony was not lost on her. She had spent months pretending to be voiceless. Now she knew how it really felt.
Above her was the curve of dark wood. Beyond that, a low gray sky bleeding toward dusk. The steady rocking beneath her was unmistakable. A boat.
She was lying in the bottom of a small boat, and it was moving downstream. Seated near the stern, one hand easy on the tiller like he was out for a pleasure cruise, was the assassin. “You’re awake,” he said cheerfully. “Good.
I was starting to worry you’d miss the whole thing. The drug will wear off in time, although,” he laughed lightly, “probably not in time for you to move again. ”
He had chosen the river for obvious reasons. Water takes a scent and pulls it apart, leaves no trail for a shifter to track.
He wanted her to disappear. A maid who slipped and drowned on her way to market—no one would investigate that. And it was only then that true horror closed its fist around her throat. If she died, she couldn’t warn Ryden.
She was the only soul alive who knew this man’s face, who saw him in the king’s chamber, who heard Alistair’s name fall from his lips. And Alistair was at the palace right now, standing at Ryden’s shoulder, pouring him wine, calling him friend. If she drowned here, the truth drowned with her. The assassin brought the boat in toward the bank and stepped out, one boot on the shore, one braced in the hull.
He crouched, working at something below her line of sight. Then she felt cold water rising up around her sides through the bottom of the boat. He hadn’t holed it so it would sink at once, but so it would fill slow and gentle. The assassin straightened.
“Goodbye,” he said softly. “It’s nothing personal. ” And he turned to go. The water climbed cold against her sides.
*Move! * she screamed at herself. Nothing. She thought of Ryden’s face.
Then a huge dark shape came out of the dusk and slammed into the assassin, carrying him clean off the boat. Ryden. He was here. He came.
She saw him hovering like he was afraid she’d shatter if he touched her, his face wild, eyes too bright. “Are you all right, Fauna? Look at me. ” The boat heaved.
The assassin came up, water streaming off him, and threw himself half over the side. Fauna saw the flash of steel, and the blade punched down into Ryden’s thigh, deep. He didn’t even scream. He turned, with the knife still buried in his leg, and hit the man so hard the entire hull shuddered.
They grappled, and Ryden reached down and wrenched the blade free of his own flesh. The assassin laughed, breathless and delighted. “Finally,” he panted. “Finally, I get to end you.
” Ryden recoiled for a moment. “It was you,” he breathed. Then he threw himself at him like a man possessed. The hull bucked, black water slopping over the sides, and Fauna could not move.
The assassin watched Ryden’s wounded leg, kicked at it fast and vicious. They were locked together, straining the knife between them, the assassin forcing it down toward Ryden’s throat. “You should have stayed a king,” he said. “Soft, trusting.
It was so easy the first time. ”
Ryden roared, a sound of something breaking loose, and got a hand free. Fauna didn’t see exactly what he did. She saw the assassin’s face change, heard the knife clatter against wood as the man was wrenched up and back like a doll and flung violently off the side of the boat.
Then nothing. Ryden stood there for a moment, chest heaving. Then he turned, and the wild thing drained out of him all at once. “Fauna.
” Hands under her, hauling her up out of the drowning boat, and she was against him, held hard to his chest. “I have you,” his voice shaking. “Look at me. You’re all right.
I have you. ” He shook his head. “The moment you didn’t come meet me, I knew. My scent’s been coming back to me for days.
And when I understood you were in danger, gods, it was like the whole world came roaring back at once. I followed you down to the water. ” His voice broke clean through. “If I had been a moment later…” He couldn’t finish.
She lay in his arms, frozen and mute and soaking and alive, and she couldn’t tell him. The assassin was dead in the river, but the man who sent him was not. *Alistair,* she wanted to say. *It was Alistair.
* But Ryden only held her tighter and carried her toward the shore, and did not hear the warning she could not give. She couldn’t move yet. The poison still held her, though its grip had loosened in the hours since the river. They laid her in a quiet room, and Ryden would not leave her side.
He sat at the edge of the bed, his fine clothes still marked with river mud, watching her face as though he was afraid to look away. “The feeling will come back first in your fingers,” he said low. “Then your hands. Don’t worry.
I will not leave your side. ”
Then the door opened. “Ryden, thank the gods. ” Fauna’s heart sank.
It was Alistair. He came in quickly, spots her there, unable to move, and then there was nothing in his face but a friend’s relief as he walked to Ryden. “They told me you’d gone after her yourself,” he said. “Gods, Ryden, you should have taken men with you.
” He stopped, pressed the back of his hand briefly to his mouth. “When they said the maid was taken, I thought…”
Ryden rose. “I found her. She’s going to be all right.
”
“Thank the gods,” Alistair said again, and gripped Ryden’s shoulder. The two of them stood there a moment, the king and his oldest friend, and Fauna lay helpless six feet away. She knew what this was. The second she could speak again, Ryden would know.
So this was Alistair’s last chance to save himself. He’d come to kill Ryden and her. “You should rest,” Alistair said gently, his hand still on Ryden’s shoulder. “You look half dead yourself.
Let me sit with her a while. ”
“In a moment,” Ryden said, his eyes going back to Fauna. “I don’t want her to wake alone and find me gone. ”
“Of course.
Of course. ” Alistair’s voice did not change at all, though his feet carried him innocently behind Ryden. Fauna saw it the way you see a thing in a dream. Too slow and too clear.
The way he had turned Ryden so that Ryden’s back was half to him. The way his hand, the one not on Ryden’s shoulder, drifted down casual to the fold of his coat. He was faking comfort while his fingers found a weapon beneath the cloth. Ryden did not see it.
*Warn him,* she thought. *Do something. Anything. * But she could only lie there and watch Alistair’s hand draw slowly back the edge of his coat and see for one instant the dull gleam of steel.
She was going to watch him die. After everything, she was going to lie here frozen and watch the man she loved be murdered an arm’s length away. *No. * Something in her rose up that she had never reached before, past the poison, the fear, and years of silence.
She watched Alistair raise his knife at the king’s back. And then: “Ryden! ”
Two things happened at once. Ryden wheeled toward her so that Alistair’s blade, driving in where his back had been, met his side instead, tearing his coat.
His face, in the half-instant before the blade landed, contorted with recognition. He knew this voice. She saw him realize it. And then the room broke apart.
Ryden roared. He turned into the strike instead of away, caught Alistair’s knife arm in one hand, and there was nothing weak in him now. The door burst inward. Men she didn’t know poured through, blades drawn—Alistair’s bought men—and behind them others, palace guards, Ryden’s own.
The small warm room became a storm of bodies and steel. But it did not last long. Ryden was fully himself now, King and Wolf and Alpha, and Alistair was driven back, disarmed, forced down. “You were supposed to die painlessly in your sleep,” Alistair told Ryden.
“It would have been kinder. Truly, you would never have known. Why? I would have given you anything you asked.
Anything. ”
“Anything but the one thing,” Ryden stood over him, chest heaving. “The crown was never going to be yours to give, was it? It sat on your head from the moment we were boys.
” Something bitter and old moved behind Alistair’s eyes. “I held this kingdom together for a month while you slept, and they called it stewardship. A few weeks more, and it would have been mine in truth. You were only ever loved because you were the king.
I would have been a better one. ” “You would have been alone,” Ryden said quietly, “as you are now. ”
Alistair had no answer for that. The guards took him away.
And as they came for her, Fauna heard Ryden say, “Take her to safety. ” She was lifted carefully and carried out of the room. And as the door closed between them, she didn’t know what he was thinking or what happened now, only that he had heard her voice at last, and there was no taking it back. Fauna slept for twelve hours.
The moment she stepped into the servants’ hall, the questions came at her from every side. “Fauna, is it true? Were you really helping the king all this time? ” “They’re saying it was Lord Alistair.
” She sat down among them and could not find a single word to give them. Not because of the drug. That had worn off. Her voice worked fine now if she wanted it.
Except she had never quite been able to use it, had she? Not since she was thirteen, cornered in that yard, trying to defend herself, and no one believed her. That was the day she learned it was safer to stay quiet, safer to be small, safer to say nothing at all. Only one person had ever believed her that day.
And now he knew. He had seen it on his face at the very end, through all the noise and danger, the moment her voice tore out of her, recognition. He knew she was the woman in the dark. He knew she was the one who sat by his bed, who said all those things.
Her shame was so deep it felt like being sick. The best she could hope for now, she decided, was that no one ever mentioned it again. That the king forgot all about her, now that the killer was caught and he was safe. Except… was that really what she wanted?
For him to forget her? To never make him laugh again, or listen to him ramble about some ridiculous lord’s coat, or watch him bend over a chessboard with the tip of his tongue poking out because he was losing and refused to admit it? That was what she was really afraid of. He wasn’t going to want any of that now.
She was a maid and he was a king. And worse, he now knew she was hopelessly, humiliatingly in love with him. Later that day, a footman leaned into the room. “The king is asking for you.
” Her heart stopped. She must have gone pale because Berta said, “Look at the poor child. You go back and tell his majesty she’s unwell and needs her rest. ” The footman nodded and went, and Fauna sagged against Berta.
She had bought herself time. She spent the next days making herself smaller than she had ever been. Twice she heard servants murmuring, “Has anyone seen that maid? The king’s been asking,” and she slipped out of sight.
It couldn’t last forever, but she couldn’t make herself face him. It was the end of a long day. She was alone in the gardens gathering herbs in the last of the light when, “Fauna,” came his voice. She froze.
Maybe if she didn’t move, he’d go away. “Fauna,” she heard his footsteps on the path. “How are you feeling? Are you all right?
I’m sorry. I would have come to you sooner, but there was so much to see to. And then they said you were unwell, and I did not want to…”
She kept her eyes fixed on the herbs in her hands, and she heard him stop a few feet behind her. “Fauna?
” Ryden asked, softer now, uncertain. She looked up. It was a mistake. It was a terrible mistake because he was standing there in the gold evening light, and he was too beautiful to look at.
His blue eyes were fixed on her with something anxious in them. “Is something wrong? ” he asked, and he sounded genuinely worried. She shook her head.
“Fauna,” he told her. “I know you can speak. ”
Her mind went white. She could not do this.
She could not stand here and be let down kindly. She set down her basket and walked away. “Wait,” Ryden said, coming after her. “Don’t go, please.
” She kept walking. “I’m not angry that you didn’t tell me,” he said behind her. “You were frightened. I understand that.
” She walked faster. “It was you, wasn’t it? ” he said. “The woman who came to me while I was ill.
” Horror washed over her, and she nearly broke into a run. “Fauna, please wait. ” His hand closed around her arm. “Let me thank you at least.
You saved my life twice. You nearly died for it. Gods, I’m so sorry,” he said, earnest. “For all of it, for every part of it.
” She stopped but didn’t turn all the way. He stepped around to her side, dipping his head, trying to catch her eyes. “Thank you,” he said softly, “for sitting with me when no one else in the world would. For the things you said to me in the dark when I couldn’t answer.
For giving me something to hold on to. ”
She snuck another look at him. He was staring at the ground now, brow furrowed, searching for words. Then he lifted his head and looked right at her.
“You told me you loved me,” he said. For one awful moment, she was caught there in that clear blue gaze. “You don’t know what it did to me,” Ryden said quickly. “Hearing your voice all those nights when I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but lie there in the dark.
You were my only thread back to the world. ” She turned away, ashamed. “You were so kind to me,” he went on, “when you had no reason to be. When you didn’t even know I could hear.
And then you told me you loved me, and I…”
She looked at him then and shook her head. *Don’t,* she meant. *Please don’t. *
“I’ve been trying to find you ever since,” he said.
A small, disbelieving laugh broke out of him. “If I’d known you were sitting right there in front of me the whole while. ” He shook his head slowly. “Gods, Fauna, I’ve been so confused.
Chasing after one woman and falling for another and losing my mind over it. And all this time it was you. It was only ever you. ” His eyes moved over her face, searching.
“I fell in love with you twice,” Ryden said. “First with the voice in the dark, the one that kept me from going mad, and then with the only person in this palace I could trust, the one who gave me those looks, who wrote me terrible, honest little notes and made me laugh when nothing else could. ” His hand slid down from her arm to catch her fingers loosely. “I love you,” he said.
Fauna stared at him. She couldn’t move. She wasn’t even entirely sure she was breathing. And the longer she said nothing, the more the hope drained out of his face.
“And you,” he said, quieter. “You said you loved me too, so I thought perhaps…” She only stared. He gave a small, pained smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Though I understand if… perhaps you thought you loved me when you only knew me from far away, and now that you actually know me… perhaps you’ve found I’m not who you imagined.
Or perhaps you’ve simply grown tired of me. I wouldn’t blame you. I wouldn’t blame you at all if you—” He searched her face and found nothing. “Say something,” he said softly.
“Please. ”
She tried. She truly tried. But her chest was too full and her throat had closed, and nothing came.
She watched his face fall. “Right,” Ryden said quietly. “Of course. ” His hand slipped from hers.
“I won’t mention it again. Forgive me. I shouldn’t have. I only thought…” His shoulders sagged.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His face was red now, and he glanced away. “I’ll just…” He let her go and turned and walked away. Fauna watched him go, watched the long line of his back, his head bowed, his steps slow and heavy down the path.
And slowly it began to sink in. Everything he just said. He knows it was her. He is not angry.
He did not call her a fool. He thanked her. He said he fell in love with her twice. And he said it looking her right in the eyes.
And then he stood there and waited for her to say it back. And she said nothing. *Go after him,* she told herself, shaking, more frightened than she had ever been. *Go after him, you fool.
Go now. For once in your whole life, just say something. *
“Wait. ” It came out thin and cracked.
Half a whisper, but it came out. “Ryden. ”
He stopped for a heartbeat. He just stood there.
Then he turned slowly and looked at her as she took a few stumbling steps toward him. He didn’t say anything. He only watched her face, and whatever he found there now was enough, because then he was moving, closing the distance between them in a few quick strides. “I love you, Fauna,” he said.
She opened her mouth. She wanted to say it back so badly it ached. But her tongue tied in knots, and the words would not come. So she did the only thing she could.
She took his hand in both of hers and held it tight against her chest. His breath caught, and a smile broke across his face as he lifted his free hand and cupped her cheek. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he said. He leaned in, unhurried, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Last chance to say no,” he murmured. She did not say no. She tilted her face up to his, and their lips came a breath apart. She made a small, frustrated sound, fisted her hand in his collar, and pulled him down.
He laughed softly against her lips, surprised, delighted. Then he was kissing her back, and there was nothing careful about it at all. His arms came around her, and he kissed her like a man who had spent weeks searching and had finally, finally found what he was looking for. And so Fauna forgot to be frightened, because the man she’d loved for years was kissing her.
And for the first time in her whole life, she was not watching from the shadows.
