Fated Eclipse: The Illegitimate Princess And Her Alpha Suitors

Chapter 162: The Street That Argued

Helen shook her head slowly, a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth despite everything, and moved along the benches to refill the mugs that had been abandoned mid-drink during the laughter.

The noise settled gradually — not all at once, but in stages, the way laughter always wound itself down when there was more to watch.

And there was more to watch.

Baron Redwick spoke.

And even Mercer’s Row, which had opinions about most things and hesitated to keep them to itself, found something worth listening to in the way he talked about Stoneford.

He spoke like a man accounting for something. Like every word was being weighed before it was spent. And the people of Mercer’s Row, who knew what it was to be careful with things of value, heard that.

When he mentioned the academy, Brianna sat up.

She had been half-listening, her attention drifting as it often did, but the word academy pulled her back as though she had been waiting for it.

”Mama,” she said.

”Mm,” Helen said, already knowing.

”Can I—”

”Bri—”

”Can I go?” Brianna pressed.

Before Helen could answer — before she could even draw a full breath to attempt one — Jacob leaned across the bench toward Brianna with the expression of a man who had made a decision and saw no reason to delay it.

”Aye, ye can go,” he said.

Brianna blinked at him.

”We’ll make sure of it,” Jacob said simply.

The wiry man from the market district nodded.

”We’ll send gold if ye need it,” he said.

”Aye,” said the man with silver at his temples. ”What’s coin for, if not somethin’ worth spendin’ it on?”

”She’ll be the smartest one there,” the heavyset man declared, with the absolute conviction of someone who had decided this was simply a fact and required no supporting evidence.

”Smarter than the lot of ’em,” another agreed.

”She already is,” someone else said.

Brianna looked around at all of them.

Then she smiled — wide and unguarded and entirely genuine — the smile of a child who had just learned that the world occasionally contained exactly what she needed.

Helen watched her daughter.

And said nothing.

She just shook her head slowly, with the quiet expression of a woman who was going to have a great deal to say later and was simply choosing not to say it here.

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The crowd settled into itself as drinks were passed and the broadcast continued.

One name after another.

The rhythm of the evening was comfortable now, something that came from a shared purpose and enough ale to smooth the edges of whatever remained rough.

Until the red-haired duke took his position.

The noise did not die immediately.

It thinned first — that same uneven thinning that had happened at the beginning of the evening — and then it stopped altogether.

Even the children who had been playing around paid attention now.

Duke Valenridge sat.

And Mercer’s Row watched him the way it watched things that it did not entirely know what to do with — with attention that was not quite suspicion and not quite admiration and was probably somewhere between them.

He spoke.

And when he leaned forward.

When his voice shifted just enough that the weight of what he was saying became unmistakable, things erupted.

”Did he just—”

The voice came from somewhere in the middle of the crowd and the owner was unable to even finish his words.

Laughter erupted and voices crossed over each other, opinions colliding, arguments forming in real time without anyone having agreed to have them.

”He called ’em out!” the heavyset man said, sitting up fully for the first time all evening. ”Right there on the veil! In front of the whole kingdom!”

”He can’t do that,” a woman near the back said.

”He just did,” said the man beside her.

”That’s not—ye can’t just—” she started.

”He did though,” Jacob said, his voice cutting through the noise with the calm of someone who had already processed what he had seen and moved on to what it meant. ”He did it plain as anything. Didn’t dress it up. Didn’t apologise for it.”

”And he should’ve,” the woman said. ”This ain’t his territory, this is the king’s territory.”

”So?” Olly asked.

She turned to look at him.

”Because ye don’t—” she started. ”Ye can’t just—”

”Why not?” Olly said.

”If it’s true,” he continued, ”why shouldn’t he say it?”

”Because it’s the royal family,” she said.

”Aye,” Olly said. ”And?”

That split the crowd neatly in two.

One half agreed with the woman — that some things were not said, regardless of whether they were true, because the cost of saying them was simply too high and the world worked the way it worked and you lived inside it or you did not.

The other half agreed with Olly — that truth was truth, and a man who could say it plainly in front of the whole kingdom while sitting in a palace interview with a royal family that clearly wished him somewhere else was not a man to be dismissed.

The argument went back and forth for a while, neither side expected to resolve it, but both sides felt strongly about it.

And even as they argued, the drinks kept on flowing. The children just stared back and forth as the argument continued without knowing who to even support.

Until a name was called and the woman who appeared on the veil was not a duke or a marquess or an earl.

It was a woman with brown hair and amber eyes in a seat that looked too large for her and hands that were folded too carefully on her lap.

And Mercer’s Row went quiet immediately.

The argument stopped mid-sentence.

The mugs were lowered.

Brianna, who had been leaning forward to add something to the disagreement that had been building on her face for the last several exchanges, closed her mouth — though she wouldn’t have been able to say anything anyway.

And every eye on Mercer’s Row fixed itself on the scrying veil.

Not even a sound was heard on the street.