I Woke Up Married to the Cursed King

Chapter 24: Chapter 24: What Are You Looking For

Caelian noticed on a Wednesday.

They were walking back from the council wing — one of the rare moments they moved through the palace at the same time, the same direction, without it being arranged. Elian had been watching the corridor ahead. Watching for Veylan, who had been in the building all morning for a trade meeting.

Caelian stopped walking.

Elian stopped too.

"What are you looking for," Caelian said.

Not accusatory. Not suspicious. Just — direct. The way he was direct about everything, like the effort of softening questions was a luxury he’d never learned to afford.

"Nothing specific," Elian said.

"You’ve been watching the corridors for three days." Caelian looked at him. "Not anxiously. Deliberately. Like you’re waiting for something."

Elian said nothing.

"I’m not asking you to tell me," Caelian said. "I’m asking if I need to know."

Elian looked at him.

At the bracelet on his wrist — two of them now, always — and the mala at his neck. At the violet eyes that had been watching him back this whole time and he’d somehow convinced himself hadn’t noticed.

"Not yet," Elian said.

A pause.

"Okay," Caelian said.

Just that. No pushing. No demanding. He started walking again and Elian walked beside him and the corridor continued around them, empty and quiet.

"You trust your council," Elian said. Casual. Like it had just occurred to him.

"I trust some of them," Caelian said. "I rely on all of them."

"The difference being."

"Trust is earned. Reliance is structural." He said it without hesitation, the way he said things he’d thought about for a long time. "I rely on the council to function. I trust perhaps two of them as people."

"Which two."

Caelian glanced at him. "Dunwick. And Sethan, to a degree."

"Not the others."

"The others are competent. Competence and trust are different things."

Elian walked beside him and thought about a man who had spent years surrounded by people he relied on and trusted almost none of. About how that kind of isolation settled into a person. About voices that told you the world had never given you anything and never would.

Of course they could get to you, Elian thought. You were alone inside your own court.

"You’ve managed well," Elian said. "Considering."

Caelian looked at him. "Considering what."

"Considering how long you’ve been doing it alone." freewёbnoνel.com

Caelian was quiet for a moment.

"I’m not alone," he said. He said it carefully. Like he was testing whether it was true.

Elian didn’t say anything.

They reached the junction where their paths diverged — Caelian to his office, Elian to his study.

"Not yet," Caelian said. Echoing Elian’s own words back at him. "When you’re ready to tell me."

He turned and walked away.

Elian stood at the junction for a moment.

You have no idea, he thought. You have absolutely no idea that someone in your orbit has been doing this to you. That you’ve been shaking their hand and sitting across from them at dinners and you’ve had no idea.

The anger came up clean and sudden, the way it sometimes did now.

He turned and walked back to his study.

Soon, he thought. I’m going to end this soon.

Veylan was in the east corridor when Elian got back.

Not doing anything suspicious. Just walking. Carrying documents. The eastern trade liaison on his way somewhere, completely unremarkable.

Elian kept his pace even.

They passed each other.

Veylan nodded. The small, appropriate acknowledgment of a subordinate to the consort. Nothing more.

"Good morning," Elian said.

"Your Highness," Veylan said, and kept walking.

Elian kept walking too.

He waited until he’d turned the corner.

Then he stopped and stood very still for a moment.

He looked at the bracelet, Elian thought. Just for a second. His eyes dropped to my wrist and then came back up.

He’d felt it rather than seen it. The specific quality of someone checking something they’d been thinking about.

He knows someone is wearing one, Elian thought. He knows the protection exists. He’s trying to figure out who made it.

He started walking again.

You won’t find me by looking at my wrist, Elian thought. You’ll find me when I decide to let you.

He went back to his study.

Spread the files across the desk.

The body. That was still the key. Find the body, burn it, end the sending. Then the snake curse lost its primary amplifier. Then the voices in Caelian’s head started losing their source.

One thing at a time.

He picked up his pen.

Soon, he thought again.

And this time it felt closer than it had before.

That evening Caelian came to the study.

He didn’t knock. He stood in the doorway and looked at the files on the desk and said nothing.

Elian looked up.

"I’m not going to tell you what I’m working on," Elian said.

"I know," Caelian said.

He came in anyway. Sat in the chair near the window. The one that had become, without either of them deciding it, his chair when he came to Elian’s study.

"Dunwick asked me something today," Caelian said.

"What."

"Whether you were settling in well." He paused. "He said you’d had tea with him. That you’d talked for a long time."

"We did."

"He seemed—" Caelian looked at the window. "He seemed like something had shifted for him. After the tea." A pause. "He mentioned his wife. Which he hasn’t done in three years."

Elian was quiet.

"I don’t know what you said to him," Caelian said. "But whatever it was — thank you."

Elian looked at him.

At the bracelet on his wrist. At the mala at his neck. At the violet eyes that were doing something Elian was becoming increasingly unable to categorize cleanly.

"He needed to hear something," Elian said. "That’s all."

Caelian nodded.

He sat for a while longer, not working, not saying anything, just — present. The way he’d started being present in Elian’s spaces lately. Like he’d decided that proximity was its own kind of communication.

Elian went back to his files.

Neither of them said anything more.

It was enough.

He wrote for two hours that evening.

Not the investigation — something else. He’d been avoiding it but tonight it sat at the desk with him and wouldn’t move.

What happens when I fix this, he wrote. Assuming I fix this. Assuming the curse is broken and the sending is ended and the Varek is dealt with and Caelian is safe.

What happens then.

He stared at the page.

I came here by dying, he thought. I have no way back. I’ve accepted that. freeωebnovēl.c૦m

But I haven’t thought about what I’m staying for.

He looked at the door.

At the corridor beyond it. At the palace that had become, without his permission, familiar. The corridors he knew. The maids whose names he’d learned. The shrine that had started as a bargain and become something he cared about. The divine being that had started as a tool and become something closer to a colleague.

And him, he thought.

He didn’t write that part.

He just thought it, sitting at the desk in the late evening, with the pen in his hand and the investigation notes to his left and the sound of Caelian somewhere in the palace doing whatever kings did at this hour.

I’m staying because I’m staying, he thought. That’s the whole answer.

He put the pen down.

Went to bed.