News from Ravelocke was bleak. Master Oswin sent her a letter, not even a full day and Lord Merrow's men were taking back control. What little power she had, vanished as soon as she did. Rhosyn crumpled the letter in her hand and looked down at the finance ledger Oswin copied for her. It was madness how quickly corruption could suffocate a town, let alone a region.
For once, numbers didn't click comfortably into place and pacing her room felt pointless. She'd restricted herself for too long, there was a whole castle to roam, actual fresh air to breathe—though it was mostly cold.
Rhosyn took to the halls, intending on the archery range. It had quickly become her favourite place—somewhere she could hurt something, even if it was just wood.
There was something different in the way the corridors buzzed, a new energy that she hadn't experienced in the castle yet. When she came to the main hall, she discovered why. A number of nobles, all of the northern regions—the Northern Bloc.
The air changed immediately and Rhosyn's eyes locked with Karsyn's. By the look of him, he wasn't surprised she'd stumble upon them, but the tension in his shoulders told her he wasn't pleased by her appearance.
Whispers already stole across the room and so Rhosyn decided to make her entrance, heading straight for Karsyn. Her court-room composure slipped into place and it felt like walking into every ballroom in the kingdom—like she was the odd one out, the outsider.
Her skin prickled the closer she got to him and when there was no more space, she had no more words—but she found some.
"Your Grace." She curtsied.
"Rhosyn, can we do this after?" he asked, steel in his eyes and a mask of his own.
The way he said her name still travelled through her, but she'd become good at pretending.
"And what is it you're afraid of?" Rhosyn hushed, the words a creeping fog of the coming danger.
She didn't know why she was angry to be honest. It might be because if she wasn't, she'd have to feel something else, and she was scared what that could be. Aggression became her new armour and she clung to it.
"I don't think I'm the one afraid," his words came out like the sun, shining light on what she tried to conceal.
He infuriated her. He was the calm and the storm, and she didn't know if she could weather either of them.
"I need that clause you stole the other day," Karsyn continued, his seemingly cool exterior unfazed.
Though Rhosyn's didn't hold so well. His words conjured up the day in his office, the heat from the moment sitting in her cheeks now. She'd convinced herself that she did it because she needed control, but she'd never felt so powerless, so small.
He was referring to the Marriage Clause she'd swiped, hoping it was something from her uncle's safe. In the end, it was one of her own documents that Karsyn had been studying. For some reason, that crawled across her skin more than anything, and then she was thinking of skin again.
Noticing her silence, he elaborated. "It's important—"
"Your Graces," Lord Dowly stepped in, grinning at Karsyn like he knew a secret and for all Rhosyn knew, he did.
Karsyn told his 'allies' everything. Right now, she stood in the middle of a hall, not a wife, but as a condition on a piece of paper. The mouths that prattled around them, whispered their judgement. Rhosyn was used to it. But what she wasn't used to, was standing next to the duke who could read her regardless of what armour she chose, who publicised her choices like she was the latest article for the north.
"I hear the south are still talking about your wedding," Dowly nattered on. "I even hear that a certain royal someone has not been seen since." He chuckled and the words cut through her.
It had been over a week already and her thoughts of Edrien were hazy. Sometimes she found herself wondering if under the pressure and stress of her wedding day that she blew everything out of proportion. Now that she thought back, the room never felt like it stopped spinning. Maybe it was regret. Maybe she missed standing in a hall very much like this one and feeling like she had a friend.
Edrien wanted her to return with him to Hemsgate. Maybe he was trying to protect her like she asked him to all those weeks ago. He was worried what Karsyn would do when he got his hands on the safe contents—the documents that'll outright name Halvar as the perpetrator of his family's massacre.
Maybe she'd been wrong.
"You've just arrived Dowly, let's get you a drink," Karsyn said, but Rhosyn wasn't paying attention.
That was until his hand grazed her elbow, his breath on her neck and she curled automatically into it.
"I'll be right back," he whispered and she heard the other words he tried to hold back, for fear she'd rebel—stay here.
She tried to ignore how as soon as he disappeared, she felt alone and she wondered if maybe Edrien was trying to save her from herself. She'd let herself be stranded and isolated. But she could live with that if it kept the kingdom from falling apart.
At least then she'd know what a kingdom's worth. The financial corruption and failure of a once proud petty kingdom, a descendant from its kings and her happiness—though somehow she never thought she'd have to literally give up her everything.
"So, you're the southerner that Duke Leoric took an interest in. You're smaller than I thought, prettier too."
Rhosyn turned to the older woman, catching the importance she granted herself in the way she looked down upon her. Or maybe that was just something that northerners had to their advantage—height.
But Rhosyn knew this one didn't like her. She wore her disdain like a cloak and distrust in the angle of her spectacles.
"His Grace is too confident in his assumption that he can contain you," the woman's words cut and Rhosyn wondered how far from the truth she really was.
This woman was one of Karsyn's allies, one he'd tell everything to. So would it really be so far-fetched that Rhosyn was being caged—put away for a rainy day.
"You are after all the niece to his family's executioner—I wonder if we'd find your name next to your uncle's."
Now Rhosyn saw who this woman was. She was someone who'd been battling the south for as long as Rhosyn's been alive. It left her bitter. But that didn't mean she wasn't dangerous.
There was something about the way her words came harsh and her eyes pierced. She was someone who used intel like fireworks—spectacle and explosive. She was intelligent, that was for sure.
"I was eight when that order went out," Rhosyn refuted it.
"But you don't deny that it was your family who signed the order."
"There's no point, His Grace knows—"
"And what is it that I know?" His voice entered the conversation as easily as his hand slipped around Rhosyn's waist. "Lady Thorne?"