THE LUNA THEY’LL NEVER LOVE

46: EFFICIENT INFORMATION

CROWEN.

I made my way down the first floor hallway, boots echoing against stone, heading toward the training room at the far end of the corridor, the same room I'd walked into countless times over the years, usually when something needed working out that words alone couldn't fix.

I pushed through the doors and found Vizellan already there, wrapping his knuckles methodically on the mat, focused entirely on the motion, every wrap pulled tight and even, the kind of repetitive precision he always retreated into when his mind was somewhere far less controlled than his hands.

I walked up, stared him down for a moment, and asked, "How are you doing?"

His jaw clenched. He didn't answer.

I crossed to the corner and started wrapping my own knuckles, letting the silence sit between us the way it usually did these days, thick and familiar, neither of us particularly inclined to break it first.

I wasn't going to bring up what I'd seen a couple of days ago in the garden.

The same way I hadn't said a word to Nashyn about what I'd walked in on this afternoon.

These days I was just a cold bucket of minding my own business.

Except this one, this f*****g matter with Vizellan and the fact that he was standing in front of me wrapping his knuckles with that hollow, distant look on his face, was harder to leave alone.

It was just more sensitive.

Because I gave more f***s about my cousin than I ever would allow myself to for Pheeona.

And still, I bit my tongue.

I walked to the center of the mat instead and squared up, fists raised, waiting for him to mirror the stance.

He did.

We sparred for a long time, trading blows that landed harder than they needed to, both of us working out whatever frustration had been building since the wedding without ever once putting words to it.

I caught a nasty hook to the ribs that nearly buckled me, and I was almost certain my cousin was enjoying the fact that we were pummeling each other.

By the time we finally stopped, both of us were breathing hard. Sweat soaked through our shirts, our knuckles ached despite the wraps as the adrenaline slowly bled out of the room.

Vizellan straightened first, pulling at the edges on his bloodied wraps, working them loose with steady fingers.

"My informant got back to me again," he said, voice still rough from exertion. "About Lunaris."

My brows lifted. “He’s rather efficient.”

He discarded his wraps over the railing.

I waited, reaching for the towel hanging over the rack beside me.

"Aldric married into the Winchester line," he said, turning to face me. "We already knew that. But there's more." He paused, considering how exactly he wanted to say it. "Pheeona's mother's death was recorded as natural causes. She had a built up but still sudden illness.”

I went still, towel forgotten in my hand. "And?"

"And the timing is suspicious." He looked at me directly now, all the earlier distance gone from his expression, replaced with sharp focus.

“It happened less than a year after her father died, right as questions were starting to circulate about succession I assume."

I considered that, turning it over slowly in my head, weighing every angle the way I'd been trained to since I was old enough to sit through a war council.

"You think Aldric had something to do with it."

"I think," Vizellan said carefully, "that a man who married into power doesn't always enjoy sharing it. Especially not with a wife whose bloodline outranked his own, who could have challenged him for the throne at any point if she'd chosen to exercise that right."

I exhaled slowly, the implications settling heavy in my chest, threading through everything I thought I'd understood about the man we'd been negotiating with for the better part of a year. Well, a year if all things were considered.

"We need more before we say anything," I said finally. "To anyone. Including her."

Vizellan nodded slowly, the muscle in his jaw working once before settling. "Agreed."

But neither of us moved to leave the room, both of us caught in the same uncomfortable silence, turning the same dark suspicion over and over until it had nowhere left to go but toward whatever truth was waiting on the other side of it.

Because it could mean the man who’d fought so hard to protect his daughter, might have removed his own wife from the equation the moment she became inconvenient to his rule.

The old fucker might have built his entire kingship on a foundation that had nothing to do with merit and everything to do with what he'd been willing to do to keep it.

It also meant Pheeona had been raised most of her entire life by a man who may have killed her mother just to keep the crown on his own head.