Chapter 47: You Don’t Have to Rescue Me

Naya stared at the words on the page, the handwriting so different from the two that had come before it. They know you’re awake.

"Who’s ’they’?" she asked.

Ronan didn’t dismiss the question, but he didn’t let it swallow the room either. "We don’t know yet. That’s what we’re going to find out."

Darius, still standing near the door, said he’d quietly trace where the second message had originated without drawing attention to the investigation. "Keep it contained," Ronan told him. "No wider circle than necessary."

Once Darius left, Ronan turned to Naya. "What do you want to do?"

She looked at him for a moment, the question settling strangely. He hadn’t told her to stay behind, hadn’t decided anything on her behalf.

"I want to go back to the village," she said. "Now, if we can."

"We don’t know whether someone’s watching it," Ronan said.

"We can’t keep waiting for permission from whoever’s sending these messages."

"I agree we need answers," Ronan said. "But we also have another responsibility first. The Moon Court gathering is in five days."

Naya groaned, the reminder landing like a weight she’d completely forgotten she was carrying. "I forgot entirely."

"Several territories will be arriving at the capital," Ronan said. "As Queen, you’re expected to attend."

"I can investigate and attend the court."

He gave her a look that told her exactly what he thought of that plan.

"You wanted to be Queen," he said.

She folded her arms. "I am Queen."

"Then start acting like one."

She almost bristled at that until she caught the challenge underneath it, the expectation that she could actually rise to meet it. It wasn’t an insult. It was him believing she would succeed.

The door opened without a knock, and Kael strolled in, immediately reading the tension still lingering in the room.

"Did I interrupt something?" he asked.

"Your brother just volunteered me for royal torture," Naya said.

"What kind of torture?"

"The Moon Court."

Kael pressed a hand to his chest with exaggerated sympathy. "Five days of smiling at people who’d happily stab you for a better seat at dinner. My condolences."

"I’ve been assigned to help her prepare," he added, entirely too pleased with himself.

Ronan’s expression sharpened. "I was reconsidering that assignment."

"You assigned me," Kael said.

"I’m allowed to reconsider."

Kael turned to Naya. "He does that a lot."

Naya laughed, and Kael, apparently satisfied he’d won whatever small argument had just occurred, settled into a chair without waiting for an invitation.

"The official etiquette is easy," he said. "Bow to the right people, don’t speak before you’re addressed unless you outrank them, the usual nonsense. The hard part is everything nobody bothers writing down."

"Like what?"

"Like who expects to be greeted first even though protocol says otherwise. Which Alpha shows up to every gathering looking for a fight because he’s bored. Which noblewoman asks questions that sound innocent but are absolutely not innocent." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Also, half the western territories still think the eastern ones cheated them out of grazing rights forty years ago, so don’t seat them near each other unless you enjoy chaos."

Naya found herself laughing again, genuinely this time, at the sheer specificity of it all. Kael clearly knew this world in a way that went far beyond formal training, something closer to instinct built from years of watching it up close.

Ronan, meanwhile, had gone quiet, and Naya caught him watching the exchange with an expression that wasn’t quite irritation but wasn’t entirely comfortable either.

Kael noticed it too.

"Don’t look so offended," he said.

"I’m not offended," Ronan said.

"You have that face."

"What face?"

"The one you make when someone else is entertaining your wife," Kael said, grinning.

Naya laughed outright at that, and Ronan’s jaw tightened slightly before he told Kael, without much real heat behind it, to leave.

"Can’t," Kael said cheerfully. "I’m officially her Moon Court tutor now. You said so yourself, minutes ago, before you started reconsidering."

Once Kael finally wandered off, promising to return the next morning with a full schedule of preparations, Naya turned to Ronan.

"Why did you really choose him to help me?"

"He knows the court better than almost anyone," Ronan said. "Better than most of my own advisors."

"Do you trust him that much?"

Ronan considered the question seriously rather than brushing it aside. "With you? Yes."

The answer landed somewhere deeper than she expected. She knew exactly how hard trust came to him, how carefully he’d guarded it since long before she’d ever entered his life. He wasn’t simply allowing her into his world anymore, letting her stand beside him at council meetings or sign her name to royal documents. He was handing her the people who mattered to him, trusting her with them the same way he’d learned to trust her with everything else.

She decided, standing there, that she wouldn’t spend the next five days circling the warning sitting on her desk, wouldn’t let fear dictate every hour leading up to the Moon Court. The investigation would continue quietly in the background, Darius working through whatever thread he could find, but for now, she had a court to prepare for and a kingdom watching to see whether she belonged in it.

"What do I need to know first?" she asked.

Ronan’s mouth curved into something close to a smile. "Apparently, you need to learn how not to insult half the kingdom."

"And who said I’m going to insult anyone?"

"You."

She considered arguing the point further, then thought better of it. "Fair."

She followed him out of the room toward the council chamber, already dreading and anticipating the five days ahead in equal measure. Kael was waiting exactly where she expected him to be, leaning against the corridor wall with an expression far too pleased with himself for someone who’d just been threatened with removal twice in one conversation.

"Ready to become insufferably diplomatic?" he asked.

"Absolutely not," Naya said.

"Perfect. Let’s begin."