Kaelen’s POV

Something was wrong with my wife this morning.

I’d felt it the moment she turned to face me in bed. That smile—too bright, too wide, too perfectly assembled, like porcelain painted to look like warmth. I’d asked if she was all right. She said yes. She said she slept well.

Elara was a magnificent liar when she wanted to be.

The memory of her fingers knotting my cravat kept replaying behind my eyes. The way her palms lingered on my chest. The way she kissed me—deep, desperate, like she was trying to swallow something whole before it disappeared.

I should have stayed.

"Your Majesty Nightfire."

Sylvia’s voice cut through my thoughts like a blade through silk. She stood at the edge of my desk, posture immaculate, her tailored court dress not carrying a single crease. A stack of documents rested in her arms.

"The Southern Alliance treaty requires your seal before the two o’clock deadline. And the meeting with the Southern Alliance has been rescheduled."

I stared at the papers without seeing them.

"Your Majesty?"

"Leave them."

She placed the stack on my desk with careful precision. "There’s also the quarterly revenue report from the eastern provinces. Lord Chancellor Maren requested your review before—"

"I said leave them, Sylvia."

A pause. Professional. Measured. She inclined her head. "Of course, Your Majesty."

She retreated to the side table where she organized her own correspondence, and I was left alone with the silence and the gnawing thing in my chest that wouldn’t stop biting.

I pulled the communication stone from my breast pocket. Turned it over in my fingers. The surface was smooth, cool, faintly humming with enchantment.

She’s fine. She’s home with Lyra and the nanny. She’s fine.

But that smile. That gods-damned smile.

Elara smiled when she was happy—soft, crooked, usually aimed at the children. She smiled when she was amused—a quick flash, there and gone, like sunlight between clouds. She smiled when she was being polite—measured, careful, perfectly calibrated for whoever stood before her.

This morning’s smile belonged to none of those categories. This morning’s smile was a wall. A barricade dressed in brightness, built to keep me on the other side.

I’d seen that smile once before. The night she told me about Gareth and Isolde. How they’d betrayed her. How her adoptive parents had thrown her out. She’d smiled through the entire story, and her eyes had been absolutely dead.

My fingers tightened around the stone.

It’s nearly noon. Just check.

I pressed my thumb to the stone’s center and channeled a thread of intent. It pulsed once. Twice. Three times.

Then her voice came through. Soft. Slightly breathless.

"Kaelen."

The knot in my chest loosened by a fraction. "Hey, baby. How’s your morning?"

"Good. Just feeding Lyra." A small sound in the background—a satisfied gurgle, the unmistakable noise of a baby who’d gotten exactly what she wanted. "She’s in a mood today. Pulled my hair twice already."

I leaned back in my chair. "That’s my girl."

A laugh. Light. Airy.

Wrong.

It was the laugh she used at court functions. The one designed to fill space without revealing anything underneath.

"We’re fine here," she said. "Valerius is at the academy. Everything’s perfectly normal."

Perfectly normal. People in genuinely normal situations didn’t use the word "perfectly."

"Ela—"

"I love you," she said. Quick. Almost urgent. "You know that, right?"

My hand stilled on the armrest. "Of course I know that."

"Good." Another pause. Lyra babbled in the background. "Valerius and I will be waiting for you when you get home. Don’t work too hard."

"I won’t."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

"Okay." Her voice wavered for just an instant—a hairline fracture in the mask. Then it smoothed over. "I’ll see you tonight."

The stone went dark.

I sat motionless for a long time. The documents on my desk remained untouched. Sylvia’s pen scratched softly across parchment somewhere behind me. Outside the window, the capital sprawled beneath a pale sky, thousands of lives moving in their ordinary patterns.

I felt worse than before the call.

Everything she said was right. The words were right, the tone was right, the content was right. She mentioned the children. She said she loved me. She told me to come home.

But there was something underneath all of it. Something I couldn’t name. Like hearing a familiar song played in the wrong key—close enough to fool most people, but I wasn’t most people. I was her mate. I knew every note of her voice the way I knew my own heartbeat.

And that voice had been saying goodbye.

No. I shoved the thought down hard. You’re being paranoid. She’s tired. She said herself that yesterday’s routine wore her out. She’s home with the baby. She’s fine.

By four o’clock, I was completely exhausted by the quarterly reports and Sylvia’s constant low-level interruptions. The afternoon dragged like a wounded animal. I forced myself through the treaty documents, signing where she indicated, but reading the figures without absorbing a single one. Every few minutes my hand drifted to the communication stone in my pocket, turning it over, over, over.

Sylvia appeared again at the edge of my desk. "Your Majesty, but there is a five o’clock meeting with the envoys who fly back to the Southern Alliance tomorrow morning—"

"Push it."

She blinked. "I’m sorry?"

"Tell them their departure is delayed by a day. We’ll meet tomorrow."

"Your Majesty, the delegation has been waiting for nearly—"

"Then they can wait one more day." I was already standing, pushing back from the desk. My chair scraped against the stone floor. "Reschedule everything after this hour. I’m leaving."

Sylvia’s composure held, but only just. A flicker of genuine concern crossed her features. "Is everything all right, Your Majesty? You’ve seemed... distracted today. If there’s anything I can—"

"There’s nothing you can do." The words came out harsher than I intended. I didn’t correct them. "Handle the envoys. That’s an order."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

I was already through the door.

The corridor blurred around me. Guards snapped to attention as I passed, but I didn’t see any of them. With every step and every failed connection playing in my head, a primal instinct deep within me screamed a warning that something was very, very wrong. I pulled out the stone again as I rushed toward the griffin platform.

The communication stone pulsed once. Twice. Three times.

Then fell into dead silence.

"Hello, the person you are trying to reach, Elara, is temporarily unavailable..."

As I strode across the griffin platform toward my mount, I tried again.

Once more, it went straight to dead silence.

By the time I was steering my griffin toward home, I had already tried to call three more times.