I Returned To Kill Monsters, And Created The Worst One

Chapter 7 — The Veiled Prince

Elara Veyne

Two days after submitting my application, I received a summons to the palace.

Not for the position I wanted.

I had marked room cleaning and corridor service as my first choices. Any job that allowed me to move through different wings would have been useful. Instead, someone reviewed my documents, decided that a foreigner with no proven experience in noble households would be better kept away from important rooms, and wrote a single word beside my name.

Kitchen.

I stared at the paper for a few seconds.

Maybe the gods really did have a sense of humor.

Even so, I had crossed the continent to get inside that palace. I wasn’t going to complain because they had chosen the wrong door.

First, I would get in.

Then I would figure out how to move around.

The temporary workers were gathered in the service courtyard the following morning. There were almost fifty of us, including kitchen assistants, porters, hall servants, laundresses, and people hired solely to deal with the absurd amount of bed linen the foreign delegations would produce.

The woman in charge of us was named Samira Qadri.

I discovered that because she announced her name twice and made it clear that forgetting it would be a mistake.

Samira must have been a little over forty, wore her hair pulled back so tightly that it hurt just to look at it, and had the permanent expression of someone who believed the world would function better if everyone stopped asking questions.

When she reached me, she examined my documents with particular attention.

“Aldervane.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Is your Azhari sufficient?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She fired off a string of instructions so quickly that I missed half of them.

I waited.

Samira raised an eyebrow.

“Did you understand?”

“The part up to ‘east storeroom.’”

The woman sighed.

“You said you spoke Azhari.”

“I said I understood it. But you need to go a little slower, please.”

She stared at me long enough for me to wonder whether I had gone too far.

“Kitchen,” she decided. “Start by unloading the baskets.”

That was how I spent my first day in the palace carrying sacks of flour, crates of fruit, and containers of oil.

Samira seemed to believe unpleasant jobs served as some kind of character test for foreigners. During the first few days, she had me scrub burned pots, organize storerooms, carry boxes, and help remove scraps from the kitchens after dinner.

It didn’t bother me as much as she probably expected.

After the Caldris, it was difficult to impress me with hard labor.

On the third afternoon, one of the cooks pointed toward a bench.

“Sit down for a while.”

I looked at her.

“Why?”

“Because you’ve been working for hours.”

“But I’m not finished yet.”

She frowned.

“Elara, five minutes won’t bring the palace down.”

I stared at the bench.

It was a strange sentence.

In my first life, rest only existed when someone decided my body had become temporarily useless.

I sat down.

Five minutes later, I got up before anyone needed to tell me.

The cook watched me with an expression I couldn’t interpret.

After that, she began leaving small pieces of fruit near my workstation.

She never commented on it.

Neither did I.

Maybe that was how normal people made friends.

As part of the temporary employment, all of us slept in the palace’s internal quarters.

I expected something similar to the Church dormitories.

Instead, I found a clean bed, a small chest with a key, a shared washroom, and a narrow window overlooking a service courtyard.

One of the other women complained that the rooms were cramped.

I decided not to join the conversation.

I had slept in much worse places while officially being part of the family that owned the house.

To me, that servant’s room seemed comfortable.

Over the next two weeks, I began to understand how the palace breathed.

Who came in early.

Who left late.

Which corridors were used by ministers and which belonged to servants.

Where the guards changed shifts.

Which doors always remained closed.

Which people liked to talk while being served.

And, above all, which people forgot that servants had ears.

The kitchen wasn’t as bad as I had imagined.

Everything passed through it.

Trays for meetings.

Tea for ministers.

Meals for delegations.

Sweets for receptions.

Sometimes I was sent to serve appetizers in smaller rooms, where trade representatives discussed contracts while I pretended the only thing in the world that mattered was the correct position of the cups.

I heard plenty.

Very little about Nythrium.

The truly important information remained trapped behind doors I still wasn’t allowed to cross.

But I learned names.

Coats of arms.

Alliances.

And that was already worth something.

I didn’t see the king during those two weeks.

I didn’t see the prince either.

Kian Varesh existed for me mostly through the servants’ rumors.

And there were many.

“My cousin knows a maid in the royal wing,” one of the assistants said while we chopped roots. “She says he hasn’t walked since he was fifteen.”

“Sixteen,” another corrected.

“I heard he can walk, he just can’t stay standing for long.”

“My brother said his muscles have completely atrophied.”

“Your brother works at the fish market.”

“So?”

I kept chopping.

The details changed depending on who was telling the story.

One said the prince had wounds on his face.

Another swore no one had seen his face in years.

A third claimed a maid had fainted after seeing him without his mask.

When I asked how she knew that, I discovered the story had come from the sister-in-law of a baker who knew a man whose daughter had worked at the palace.

I decided not to treat that as reliable evidence.

One thing, however, remained the same in every version.

No one could cure him.

That, I remembered.

The day of the ball began before dawn.

When I woke up, half the quarters were already dressed.

The kitchen looked like an organized war.

Huge pots occupied almost every surface, trays passed from hand to hand, and Samira crossed the room distributing orders as though she had personally been tasked with preventing the kingdom from ending.

That evening, the employees assigned to the grand hall received specific uniforms.

Light-colored fabrics.

Discreet sashes.

And a thin veil covering the lower half of the face.

“During formal events, service staff must remain visually discreet,” Samira explained. “Heads down. Do not speak to guests unless directly addressed. Do not interrupt conversations. Do not cross the central area during presentations. And no one approaches the royal family without orders.”

I adjusted the veil.

It didn’t bother me.

Going unnoticed was exactly the goal.

When the hall doors opened, I heard the music before I saw anything.

Strings.

Low percussion.

Small metallic bells.

The sound was nothing like Aldervane’s heavy ceremonies.

There was something more fluid about Azhareth’s music.

Maybe it was the heat.

Maybe I was simply tired of cathedral organs.

I entered carrying a tray of drinks.

The grand hall seemed even larger at night.

Hundreds of crystals illuminated the pale stone walls and reflected in the narrow channels that crossed parts of the floor. Golden and dark fabrics hung between the columns. Foreign families occupied the tables along the sides while heralds announced names, titles, and territories.

My gaze naturally went to the raised section of the hall.

King Rayan Varesh sat at the center.

Beside him, the queen.

And then I saw the figure seated a few steps away.

Kian.

The first thing I thought was that it must be unbearably hot.

The second was that they had dressed the man as though they were preparing his corpse for a ceremony.

Practically none of him was visible.

Black gloves covered his hands. His neck disappeared beneath layers of dark fabric. His clothes were heavy, structured, and closed over every possible inch of skin.

His face was hidden behind a full black iron mask, ornamented with subtly golden metallic lines.

He looked smaller than I had imagined.

Not in height.

In body.

There was something deeply wrong with the way the fabric fell over his shoulders. Too thin.

Almost motionless.

For several minutes, I only saw him move his head once and discreetly adjust one hand on the arm of his seat.

I went back to serving.

In any case, he wasn’t my problem.

The first prospective brides began approaching the royal family.

Princesses.

Daughters of dukes.

Heiresses of houses I recognized from the books I had studied.

Each one was announced with a list of titles long enough to make me grateful once again that I had only one name.

Some of them spoke among themselves while they waited.

Two were near me when I stopped to offer drinks.

“It’s worse in person,” one of them murmured.

The other suppressed a laugh.

“Can you see anything?”

“Thank the gods, no.”

“They say his face is covered in wounds.”

“I heard his skin falls off.”

She made a face.

“If my father tries to convince me to accept this, I’ll run before the ceremony.”

The two of them laughed.

I remained still.

I had heard people say worse things.

Even so, something about it irritated me.

Maybe because the man was only a few meters away.

Maybe because I knew exactly what it was like to remain in a room while other people discussed your body as though you weren’t there.

I looked at Kian.

No reaction.

Then I noticed his fingers.

His right hand rested on the arm of the seat.

Very slowly, his gloved fingers had curled inward.

He was listening.

I looked back at the two women.

Suddenly, I found both of them particularly unpleasant.

The prince might be dying, but he still had ears.

The presentations began shortly afterward.

Since Kian would not take part in the dancing, each prospective bride presented herself before the royal family according to the traditions of her own house. Some performed a brief dance. Others played instruments or offered symbolic gifts.

It was less a romantic selection and more a diplomatic demonstration carefully wrapped in silk.

I kept moving through the room.

When I reached the line of young women waiting for their turn, I heard a conversation that made me momentarily forget the tray in my hands.

“My uncle was here last year,” said a woman in a blue dress.

“In Namarra?”

“At the palace. He brought our family healer to examine the prince.”

The young woman beside her widened her eyes.

“They allowed it?”

“At the time, they were still accepting practically any specialist with enough reputation. My father said the Crown offered a fortune.”

I continued serving a glass.

Slowly.

“How much?”

“I don’t know exactly. Gold, trade rights... and a Nythrium concession if he managed to stabilize the illness.”

My hand stopped.

Nythrium.

The second woman gave a small laugh.

“I assume he failed.”

“He stayed four days. Came back saying there was no cure.”

“I heard they even offered direct access to the mines to a doctor from Karthen.”

“He failed too.”

They kept talking.

I stopped listening.

My gaze slowly rose to the man seated beside the king.

Kian remained motionless behind the mask.

I had crossed the continent looking for Nythrium.

Spent months saving money.

Learned another language.

Entered a foreign palace to discover who controlled the mines, what contracts existed, and how someone without a title could get close to that mineral.

Maybe I had been looking for the wrong path.

A prince no one could cure.

A Crown apparently willing to pay anything for a real treatment.

And I had spent much of my first life doing things that alchemists far better than me called impossible.

My gaze remained on the iron mask for several seconds.

I didn’t know what was wrong with him.

I didn’t know whether my blessing would make any difference.

Much less did I know how I would get close enough to find out.

So it still wasn’t a plan.

But for the first time since arriving in Azhareth, I knew exactly where I should start looking.