The sleeping guards at the king’s door were the last thing Fauna expected to see. She was just passing by, a scullery maid with no business near the royal chambers. But Ryden lay ill inside, alone, and no one had sat with him in a week. It made her furious.
She knew she should leave. She was a maid; he was the king. But her feet wouldn’t carry her away. They never could, not really, not when it came to him.
She slipped past the guards and into his room. He lay so pale and still, his hands folded on the blankets like he was already laid out for burial. She whispered to him, told him he was a good king, a kind one, and that it wasn’t fair. Then she heard voices in the hall.
Panic seized her. She pressed herself into a dark corner, and the stone wall gave way beneath her shoulder. She tumbled into a hidden passage and pulled the panel shut just as the door opened. She’d found a secret path through the palace walls, one meant only for royals.
She told herself she wouldn’t go back. But that evening, Berta kept sighing about the poor king dying alone in the dark. The words turned over in Fauna’s head until she couldn’t bear it. So she went back, using the passage.
She sat by his bed, and the next night brought a book, and the night after that, she stopped pretending to read and just talked to him. A healer arrived from the coast. Fauna was carrying linens past his room when she heard him say Ryden wouldn’t last much longer. “Perhaps tonight,” the healer said.
Fauna waited for the palace to sleep, then ran through the passage. She sank down beside Ryden and took his hand. “Please don’t go,” she whispered. “I know I have no right to ask.
But I love you. I’ve loved you since I was thirteen, since you crouched down in the dirt and believed me when no one else would. ”
She pressed her forehead to his. “Please don’t go.
”
Then she heard a sound from behind the wall, from her passage. A figure in black slipped through the hidden door, a vial in his hand. He leaned over the king. “Goodbye, your majesty.
”
Fauna grabbed a heavy candlestick and hurled it at him, screaming for help. The vial splashed across the sheets. The man fled back into the passage, and she ran after him, but he vanished into the night. Guards poured into the courtyard searching for the attacker, and she pressed herself into the shadows, invisible.
They didn’t find her. She didn’t sleep. She had to tell someone. But to explain what she saw, she’d have to admit she’d been in his room.
Then Berta burst in. The king was awake. They were all summoned to the great hall. Alistair, the king’s beta, told them Ryden believed someone had tried to poison him.
While he slept, he had been conscious, unable to move or speak, but he could hear. He’d heard the assassin more than once. Fauna’s blood turned to ice. Ryden had heard everything she’d said to him.
In the king’s office, he asked if anyone had seen anything strange. When her group shook their heads, Ryden grew desperate. “The man came more than once. Last night he said, ‘Goodbye, your majesty.
‘”
Fauna tried to speak, but her throat clamped shut. She’d been mute with fear since she was thirteen, cornered by men who accused her of stealing. She couldn’t get a word out. The maid beside her said, “She’s mute, your majesty.
”
Ryden frowned at her. “Can you speak at all? ”
She made a writing motion in the air. He gave her paper, and she wrote that she’d seen a man in black fleeing through the courtyard.
She led them to the hidden seam. But Alistair said she might have simply seen a shadow. Ryden swayed, suddenly tired. “Perhaps I did dream some of it.
”
Fauna watched him walk away, certain now that no one was coming for him. And she was the only soul alive who knew the truth. That night, a hand closed over her mouth. It was Ryden, cloaked and hooded, come to find her.
He led her to a small, unused room. “I know someone tried to kill me,” he said. “And I know you saw him. I never doubted it.
But my senses haven’t fully returned. I can’t track him. And I can’t trust anyone in this palace. Except you.
” He looked at her. “I need your help. ”
She nodded. So they met in a tavern every few nights.
She watched and listened while she worked, because no one ever thought to lower their voice around the mute maid. She wrote him everything she saw, and they burned the notes. They made no progress, but somewhere along the way, the investigation stopped being only business. He asked her opinion on his coats, his wine, his letters.
She became the person he wanted to talk to about everything. And she fell a little more in love with him. One night by the fire, he confessed he was in love with a woman he’d realized wanted to meet her while he was ill. “But I can’t go to her now.
Anyone close to me is in danger. ”
Fauna held herself together. He was in love with someone else. He could never know it was her.
A few days later, she met Alistair in the market. He asked for her help convincing the king to accept a bodyguard, a wolf he’d found, the finest guard in the realm. Alistair lifted his hand, and the man approached. “My lady,” he said.
Fauna’s whole body went cold. She knew that voice. It was the voice that had whispered “Goodbye, your majesty” over the sleeping king. She realized Alistair was the one who had sent the assassin.
And now he wanted her help putting the killer at Ryden’s side. She nodded as if to agree, then slipped away. A hand closed around her arm, and a knife pressed into her side. “Walk quietly,” the assassin murmured.
“Make a sound and I’ll open you up right here. ”
She walked. He steered her to the river, explaining that Alistair had set it all up to see if she knew his voice. The fear spiked, and the muteness that had protected her her whole life now made her quiet as he dragged her to the boat.
A bitter cloth came down over her mouth, and then nothing. She woke paralyzed in the bottom of a boat. The assassin had drugged her so she couldn’t move. He holed the hull so it would sink slow and gentle.
“Goodbye,” he said, and turned to go. Then a huge shape came out of the dusk and slammed into him. Ryden. He was there.
He’d followed her. The assassin drove a blade into Ryden’s thigh. They fought in the boat, and Ryden hurled the assassin into the river. Then he hauled Fauna up and held her against his chest.
“I have you,” he said, his voice shaking. “You’re safe. ”
But she couldn’t tell him the truth. The assassin was dead, but the man who sent him wasn’t.
Alistair was still at the palace, at Ryden’s shoulder. They laid her in a quiet room. Ryden wouldn’t leave her side. Then the door opened, and Alistair walked in.
“Ryden, thank the gods,” he said. He came to Ryden, gripping his shoulder. “Let me sit with her a while. You look half dead yourself.
”
Fauna watched, frozen, as Alistair’s hand drifted down to his coat, his fingers finding a weapon. He turned Ryden so his back was half to him. No, she thought. She had to warn him.
As Alistair raised the knife at Ryden’s back, the words tore out of her, the only thing that could save him. “Ryden! ”
Ryden wheeled. The blade caught his side instead of his back.
He turned into the strike, caught Alistair’s arm, and the room exploded into chaos as guards poured in. Alistair was driven down, disarmed. “You were supposed to die painlessly in your sleep,” Alistair spat. “I held this kingdom together while you slept.
A few more weeks, and it would have been mine. ”
Ryden looked at him. “You would have been alone. As you are now.
”
Fauna was carried out to safety. As the door closed between them, she knew Ryden had heard her voice at last. There was no taking it back. She slept for twelve hours.
When she woke, the servants were full of questions. She couldn’t find a single word. She never had been able to speak, not since she was thirteen and no one believed her. Only Ryden ever had.
She avoided him for days. She couldn’t face him. The footman came to fetch her, and she sent word she was unwell. She made herself small and invisible, the way she always had.
Then she was alone in the gardens, and his voice came from behind her. “Fauna. I know you can speak. ”
She tried to walk away.
He followed, telling her he wasn’t angry, that he understood. “It was you, wasn’t it? The woman who came to me while I was ill. ”
He thanked her for saving his life, for sitting with him when no one else would.
“You told me you loved me,” he said. “I’ve been trying to find you ever since. If I’d known you were right there in front of me the whole time. ” He shook his head.
“I fell in love with you twice. First with the voice in the dark. Then with the only person in this palace I could trust. ”
His hand caught her fingers.
“I love you, Fauna. ”
She stared at him. She couldn’t speak. Her throat had closed, her chest too full.
She watched the hope drain from his face. “Right,” he said quietly. “Of course. ” He let her go.
“I won’t mention it again. ”
He turned and walked away, head bowed. She watched him go, and slowly the truth sank in. He knew it was her.
He wasn’t angry. He loved her. Twice. And she had said nothing.
“Wait,” she said. It came out thin and cracked, half a whisper. But it came out. Ryden stopped.
He turned slowly. She took a stumbling step toward him. He was moving then, closing the distance in a few quick strides. “I love you, Fauna.
”
She opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. So she took his hand in both of hers and held it tight against her chest. His breath caught. A smile broke across his face.
He lifted his free hand and cupped her cheek. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he said. “Last chance to say no. ”
She didn’t say no.
She made a small frustrated sound, fisted her hand in his collar, and pulled him down and kissed him. He laughed softly against her lips, surprised, delighted. Then he kissed her back, his arms coming around her, like a man who’d spent weeks searching and had finally found what he was looking for.
For the first time in her whole life, Fauna wasn’t watching from the shadows.
