Chapter 169: Warmer

EDELINA

Johann took another step forward.

I watched the tension gather in his shoulders, saw his hands curl slowly at his sides. Whatever restraint he had managed to find earlier was slipping again. The violence between them had been waiting beneath the surface all day, and Lysander was doing everything in his power to drag it out.

"Johann." My voice cut through the room.

He stopped.

"Stop."

He turned toward me, his breathing quick, his eyes still burning with anger.

I held his gaze for a moment before letting mine drift deliberately toward Bonnie.

"Do not behave like a rogue," I said, my voice cold and measured, "when there is already one sitting at the table."

The silence that followed was absolute.

Bonnie’s face drained of color before a flush crept up her neck and cheeks. Her hands trembled where they rested in her lap.

Across the table, Lysander’s eyes blazed.

His fingers curled into fists against the tabletop, his knuckles whitening beneath the pressure.

Johann, however, stepped back.

He drew a slow breath, forcing the tension from his shoulders before smoothing his expression into something almost polite.

"As you wish, Mother."

He offered me a tight nod.

Then he pulled out my chair.

The gesture was perfectly formal, almost painfully so, but I knew my son well enough to recognize the mockery beneath it. He was making a point of showing everyone in the room that he could obey without surrendering.

I sat.

Johann took the seat beside me.

A moment later, the private chef emerged through a side door, his expression carefully blank. He moved around the table with the efficiency of someone who knew better than to acknowledge the tension hanging over the room.

Roasted venison was placed before us, its rich, coppery scent filling the air.

Then came the grilled fish, bright with lemon and sharp enough to cut through the heavier smell of the meat.

Finally, steaming bowls of soup were set down, earthy and fragrant.

For a time, no one spoke. The clink of silverware against porcelain filled the void, tense and deliberate. I watched Lysander from beneath my lashes, studying the way he cut his meat, the set of his jaw, the way his knee bounced slightly beneath the table. He was nervous. Good.

"Did you hear what happened today?" he asked suddenly, his voice slicing through the silence.

I paused, my spoon halfway to my lips. "I heard that a witch died," I replied, keeping my tone light, and disinterested. "From what I gathered, there was some commotion in the infirmary."

"The witch was a traitor," Lysander continued, his eyes never leaving my face. "She killed a Delicate. Exploded her head while the poor woman was trying to recover from her injuries."

The soup turned to ash in my mouth.

I set my spoon down carefully, my fingers gripping the edge of the table until my knuckles turned white. A Delicate. A memory-reader. A truth-seer. In this house. Oh, goddess. Oh, merciful goddess.

My blood froze in my veins, ice crystallizing in my chest, spreading outward to my fingertips. A Delicate. If she had lived, if she had touched the right objects, the right bodies, she would have seen everything. She would have seen Cornelius’s last moments. Maybe even more if she touched further into the past. She would have seen my meetings with Willow. She would have seen Lycaon.

And that had to be why Lycaon had killed her.

No. Not killed. Sacrificed. He had taken out the witch too, and in doing so, taken himself out, because he knew. He knew what the Delicates and any other future delicate would find. He had sacrificed his freedom, his vessel, everything, to keep our secrets safe.

It was the least selfish thing he had ever done.

I stared at my plate, at the fish I had barely touched, and I felt the world tilting beneath me. He had done that for me. For us. While I had been pacing my room, counting steps, he had been taken his first taste of freedom after years of being denied existence to protect me.

"Your Majesty?"

I looked up, blinking, to find Lysander watching me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. "Where did you go?" he asked, his head tilted slightly, his eyes narrowed.

I swallowed, forcing my face back into its mask, smoothing the panic into something resembling composure. "I was just thinking," I murmured, my voice steady despite the earthquake happening inside my chest. "Thinking that what happened was horrible. The kingdom deserves peace. It is all too much and all so cruel."

Lysander leaned back in his chair, his expression unreadable, his fingers drumming once against the tablecloth. "I do hope your words are heeded," he replied, his voice soft as silk and twice as sharp. "Because we do deserve peace. I can agree on that."

Our eyes locked across the table, and I saw the knowledge there, the suspicion, the certainty that he was close to something he could not yet name. But he did not know. He could not know. Not yet.

A knock shattered the silence, sharp and sudden.

All three of us turned toward the door, our bodies tensing in unison, a family of predators caught in the same trap.

"Who is it?" we all demanded in unison.

The door opened a crack, and the High Beta, Bradley’s face appeared in the gap, his expression grim, his eyes immediately finding mine and lingering there with a weight that made my stomach drop.

"Perhaps I will come later," he muttered, already beginning to withdraw.

"Wait," Lysander commanded, rising from his chair. "What is this about?"

Bradley hesitated, his gaze flicking between me and the Regent, his jaw tight. "It is about back home," he replied carefully. "A call."

"You can spill it," Lysander insisted, his voice taking on that tone of command that was becoming more natural to him with every passing day. "We are all family here. It does not have to be a secret."

Bradley stepped fully into the room, his shoulders squared, his eyes finally settling on Lysander. "I got a call from your brother, Alpha Sofiane, Your Majesty. He asks if you will be coming tomorrow, given how close the royal crowning is coming."

The room went still.

Lysander looked at me, then at Johann, then back at Bradley. A slow smile spread across his face, one that did not reach his eyes.

"Tell him," Lysander replied, his voice clear and carrying, "that I will be there."