I Woke Up Married to the Cursed King

Chapter 37: Chapter 37: What Are You Trying to Do Here

The library table had disappeared under books.

Theology. Folklore. Regional histories. Spiritual traditions from every corner of the kingdom and beyond — he’d pulled anything that might touch on entities, on higher-level workings, on the mythology of things that fed on human suffering. He had four pages of notes and was halfway through a fifth when he heard footsteps.

He didn’t look up immediately. He closed the top book casually, shifted his notes under a larger volume, and arranged his face into the expression of a man doing something entirely unremarkable.

Then he looked up.

Isolde stood in the library doorway.

She looked at the table. At the towers of books. At him.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"Studying," Elian said pleasantly. "Diplomats arriving next month. I wanted to understand the regional traditions better — it helps with the correspondence." He gestured vaguely at the books. "Folklore, theology, that sort of thing. Very dry."

She looked at the table for a moment longer.

Then she smiled. "You must be very dedicated."

"I find it interesting," he said.

She came in. Moved along the shelves with the ease of someone comfortable in libraries, trailing a finger along the spines. Asking questions — light ones, curious ones, the kind that sounded like casual conversation.

He answered carefully. Let her lead. Listened to what she asked as much as what she said.

And underneath the careful answers, he was taking notes.

Because she knew things.

Not obviously. Not in a way that announced itself. But the questions she asked had shape to them — they pointed at specific areas, specific traditions, the specific category of texts he’d been pulling all morning. She’d come into this library and gone straight to the subjects he was researching without appearing to.

He kept his face easy and his voice even and felt the information accumulate.

You know more than you should, he thought. Again.

"Fascinating," she said at one point, pulling a volume from the shelf. She opened it to a page that was — he noted — exactly the section he’d been planning to read next. "Have you looked at this one?"

"Not yet," he said.

She held it out. Helpful. Warm.

"Thank you," he said, and took it.

She smiled and left twenty minutes later, saying she’d promised Rowan a walk before lunch.

Elian waited until her footsteps faded.

Then he opened his notes and wrote down everything she’d touched, everything she’d asked, every subject her questions had circled.

He looked at the pattern of it.

You were mapping what I know, he thought. And pointing me toward what you want me to find.

He closed the notes.

Filed it.

And felt, underneath the cold professional assessment, something that was very close to certain.

* * *

Rowan appeared an hour later.

He came in without the easy warmth of the night before — not cold exactly, but different. Like something had been adjusted behind the eyes.

"What are you reading?" he said.

"Regional folklore," Elian said. "For the diplomatic—"

"You don’t need to understand those things," Rowan said. He said it oddly. Not rude — just flat. Like a line delivered slightly wrong. "These are old subjects. Taboo in some regions. It’s not something a consort needs to concern himself with."

Elian looked at him.

"I find it interesting," he said.

Rowan looked at the books. Something moved through his face that Elian couldn’t read.

"There are better uses of your time," he said.

Then he left.

Elian sat very still for a moment.

He thought about Isolde whispering in Rowan’s ear. About the half-second it had taken Rowan to arrange his expression when he’d walked in.

Watch the eyes, the margin note had said.

He looked at the door Rowan had just walked through.

Is it you, he thought. Or is she using you.

He didn’t know yet.

He picked up the book Isolde had handed him.

Read the section she’d pointed him toward.

And despite everything — despite Isolde’s questions and Rowan’s odd flatness and the chill sitting in his chest — he found what he needed.

He almost smiled.

Thank you, he thought, at whoever had been trying to manage what he learned. That was genuinely helpful.

* * *

He found Sable in the afternoon.

"Most worshipped god in this world," he said. "Who. What traditions. What rituals."

She looked at him. Then she took him to the shrine.

They sat outside it in the afternoon light and she talked. The major deity of the kingdom — old, widely believed in even by people who’d stopped actively practicing. The rituals were simpler than he’d expected. Candles. Specific prayers. Offerings of grain and oil. A particular chant sung at dawn and dusk.

"You’re learning them," she said. Not a question.

"I need to understand what generates genuine belief," he said. "What makes worship real rather than performed."

She looked at him for a long moment.

"The intention," she said. "That’s always what makes it real."

"Teach me the rituals," he said.

She did.

He practiced until the light went gold and then kept practicing until she told him that was enough for one day.

* * *

He came back to the royal wing as the evening settled in. freewebnøvel.coɱ

The atmosphere had changed again.

He felt it immediately — the specific quality of wrongness he’d been cataloguing for months, but different now. Not heavier. Closer. Like something had shifted its attention.

It knows I found something, he thought. Or it suspects.

He pushed the door to the bedroom open.

Caelian was there.

Not working. Not reading. Just sitting in the chair by the window, still dressed from the day, watching the door like he’d been waiting for it to open.

Elian came in. Closed the door.

They looked at each other.

"What are you trying to do here," Caelian said.

Not angry. Not accusing. Just — asking. Finally, directly, the question he’d been circling for months.

Elian looked at him.

At the violet eyes that had been watching him this whole time, filing things away, waiting for the right moment to ask.

He thought about everything he could say.

Everything he couldn’t.

"What do you mean," he said.

"You know what I mean," Caelian said quietly. "The symbols. The salt. The rituals. The herbalist you brought in. The library today." A pause. "You’ve been doing something since the day you woke up in this palace. And I’ve been waiting for you to tell me what it is."

Silence.

Elian sat down.

Looked at his hands.

Looked at Caelian.

How much, he thought. How much can I tell you.

* * *

He closed the library at midnight.

Stacked his notes. Put the books back. Stood in the quiet of the room for a moment.

Divine presence actively invoked, he thought. Pure intent. Eyes a half-second late.

Three weaknesses. None of them easy. All of them pointing in the same direction.

He needed more worshippers at the shrine. Real ones. Not just the maids — though the maids had been consistent and he was grateful. But more people. People whose belief was genuine.

How do you make people believe in something they can’t see, he’d thought in the library.

Standing here now, he had a clearer answer.

You don’t make them believe. You give them something real to respond to. You let them feel it and let them decide.

The shrine had been doing exactly that. People came back because it helped. They didn’t need to understand why — they just knew it did.

More people, he thought. More genuine faith. The divine being gets stronger. And when the eclipse comes—

He thought about Isolde at the gazebo. About the question that had no shape yet.

Watch the eyes, the margin note had said. They’ll be a half-second late.

He walked the corridor.

Passed the east wing.

Passed Edmund, who appeared from a doorway the way he always appeared, perfectly timed, warm nod, gone again.

Elian stopped.

Turned.

Watched Edmund’s back disappear around a corner.

Eyes a half-second late, he thought.

He hadn’t been looking for it.

He went to bed.

Lay awake.

Thought about a lot of things.

He went back to the library the next day.

Read the text Isolde had handed him.

It was exactly what he’d needed. The specific section on divine entities and their interaction with dark workings. The mechanics of how genuine faith counteracted accumulated malice.

She pointed me here, he thought. On purpose. Which either means she wanted me to find this — or someone told her to.

He closed the book.

Sat with it.

Either way I have what I need, he thought. And I’m going to use it.

He went to find Sable.

He walked back through the palace.

Make people believe in something they can’t see, he thought. I’ve been doing that my whole life.

Just never for this reason.

He went to find Sable.

He reached his room.

Sat at the desk.

Picked up the pen.

Worshippers, he thought. The shrine needs more worshippers.

I know how to make people believe in things.

He started writing a plan.