Chapter 238

Lysander

“More honey, Lysander?”

Calix held the little silver pot out across the breakfast table with a warm smile, the same smile he’d worn every morning for three days. I stared at it. Beside me, Drake looked up from Commander Valen’s report and watched me, waiting for me to take it.

“Thank you,” I said, and took it.

“Dr. Star says the baby needs the sugar this late in the season.” Calix settled back in his chair and folded his napkin over his knee. “I asked her yesterday. I hope you don’t mind.”

“That’s thoughtful of you,” Drake said.

“It’s nothing.” Calix lifted one shoulder in a modest shrug. “Somebody has to make sure he eats. You certainly won’t, with Julian still loose in the mountains.”

Drake’s face went hard again. He set the report down beside his plate with his finger pressed to one line, and I saw the words no sign at the river crossing before he folded it over.

Three days had passed since I woke to find my door open and my key gone, and three days since a guard ran into the great hall shouting that Julian’s cell stood empty. The whole house had turned upside down. Valen’s men had searched every cellar, every stable, and every trunk in the attic, and they’d found nothing. Nobody had found my key either. I’d never told anyone it was missing. I just wedged a chair under my door handle every night and lay awake listening to the loose board in the hall.

“He had friends,” Calix said gently. “Julian always had friends. Somebody on the inside must have opened that door for him.”

He said it to Drake, but his eyes slid across the table and rested on me while he spoke.

I poured honey on my toast until it ran off the edges and pooled on my plate.

“That’s enough, I think,” Drake murmured, and he took the pot out of my hand. His fingers brushed mine, warm and steady. “Are you all right? You’re pale.”

“I’m fine. The baby kicked me in the ribs at four this morning. He’s practicing to be a council elder. He already knows how to keep everyone up all night.”

Drake’s mouth twitched. Across the table, Calix laughed, a light, pleasant sound, and he shook his head like an indulgent uncle.

“He’ll be a handful,” Calix said. “Just like his father.”

Then Valen appeared in the archway, and Drake pushed back his chair, kissed the top of my head, and followed him out. His footsteps faded down the corridor toward the main study.

The second they were gone, the warmth drained out of Calix’s face as fast as water out of a cracked cup.

He didn’t say anything. He picked up his knife and buttered his toast, scraping the blade from one corner to the other in long, even strokes. He bit into it. He chewed. He reached for his tea and drank, and the whole time he kept his hazel eyes fixed on me across the table, steady and blank, like a man watching a pot he expects to boil.

I made myself eat. I cut my soggy toast into little squares and put them in my mouth one at a time, and I couldn’t taste any of them.

He never said a word. He didn’t threaten me or remind me of the parlor, and he didn’t mention the key. When he finished his tea, he stood, smoothed the front of his gray jacket, and walked out without looking back, and I sat alone at the long table with my hands shaking in my lap.

I’d have taken a threat over that. A threat would’ve told me where he planned to strike. His silence told me he didn’t need to tell me anything, because he’d already decided.

I tried to tell Drake on the second evening.

I found him in his study with his boots up on the corner of the desk and his collar open, rubbing his eyes over a stack of border reports. The fire burned low behind him. For one breath, standing in the doorway, I saw the man who’d sat with me on the parlor sofa, tired and unguarded and mine.

“You should be asleep,” he said without looking up.

“So should you.”

“I’m three hundred years old. I don’t need sleep. I need Julian in chains and the border rotations sorted before the banquet.” He dropped the report and held out his hand. “Come here.”

I crossed the room and let him pull me down onto the arm of his chair. He spread his palm over my stomach the way he did every night now, and the baby rolled toward his hand like a cat toward a sunny windowsill. Drake let out a slow breath through his nose.

“He likes you better than me,” I said.

“He has excellent taste.”

“He’s three-quarters stomach and a quarter lungs. He doesn’t have taste.” I laid my hand over his. My heart had started hammering, and I knew he could feel it through the bond, so I made myself say it before I lost my courage. “Drake, I need to tell you something about Calix.”

His thumb stopped moving on my stomach. “What about him?”

“The night of the parlor. After you left to see Valen, he…”

The study door opened behind us.

“Forgive me.” Calix stepped in with a leather folder tucked under his arm and an apologetic smile. “The rotation lists from the eastern pass. Valen said you’d want them tonight.”

“Leave them on the desk,” Drake said.

Calix crossed the room and set the folder down. He turned and looked at me, perched on the arm of Drake’s chair with Drake’s hand on my stomach, and he tilted his head with polite interest.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Drake looked up at me. “You were saying. About Calix.”

Both of them were waiting. Calix stood at the edge of the firelight with his hands folded behind his back and his face full of mild concern, and I could see every word I was about to say already landing in his ear and being filed away for later.

“I was saying,” I said, “that Calix brings me chamomile every night, and I hate chamomile. It tastes like boiled lawn. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I’ve been pouring it into the hearth.”

Drake stared at me. Then he laughed, a real laugh, deep and startled, and he dropped his head back against the chair.

Calix smiled at me. “I’ll bring mint tomorrow.”

“Mint’s worse,” I said.

“Then I’ll keep trying until I find something you like.” He bowed his head to Drake. “Goodnight.”

When the door closed behind him, I put my face in my hands. Drake rubbed my back and chuckled into my hair, and I let him think I was embarrassed.

On the night of the banquet, Drake dressed in black with the silver clasp of his house at his throat. I sat on the edge of his bed and watched him fight with his cuffs in the mirror.

“Let me,” I said.

He came and stood between my knees, and I fixed the links while he watched me. His dark eyes moved over my face.

“You’ve barely slept all week,” he said.

“Your son kicks.”

“It’s more than that. I can feel it.” He touched the center of his own chest, where the bond sat between us. “You’re frightened, Lysander. You’ve been frightened for days.”

I fastened the second link and kept my eyes on it. Tell him. Tell him now, while Calix is downstairs.

“Julian’s still out there,” I said instead. “That’s all.”

He tipped my chin up with two fingers and studied me. I didn’t know what he saw. After a moment, he bent and kissed me, slow and warm, and when he pulled back, he rested his forehead against mine.

“Valen’s left six men on the house,” he said. “Nobody gets through those gates tonight. I’ll be home before midnight.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

I walked him to the front steps. Calix waited by the carriage in a dark gray coat, his hair neat, holding the door open. He smiled at me over Drake’s shoulder as Drake climbed in, and his smile didn’t change at all while I watched the carriage roll down the long drive and disappear around the bend.