Read The Forsworn and The Princess :: Chapter Nine: The Cost of Knowing

It begins with a scream.

Not from within the palace, but just beyond it — in the lower courtyard, where the servants’ paths cross the western wall.

Sharp.

Sudden.

Cut off too fast.

I’m in the library when I hear it. Kaelis is already moving before I’m fully on my feet. He doesn’t wait for permission. He never has.

We reach the courtyard within minutes. Two guards are already there, speaking low, faces pale under their helms. A servant kneels in the grass, hands trembling, blood on her palms. She’s whispering something over and over.

A prayer.

Or a warning.

At her feet lies a man.

Clothes marked with Evasian colors.

Throat cut.

I feel my stomach twist.

The guards don’t speak right away. Neither does Kaelis.

The silence hangs heavy — thick with the weight of something deliberate.

Lady Maelis arrives moments later, her face unreadable. “Your Highness,” she says to me, voice cool. “You should return to the inner wing.”

I don’t move. “Who is he?”

“Part of the prince’s delegation,” she says. “Not noble. Not senior.”

“But important enough to die for something,” I say.

She doesn’t respond.

Kaelis crouches beside the body, eyes scanning the folds of the man’s tunic. He pulls back a sleeve. Etched there, near the wrist, is a faint mark. A sigil burned into the skin — not Valenoran.

Not Arathenian.

Evasian.

I’ve seen it once before.

On the courier they said was carrying the intercepted message.

Kaelis looks up at me, and for once, the answer is in his face before he speaks. “This wasn’t random.”

No.

It wasn’t.

This is a message.

Not sent.

Left.

The council chamber is quiet, but not still.

The kind of quiet that comes before a storm, or after a blow too clean to bleed right away.

I stand at the end of the table, not seated, not waiting to be spoken to.

Lady Maelis is already present, flanked by two senior advisors.

My father sits further back, expression unreadable, one hand resting loosely on the carved armrest of the throne. Kaelis stands behind me. I can feel his presence like armor.

“The man was part of Eiran’s retinue,” I say. “He carried a mark identical to the one we found on the intercepted courier.”

Maelis steeples her fingers. “You are suggesting the prince is involved.”

“No,” I reply, voice sharp. “I’m suggesting he’s dangerous. There’s a difference.”

The room shifts — tension bleeding from every corner.

“He’s already here,” one advisor murmurs. “The engagement is set. If we accuse him—”

“I haven’t accused the prince,” I snap. “But someone wanted him dead. Someone wanted him silenced.”

“And who gains from that?” Maelis presses. “If Eiran had him killed, what does that accomplish?”

“Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps someone else did — to frame him. Or to bury a message no one had the chance to deliver.”

“Speculation.”

“Strategy,” I correct. “Which you value, don’t you, Lady Maelis?”

Her mouth tightens.

“We need to delay again,” I continue. “The banquet. The public address. All of it.”

One of the advisors chimes in, wary. “If we delay twice, Your Highness, we show weakness.”

“If we don’t,” I say, cold and certain, “we show ignorance. And the court bleeds for it.”

That hangs there.

Even my father doesn’t move.

And then— “I agree.”

Everyone turns.

King Aldric’s voice is quieter than usual. Gravel-smooth. Measured. He doesn’t look at me when he speaks. He looks at the tapestry above the far wall — the founding of the kingdom stitched in gold.

“There is rot beneath this alliance,” he says. “Let us not dress it in garlands and call it peace.”

Maelis bows her head.

She doesn’t argue.

But I can feel it.

She’s recalculating.

They all are.

The shadows are longer now.

We’re in the upper barracks — the ones Kaelis uses when he doesn’t want to be found. Stone walls, a narrow fire burning low, and the quiet creak of old floorboards under our boots. It smells of iron and ash and leather, and somehow, I can breathe here.

He leans against the far table, arms crossed.

The firelight sharpens his cheekbones, sets gold along the edges of his armor.

“You were bold,” he says.

“I was right.”

“That doesn’t mean they’ll thank you for it.”

I sink into the chair opposite him. My limbs ache — not from exhaustion, but from tension held too long beneath silk.

“They want order,” I say. “They don’t care if it’s real, so long as it looks intact.”

Kaelis nods once. “That’s how kingdoms rot.”

There’s a pause.

I glance at him. “Did I make a mistake?”

His jaw flexes. “No. But you made a choice.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Yes,” he says, quietly now. “Mistakes you can walk back. Choices… mark you.”

That hits deeper than I expected.

I press a hand to the center of my chest. “Then I think I’ve been marked for a while.”

Kaelis doesn’t argue. He never does unless it matters.

Instead, he unfolds his arms, steps forward, and kneels to one knee beside my chair. It’s not ceremonial. It’s not dramatic.

It’s just him — grounding me, steady as always.

His eyes meet mine. “Whatever this becomes, I’ll be where you are,” he says.

Not behind you.

Not beside you.

Where you are.

And I know what it costs him to say it.

I nod once — not as a princess, not as a woman caught in a crown she didn’t ask for — but simply as Elira.

And then, like the hush before a storm, the knock comes at the door.

A page.

Nervous.

Shifting from foot to foot. “Your Highness… the Prince is requesting your presence. Immediately.”

Of course he is.

The page disappears down the hall, footsteps echoing like a countdown.

I don’t move right away.

The door to Eiran’s chambers stands just ahead — polished mahogany, gilded at the hinges, too beautiful to belong to something sharp. Kaelis is still beside me, though he doesn’t speak.

The quiet stretches.

The fire from the barracks is gone now — the light colder here.

Thinner.

I stare at the door and say, “I know he’s hiding something.”

“You do,” Kaelis replies, simple and sure.

“I know he’s dangerous. I know he’s here for something more than a crown.”

“Still true.”

I fold my arms across my chest, not to protect, but to hold something in. “So why does the thought of facing him feel like walking into a trap I already saw being built?”

Kaelis tilts his head slightly. “Because it still works.”

I glance at him.

He continues, voice lower now, steady: “You’re not afraid of being wrong. You’re afraid of being right… and what that means you’ll have to do next.”

The words land deep.

He’s right.

Again.

It isn’t doubt that makes my hands clench — it’s the knowledge that truth demands action. That if I step into that room and he confirms what I already suspect, I will have to choose what comes after. And it will not be quiet. Not diplomatic. Not reversible.

My stomach knots, not from fear — but from the responsibility of knowing.

Kaelis steps forward, just enough that I feel the warmth of him, the steadiness. “You already decided,” he says. “Now you just have to say it out loud.”

I nod once.

And I step forward.