To heal a Rogue

LYSANDER

The elder led me down a corridor I hadn’t walked in years, and it took me a moment to realize where we were actually headed. My stomach dropped slightly when the doors finally opened onto my uncle’s chambers, the steward already inside, working a garment bag open across the foot of the bed. Burgundy fabric spilled out from beneath the tissue paper, close enough to the color Bonnie had chosen that I felt something small and warm move through my chest despite everything else pressing down on it.

Two more elders appeared in the doorway before I’d even crossed the threshold. One of them held out a leather pad with several pages clipped inside.

”You’ll need to memorize this,” he said.

I took it and flipped through the first page, scanning the careful, formal language, then looked back up at the three of them standing shoulder to shoulder like a small tribunal.

”There’s clearly something else you want to say,” I said. ”So say it.”

They exchanged a glance among themselves, the kind that always preceded bad news dressed up in careful phrasing.

”There’s been word,” the first one said, ”that you struck a sentinel over the girl. That you and your cousin came to blows because of the matter as well.” His eyes were steady on mine. ”Tonight is critical, Alpha Lysander. If there is anything we should know about what you believe you can and cannot do where she’s concerned, this is the moment to say it.”

”The crown is at its most vulnerable right now,” the second added. ”Strength must be visible. There will already be questions about legitimacy, even with the will read aloud and witnessed. You’ll need to prove you deserve that seat, not simply that you were handed it.”

”You have nothing to worry about,” I said. ”Is that all?”

The third elder folded his hands in front of him. ”We still don’t fully understand why the late King changed his succession so abruptly. It’s clear it has something to do with his son. Perhaps his relationship with the Queen as well, given that she’s currently being cared for in some run-down healer’s outpost instead of the royal infirmary here.” He paused deliberately. ”There were also several deaths among the healers in this house weeks back. Deaths the King himself signed off on.”

Something cold moved through me at that.

”He did?” I said. Because such cruelty did not sound like him.

They exchanged another look, quieter this time, and way more weighted.

”All of this leads some of us to suspect,” the first elder said, ”that your cousin may be dangerous. That he could have had a hand in what happened to the King.”

”I won’t lie to you,” I said. ”That’s part of why I accepted this. I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s noticed his behavior. But I don’t want us building conclusions out of assumptions alone.”

”You were close to your uncle in his final hours,” the second said. ”Close enough that you were there when he named you heir that same night. Did he tell you anything? Anything at all that might explain what’s happening now?”

I thought of the word infertile, spoken quietly in a library that now smelled permanently of blood. I thought of how little I actually trusted these three men standing in front of me, how carefully they’d need to be handled before I gave them anything that might be turned into a weapon against either Johann or myself.

”No,” I said.

They studied me a moment longer, then nodded to each other, some silent agreement passing between them.

”Alpha Prince Johann will be your greatest threat tonight,” the first said. ”Be wary of him and mentally prepare for whatever he might attempt.”

”I would like to see him try.”

”We do hope Beta Bradley arrives tonight,” the second added, ”after your speech, once you’ve been properly presented. The Elder Circle will need to convene for your initiation.”

”I’ve never heard of any initiation,” I said. ”What is that about?”

”You’ll learn of it in due time.”

The steward cleared his throat from where he stood beside the bed. ”I’ve finished steaming your attire, Alpha Lysander. I can assist you in dressing whenever you’re ready.”

”I need to bathe first,” I said.

”I can help with that as well.”

”Yeah... I’d like to be alone to shower,” I said, and something in my tone must have carried enough finality that none of them argued further.

They filed out one by one, murmuring their goodbyes, leaving me standing in the middle of a room that had belonged to a dead man only a day ago. I looked at the steamed burgundy fabric hanging from the wardrobe door, then let my eyes drift over the rest of the room, the heavy furniture, the cold hearth, the faint impression still visible in the carpet where a chair had once stood before someone dragged it away.

I felt like a fraud. Usurping Uncle Cornelius’s own chambers, stepping into a space still soaked in the memory of him, while I hadn’t even decided yet whether I actually wanted any of this.

But evening was close now, and there wasn’t time to sit with that discomfort properly. I stripped out of my clothes and walked into the adjoining bathroom, turning the shower on and letting the water run hot before I stepped beneath it.

Standing there, steam curling up around me, my mind kept circling back to what the elders had said.

Dead healers.

Healers my own uncle had apparently signed off on killing.

Why? Was it simply to protect the secret of his infertility? To bury the truth so deep that no one alive could ever confirm it independently?

That didn’t sound like the uncle I remembered.

But then again, I was beginning to understand that royal wolves and empathy rarely occupied the same room for long. Every layer I peeled back from this power revealed something else rotted underneath it, some new cruelty dressed up as necessity, and I was starting to wonder if there was any version of my uncle that hadn’t been capable of exactly the kind of ruthlessness everyone kept implying that I needed to embody.

I let the water run over my face and made myself a quiet promise. Whatever had happened to those healers, whatever secret they’d died with or at least the reason for why they had to die, I intended to find out before the night was finished with me.

I had a sneaking suspicion that it was all connected.