He'd been pacing back and forth for the past hour. No document kept his attention and his mind kept slipping to the drawer of letters addressed to another man. He hadn't meant to read the first one. But once he'd broken the seal, the rest felt inevitable. That was the problem with lines; once crossed, they blurred.
Leoric came to the end of the large carpet, turned, and started back down the length of it, his mind sinking into memories from that morning.
He expected her to do something after the gathering she'd walked into. But with the attempt on her life and how shaken she was, he figured she'd need time. Clearly he figured wrong. Good thing he was hardly wrong, not never wrong.
"He's been pacing ever since he'd put down that Produce Docket," Kaly muttered and he almost forgot she was here.
"At this rate, he'll be wearing a hole in the floor and we'll have to catch him in the ballroom underneath," Valric jested and Leoric wondered when he'd arrived.
"You know I can hear you," Leoric said dryly.
"You're supposed to, we're an honest family, even our judgement is on display." Valric kicked off the far wall and ventured closer, a big grin on his face—he was enjoying this too much. "Tell me, Leo, what's got you pacing? Lover's dispute?"
He was definitely enjoying himself.
Valric had watched the 'love story' from stony beach, to contractual marriage deal, to wedding—well returning home married.
Ever since he heard that the pretty woman on the beach was the prince's ornament, Valric had happily become invested. He said it was because he wanted Leoric to be happy. That might hold some truth, but he leaned into the delicious news a bit too much and found it far too amusing.
"Not today, Valric." He stopped, his displeasure sitting solely on his shoulders and Valric ate it up.
"I thought things were going well," Kaly spoke up, her tone impassive. "Didn't you two recently..." Her words faded as Valric's brows rose, her words pretexting another night in the office, and yet again, something else for Valric to gobble up as gossip.
"Husband and wife in more than just name now?" He perched on the back of a sofa, smirking like he'd just found gold—or had revenge, both tended to be the same thing for the two of them.
"Don't you have something else to be doing?" Leoric asked instead, ignoring his gloating behaviour. Not now.
Valric's expression shifted, the delight still ghosting his features, but a dark satisfaction shifted there now. Valric enjoyed many things. 'Questioning' uninvited guests being one of them. But Leoric supposed, people often enjoyed what they were good at.
"He gave up the ghost." Valric stretched tired muscles and let himself flop back onto the sofa behind him, staring up unbothered by the words he just uttered.
Normally, a person would be bothered with torturing anyone, and a torturer would be bothered with their prey dying. But by the haunting grin on the man's face, his prey only died when he was allowed.
"You going to give me a report or torture me instead?"
Valric laughed, carefree and cheerful. "Torturing you with questions does sound fun... Tell you what, I'll give you my report if you tell me one thing." Something glinted in his eyes and Leoric sighed heavily.
He leaned on the desk, eyes trained on the letter sitting atop it and it looked back as if challenging him. It had Rhosyn's penmanship all over it, hugging the prince's name like a caress. It was the letter she 'sent' just before the bloc's gathering. Leoric hadn't had time to read it yet. Now he felt like he couldn't...
He never meant to disregard her privacy. To suffocate her into a cage of control he couldn't afford to let up on. She refused to see her enemies—her true enemies—for her sense of loyalty, and they didn't deserve her.
Leoric closed his eyes, if only so he didn't have to lose a staring contest with a letter. Then he nodded to him. Anything to speed up this torment.
"I'm curious, I thought you liked a challenge—that's what attracted you to her in the first place. So..." Valric sat up, his legs still draped awkwardly over the back cushions of the sofa. "Why do you look like you've given up, Leo?"
The words hit harder than Leoric thought they would and he gripped the letter in his hand.
It was an interesting idea.
Maybe he gave up on the possibility of getting her to trust him. Every time it looked like they'd stepped closer to something that felt real—a shared breath in a carriage, a kiss that wasn't strategy—something would fall apart and the ground would give way. And if that didn't happen, Rhosyn would sabotage it herself.
He'd convinced himself that the least he could do was keep her alive. But even that was proving difficult. Valric was right—she was a challenge.
"Because there's nothing to salvage." Leoric opened his desk drawer and dropped the letter inside.
Stealing a glimpse at where Rhosyn's head was by reading her letters to the prince wasn't worth the discord he created. The words themselves weren't outright costly. They were lonely and full of fear... Of him. And he just proved her right.
"Happy now?" his voice was bitter and gaze sharp as he met Valric's.
But it was one of the rare moments where he didn't grin away awkward conversations or mock situations to make them lighter. Instead, his face fell straight and a grim seriousness settled in.
"You know your sorrow makes me sad Leo," he expressed, pulling himself up and over the back of the sofa to stand. "Besides, Kaly has mentioned what the two of you are like when you're together."
"Perfectly matched in all things—including your attraction to one another," Kaly said, giving Leoric a stern look which all but explained all the near-kisses and charged touches she'd witnessed.
Valric's hand clamped down on Leoric's shoulder. "I'm sure she'll come around, just be honest with her," he encouraged, optimistically. "You know she feels cut off and alone. So remind her she's not."
Valric's grey eyes held that surreal softness. For a man who normally laughed his way through life, or caused agony for those who'd inflicted pain on them, he held an eerie sweetness about himself now.
"So, go make your peace, Leo." Valric's classic grin split across his face and a twinkle in his eyes. "And whatever you do, keep her from the crown—their assassin got too close this time."
It was the third one already and they'd just returned a week ago. If he hadn't been so busy with the bloc guests, he would've caught the assassin before he'd even entered her room.
"Fine." Leoric fisted the letters, not feeling the confidence Valric had.
"Just be your loveable self Leo, and she won't be able to help but fall for you."