Chapter 2: The Man I Buried
1096 Words
Odalys's POV
The note stayed folded in my palm long after I stopped reading it.
I didn't sleep. Not really. I sat with the candle burned to nothing, staring at one line until it stopped meaning anything.
By morning I'd hidden the paper under the loose board beneath my bed. The same board I used as a girl to hide things my father wasn't meant to find.
Old habits. Some of them still fit.
Ines laced me into the dinner gown. She didn't ask why my hands wouldn't hold still. I didn't offer her a reason.
"You're pale," she said, pinning the last of my hair back. "Eat something at dinner. Actually eat it this time."
"I will."
"You said that last week too."
I didn't answer that one.
The council dinner sat me two seats from my father. Across from Griffin.
Two hours with a clear view of his face and no way to look away without someone noticing.
I'd read this room once before.
I knew which Elder liked his wine poured heavy. I knew which one smiled and meant nothing by it. I knew which servant would spill something before the second course, because he always did, nerves getting the better of his hands whenever the Elders raised their voices.
He spilled it right on schedule. Wine across the tablecloth, a servant's quiet apology, my father waving it off without looking up.
Some things hadn't moved an inch.
I sat there running through the rest of it, already sure how the night would go.
"The border dispute with the Kesh territory needs settling before the wedding, not after." An Elder didn't look at me when he said it. "Once the packs merge, it becomes Lord Castellane's problem to inherit. Better it's done clean now."
"With respect. A clean resolution now means conceding the north—"
"The northern ridge, yes." His smile went flat. "A small price for peace."
"It's not small to the families living on it."
"Families adjust."
"Forgive me, my lady," another Elder said, "but territory matters are perhaps better left to—"
"She's studied them her whole life."
Griffin didn't raise his voice. He didn't look up from his plate either, like it cost him nothing to say.
That made it land harder.
The Elder's mouth closed.
I sat there with my fork halfway to my mouth. I put it back down without eating.
That never happened before.
Not once in the dinner I already lived through. In that one I sat quiet through every dismissal.
I'd made that deal with myself a long time ago. Stop fighting for a seat nobody was giving me anyway.
He hadn't done that before.
"Thank you," I said, mostly for the table.
"Wasn't for you." He still hadn't looked up. "He was wrong."
I reached for the last time we'd sat at this table, trying to line it up against what just happened. It wouldn't hold still. The edges blurred no matter how hard I tried to hold them.
I remembered we'd sat here once before. I couldn't remember what either of us said. I couldn't remember if he'd looked at me the way he was looking at me now, somewhere between annoyed and something else I didn't have a word for yet.
My hand went to my collarbone before I told it to stop. I made myself set it back on the table.
"Are you well?"
"I'm—" I stopped. "Fine. Long day."
Two words. Not warm. Not cold either. I didn't have a place to put them.
"They tend to be. This close to the wedding."
"You'd know."
"I would."
Neither of us meant it. I don't think either of us knew what we did mean.
The rest of dinner went the way dinners like this always went. Plates cleared. My father laughed at a joke that wasn't funny. The man telling it held half his territory.
I watched Griffin instead of the Elders. He caught me twice. He didn't look away either time.
Relief came first. Quick. Undeserved.
If he could change this much in three days, maybe none of it was fixed. Maybe I could bend the rest of it too.
Fear came right behind it, close enough to trip over the relief.
If he wasn't the man I remembered, I didn't know him at all. I'd been reading from a version of him that might not exist anymore, and I had no map for whatever version sat across from me now.
Both feelings sat under my ribs at once. Neither one won.
"My lady." My father's voice, from the head of the table. "You've barely touched your plate."
"Not hungry."
"You're getting married in three days. Eat."
I ate two bites to satisfy him. They sat like stones.
I excused myself before dessert. Nobody stopped me this time. My father had already turned back to the Elder beside him, already forgotten I'd been sitting there at all.
The corridor back to my room ran past the old portrait gallery. Dead relatives in old frames, none of them looking at anything.
I walked slow. I worked back through what Griffin had said, looking for the line between the man I remembered and the one across from me tonight.
I stopped outside my own door.
The note.
I hadn't looked at the handwriting close enough. I'd been too busy reading the words to notice how they were formed.
The slant. The way the writer crossed their sevens hard through the middle instead of leaving them open.
I'd seen that slant before. That exact crossed seven.
I closed my eyes and made myself go back. Where. When. My father's study, the door left open a crack while I waited for him to finish a meeting years ago. A stack of papers on his desk, the top one catching my eye because of the wax seal, dark red, pressed with a mark I didn't recognize.
I'd asked him about it once. He told me it wasn't my concern and closed the folder before I could look again.
On a stack of papers on my father's desk. Two years ago.
Documents with a seal I didn't recognize. I never asked twice. Wasn't my business, and my father didn't like being asked things more than once.
A woman's hand. A woman with no reason, in this life or the last one, to write me anything at all.
I stood with my back against my own door. My heart went somewhere it had no business going this fast.
I knew that handwriting.
- Writer
