“She is very special,” he said carefully. “And incredibly dedicated to her responsibilities.”
“My daughter has always been like that,” he explained at last. “Ever since she was a little girl.”
Alaric said nothing. He simply waited, letting the silence do the coaxing.
The king's gaze dropped to the long stretch of oak between them.
“I couldn’t talk to her after her mother died,” he murmured, not quite meeting Alaric’s eyes. “She was eight. Didn't cry, notonce. She just stood beside the casket, still as ice. People praised her composure. Called it royal. I didn’t realize until later that she thought she’d be punished if she didn’t behave that way.”
The words landed heavier than Alaric expected.
“Then came the engagement. She’d known Dasmon since childhood. He died, and again she never cried in front of anyone.”
Rhaedor sighed heavily and leaned back in the chair.
“I know I ask too much of her,” he went on, finally meeting Alaric’s gaze. “But she was born into a kingdom that doesn’t forgive softness. They don’t treat her kindly because I didn’t teach them to. Because if she ever truly tasted freedom, every duty after would feel like a shackle.”
Well. That explained a great deal.
He looked at Rhaedor and wondered whether the man knew how much he had just revealed. Whether he understood the kind of scars he’d helped shape in the daughter he claimed to protect by restraint.
Perhaps he did. Perhaps that was what made it worse.
“One person she opens up with is her maid,” the king stared down at his clasped hands. “The same one who served her mother before she passed. She's always been that way—selective. She doesn't let people in easily. She prefers her books and her paintings...” His voice faltered for a beat, something tightening at the corners of his mouth. “And when she does get excited about something, it’s almost… as if she doesn’t know what to do with it.”
“I see,” Alaric said, keeping his voice even. “But I don’t understand why you’re saying that to me.”
The king didn’t answer right away.
He looked toward the tall windows in his right, where the morning light filtered through the leaded glass in muted streaks of gold.
“She wouldn’t hear it from me,” Rhaedor admitted at last. “Not the way she needs to.”
Alaric studied his profile. How many sons and daughters of crowns walked through life having learned how to negotiate treaties before they’d learned how to name their own feelings?
“She might surprise you,” Alaric murmured, though he wasn’t sure whom he meant to comfort with the words. “If you spoke plainly.”
Rhaedor offered a quiet huff. “That’s not our way in Edrathen.”
“Then maybe it should be.”
Because what kind of man builds a fortress around his daughter and then complains that she doesn’t let anyone in?
Alaric knew the power of influence well. Lucien taught him to ask what’s worth sacrificing. He used to think the answer wasanything. Now he was not sure that was true.
He leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on his knees. “What do you want from me? To fix what you helped shatter?”
Rhaedor met his gaze again, and for a moment the old king looked very tired. “No,” he responded quietly. “I want you to be the one thing I’ve never been able to be for her.”
Alaric’s brows lifted. “Which is?”
“Safe.”
Alaric sat back slowly, dragging in a breath that scraped against something in his chest.
Safe. It was so simple. And so impossible. Because safety, in a world like theirs, was never a guarantee—it was a vow made in defiance of everything that threatened to undo it. And yet, for Evelyne, it felt less like a burden and more like a vow already written into his bones.
He gave a single, deliberate nod.
