Regress
Chapter 4: The Garden Alcove Promise
The Conservatory Hall blazed with candlelight. Crystal chandeliers threw fractured rainbows across silk gowns and polished medals, and the air hummed with the particular pitch of nobility performing for one another. Elena accepted a glass of chilled wine from a passing attendant and let her gaze drift across the crowd until it snagged on honey-blonde hair.
Seraphina cut through the gathering like a blade through cream.
“Darling Elena.” Her gloved hands reached out, capturing Elena’s free hand with theatrical relief. The rose-scented fan fluttered near her throat. “When I heard about the attack on your dear brother—my heart simply stopped. You must be utterly shattered.”
The performance deserved applause. Every word, every gesture, calibrated to broadcast intimate concern to any watching eyes.
“How kind of you to worry.” Elena’s voice carried the same melodic polish it always had. Measured. Warm as ash-covered embers. “Lian is recovering well. The duke’s intervention was most timely.”
Seraphina’s lashes dipped. “The duke. Yes—I noticed he has become quite the fixture at Rhee Manor.” Her fan stilled. “One might wonder what prompted such devotion, after so long an absence.”
There it is.
Elena let the silence stretch a heartbeat too long. Then she leaned in, lowering her voice to the conspiratorial register Seraphina favored when mining secrets.
“I shouldn’t speak of it. Not here.”
The fan snapped shut. “Elena, we are practically sisters. Whatever burden you carry—”
“It isn’t a burden.” Elena glanced around the hall, then back, her violet eyes catching the chandelier light. “Mother’s heirloom. The Rhee hourglass pendant. I found her final letter—tucked behind a loose stone in the west study.” She let the lie breathe. “The pendant wasn’t lost. She hid it. And where she hid it contains something the crown would find quite illuminating.”
Seraphina’s expression softened into practiced sympathy. But her knuckles whitened around the fan.
“Goodness. And you haven’t told anyone?”
“Only you.” Elena smiled, and meant none of it. “I haven’t decided whether to retrieve it before the Queen’s Inquisitor summons me, or let sleeping secrets lie.”
“Summons you?” The words came too fast.
“This morning. A royal courier.” Elena touched the hourglass brooch at her throat. “Timing is everything, wouldn’t you say?”
Seraphina’s fan flicked open, then closed. “Darling, I’ve just remembered—I promised Lady Halwick I would find her before the third course. Do excuse me.”
She was gone before Elena could reply, her honey-blonde head cutting a swift path toward the far doors.
Straight to the palace mage’s wing. Predictable to the last.
Elena exhaled. One false trail laid. One viper slithering toward bait that didn’t exist.
Marie held very still in the servant corridor.
Her back pressed against cold stone. Between the clatter of the kitchen and the muffled strains of violins, no one had noticed her crouch to retrieve the fallen letter. A harried courier had dropped it near the delivery entrance—seal already cracked, as if the wax had given way mid-transit.
She shouldn’t open it.
She opened it.
The script was tight, bureaucratic—a mage registry dispatch. Her eyes skimmed past formal headers until a name locked her breath.
Lian Rhee. Unregistered affinity suspected. Monitor and report.
Below it, separated by a line break, three words in a different hand. An older hand. Cursive so deliberate it felt carved.
Rhee power slumbers.
Marie’s fingers went cold. She folded the letter twice and slipped it into her sleeve before the kitchen boy rounded the corner with a tray of candied figs.
Lian tugged at his collar for the fifth time.
“Why does everyone keep looking at me?”
Elena kept her voice low. “Because you look like you’re expecting an axe to fall. Shoulders back.”
He obeyed, but his thumb worried the charm bracelet—the little silver stag clinking against a copper sunburst. A nervous habit she’d watched him develop at the academy. Endearing, in the manor. Dangerous, here.
“Lady Rhee.”
The voice came from behind. Not a question.
Elena turned. The Queen’s Inquisitor wore grey velvet and the kind of stillness that announced authority before a title did. His eyes—pale, unreadable—had settled on Lian’s wrist.
“An unusual accessory for a young gentleman.”
Lian’s hand froze mid-fidget. “It’s—they’re charms. From my sister. They’re nothing.”
The inquisitor’s mouth didn’t move. “Academy trinkets often carry more than sentiment. Student craft, was it?”
Before Lian could stammer another syllable, a wall of black and charcoal stepped between them.
“Inquisitor.” Kael Ashford’s tone could have frozen brandy. “The boy is under my protection. If you have questions regarding Rhee Academy matters, Ashford Keep will receive them formally.”
A beat. The inquisitor’s pale eyes flicked to Kael’s left wrist—where the silver brand glimmered beneath his glove—then back to Lian.
“Of course, Your Grace. I merely admire the craftsmanship.”
He withdrew with a nod that promised nothing.
Elena’s hand found Lian’s shoulder. “Breathe.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You did nothing wrong. That’s what they notice.”
His throat bobbed. The stag charm glinted under the chandeliers like a signal fire neither of them understood yet.
The banquet wound down into dessert courses and emptier halls. Elena slipped through the conservatory’s arched doorway into the garden alcove, where night-blooming jasmine coiled around iron trellises and the violins faded to a distant murmur.
Kael followed without a word. Without her needing to ask.
“The inquisitor won’t forget,” she said quietly. “Lian is marked now.”
“I’ll increase the patrol at his academy lodgings.”
“That won’t stop a crown inquiry.”
“It will delay one.”
She turned. He stood closer than she’d expected—close enough that the cedar-and-smoke scent of his magic registered before the cold precision of his face did. His gloves were off. She hadn’t noticed him remove them.
“You’re staring at my hands.”
“You never take those off in public.”
“The brand.” His voice dropped, the formal edge softening into something rawer. “It burns when I wear them too long now. Since the oath reaffirmed.”
Elena’s gaze dropped to his left wrist. The silver mark shimmered faintly, pulsing in rhythm with—she pressed her own wrist against her gown. The matching brand answered. A dull, steady ache she’d grown so accustomed to she sometimes forgot it was there.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not the way you mean.”
He lifted his hand. Slowly. Giving her time to step back.
She didn’t.
His knuckles brushed the inside of her wrist. Bare skin against bare skin. The contact was accidental—or would have looked accidental to anyone watching. But neither of them moved to break it.
Heat spread from the touch point. Not the violent heat of his fire magic—something quieter. Banked embers. Her pulse stuttered and then steadied, beating against the place where his fingers rested.
Don’t name this. Don’t speak it.
Kael’s grey eyes held hers. Gold flecks stirred in the depths, embers catching light.
“Elena.”
Just her name. No title. The single syllable landed like a stone dropped into still water.
Her lips parted. Nothing came out.
Footsteps clicked on the conservatory stone. A young page in royal livery appeared at the alcove’s entrance, crisp and impervious as a blade.
“Lady Rhee. A message from Her Majesty’s Inquisitor, by order of the Queen.”
Kael’s hand withdrew. The cold rushed back in.
Elena accepted the folded parchment, broke the gilt seal, and read the three lines of elegant script.
Lady Rhee. Your attendance is commanded at a private audience with Her Majesty the Queen. Two days hence, at the Hour of the Silver Bell. Neither escort nor excuse.
Below it, in a hand far less formal, two words had been scratched as if an afterthought:
Come alone.