I Woke Up Married to the Cursed King

Chapter 13: Chapter 13: The Other Side of the Table

The new bracelet was stronger.

He’d spent two days on it. 27 beads again, but tighter intent, different chanting sequence, the seeds the divine being had selected for precision rather than volume. He’d made it in the early mornings before the palace woke up, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room with the candles low and his voice barely above a breath.

When it was done it sat in his palm and felt right in a way the first one had taken longer to achieve.

He put it on the table and waited for Caelian.

He came in late. Still in his formal clothes, collar loosened, the particular exhaustion of a man who had been performing competence for twelve hours straight.

"How are you feeling," Elian said.

Caelian looked at him. "Not well."

At least he was saying it now. That was something. Three weeks ago he wouldn’t have.

Elian looked at the bracelet on Caelian’s wrist without appearing to look at it.

Four beads darkened.

Four.

Last time he’d checked it was one.

"Anything happen today," he said. Casual. Like he was asking about the weather.

"Nothing specific," Caelian said. He sat on the edge of the bed. Pressed two fingers to his temple. "Council ran long. The northern trade dispute again."

Nothing specific, Elian thought. Four beads in how many days and nothing specific.

He crossed the room. Sat beside him.

"Give me your wrist."

Caelian held it out without question. That was also new. The not questioning.

Elian unclasped the bracelet. Set it aside. Picked up the new one and fastened it in its place, adjusting the fit the way he always did, making sure each bead sat correctly.

He didn’t let go immediately.

Caelian looked at their hands.

"New one," he said.

"The old one was tired," Elian said.

A pause. "Tired."

"It had worked hard." He let go. "This one will work harder."

Caelian looked at the bracelet on his wrist. Then at Elian.

"I don’t understand what you do," he said. Not accusatory. Just — honest. The late-night honesty of someone too tired to perform anything else.

"I know," Elian said.

"But it helps."

"I know that too."

Caelian nodded slowly. Like that was enough for now.

"I’ll be out tomorrow," Elian said. "All day. Take care of yourself."

"Where are you going."

"The capital. Errands."

Caelian looked at him for a moment. Then: "Take a guard."

"I’ll take Mira." The maid. She’d proven herself useful and more importantly discreet.

"A guard," Caelian said again.

"Mira," Elian said pleasantly. "Goodnight, Your Highness."

Caelian’s mouth did something that wasn’t quite a smile. "Goodnight."

They lay down. The room was quiet. The salt bundles in the four corners were fresh — he’d changed them yesterday, the old ones gone grey and dense with everything they’d absorbed.

Elian stared at the ceiling and did not think about the four darkened beads.

He thought about them anyway.

Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow.

He dressed before dawn.

Simple clothes. Nondescript. The kind of thing a merchant’s clerk might wear, or a minor official, or anyone who needed to move through a capital without being looked at twice. He’d raided the back of the wardrobe where the older, plainer things lived.

He looked in the mirror.

Better, he thought. Much better.

Mira was waiting in the side corridor, wrapped in a plain cloak, looking deeply uncertain.

"Your Highness—"

"Don’t," Elian said. "Not today. Not out there." He looked at her. "Not once. Understand?"

She understood. He could see it. She didn’t like it, but she understood.

"What do I call you," she said.

"Elian is fine."

She looked pained.

"You’ll manage," he said. "Come on."

The capital was loud and alive and smelled like bread and horses and something frying in oil somewhere to the left.

Elian walked through it and felt something loosen in his chest that he hadn’t noticed was tight. The anonymity of it. The crowd. Nobody looking at him, nobody bowing, nobody managing their expression carefully before they spoke.

This, he thought. This I know how to do.

They spent the first hour looking.

Not obviously. He’d learned this in three countries — you didn’t ask for the thing you wanted directly. You asked around it. You found the edges of it, the places where it left marks on the capital’s surface, and you followed those marks inward.

He asked about herbalists. About people who dealt in unusual materials. About practitioners of old traditions.

He listened to what people didn’t say as much as what they said.

Mira stayed close and said nothing and only occasionally made a small distressed sound under her breath.

The man was in a narrow side street off the market.

He was old. Sitting on a low stool outside a doorway so dark it looked solid. In front of him, laid out on a cloth, were stones and bones and a few things Elian didn’t have names for in this world but recognized by function.

He was the right kind of person. Elian could feel it. freewebnøvel.com

He slowed. Stopped.

He looked at the display like a man browsing. Like he’d happened past and something had caught his eye.

The old man looked at him.

"Looking for something specific," he said. His voice was unhurried. The voice of a man who had been asked questions his whole life and knew how to wait.

"A working," Elian said. "A specific kind."

He kept his voice low. Even. A man with money and a problem and the sense to know where to bring both. He described what he wanted — framed as a commission, as something he needed done to someone who had wronged him. The ritual burial. The binding. The sending. He used the right hesitations, the right pauses, the body language of someone who had made a decision they weren’t entirely comfortable with but had committed to anyway.

He’d played this role a hundred times from the other side of the table.

Turns out it translated.

The old man listened without expression. When Elian finished he was quiet for a long moment.

Then he looked at him directly for the first time.

"How much," he said, "are you willing to pay?"

And Elian heard the divine being’s voice in his head, clear as if it were standing beside him.

Everything comes with a price. Never look at anything as less than that.

Go in knowing what you’re not willing to pay. frёeωebɳovel.com

He looked at the old man across the cloth of stones and bones.

He thought about Caelian’s wrist. Four darkened beads.

He thought about what he had. What he was willing to give. Where the line was.

Equal exchange, he thought. He’ll make it sound reasonable even if it isn’t.

"That," Elian said, "depends entirely on what you’re offering."

The old man smiled.

It was not a particularly reassuring smile.

"Sit down," he said.