I Woke Up Married to the Cursed King

Chapter 41: Chapter 41: Outside the Door

Elian moved back to his own room.

Not dramatically. He didn’t announce it. He just — stopped going to Caelian’s bedroom at night and started sleeping in the room that had technically been his since he arrived and that he’d barely used.

The bed was fine. The room was quiet. Everything was perfectly adequate.

He lay in the dark the first night and looked at the ceiling and told himself this was sensible and rational and the correct thing to do given the circumstances.

He slept badly.

He didn’t change anything.

* * *

Lyra remained in the palace.

The council had arranged rooms for her in the guest wing — a formal stay, the kind that meant something in diplomatic terms. She moved through the palace with the ease of someone who had decided to treat it as a done thing and was simply waiting for the paperwork to catch up.

Elian did not interfere.

He went to the temple every day that week. The full moon ritual had been extraordinary — he’d stood in the back and watched and taken notes and felt the particular quality of genuine collective faith doing something in the air that he could measure but not quite describe. He’d spoken to the head priest afterward, carefully, framed as scholarly interest. The priest had been delighted to talk.

He was building something. Slow and complicated and some pieces still didn’t fit, but it was taking shape.

He came back to the palace each evening smelling like incense and feeling, briefly, like he knew what he was doing.

Then he’d pass Lyra in a corridor and the feeling would go away.

* * *

For Caelian, the week was louder.

The voices had been manageable for months. Quieter than they’d been in years — muffled, distant. Now they were coming back. Gradually. The way cold came back into a room when someone left a window open — slowly, and then suddenly everywhere.

Look, they said. See what you did.

He signed documents. He attended dinner. Lyra was there, pleasant, appropriate, saying the correct things. He looked at the empty chair beside him.

You don’t deserve to have people stay, the voices said warmly. Look at the evidence. Everyone leaves or they would leave if they could.

He pressed two fingers to his temple.

He didn’t know what he’d done wrong.

That was the part he kept returning to. Something had shifted the day of the greenhouse. Something he’d done or said or failed to do.

On the fourth night he stood outside Elian’s study door.

Not to knock. He hadn’t decided to knock. He’d just walked there, the way you walked somewhere when your body had made a decision your head hadn’t caught up with yet.

The light was on under the door. Elian was still awake.

You did something, the voices said softly. You always do something. You push people away and then wonder why they go.

His hand came up.

Stopped before it touched the door.

He stood there for a long moment.

Then he went back to his room.

* * *

By the seventh day the headache was constant.

Not sharp — dull. Sitting behind the eyes, not responding to anything, simply there when he woke up and still there when he tried to sleep.

He snapped at Lord Sethan in a meeting over something that didn’t warrant it. He was colder with Aldous than he needed to be.

Lyra found him in the corridor on the sixth day.

"Your Highness," she said. "You look unwell."

"I’m fine," he said.

"You’re not." Straightforward. "Is there something I can—"

"No. Thank you."

She looked at him. "I’m not your enemy."

"I know," he said. "I’m sorry."

He walked away.

* * *

On the eighth night he stopped being stubborn.

He’d been standing in his room for twenty minutes, just standing, which he never did. The voices were loud. The bracelet on his wrist felt thin. Insufficient.

He picked up his coat.

Set it down again. freewebnovel.cσ๓

Walked out of his room and down the corridor and pushed open the door to Elian’s room without knocking.

* * *

Elian was asleep.

Completely, entirely, without apparent concern for anything, asleep. Face relaxed. Breathing even. Like someone with no unresolved problems.

Caelian came in. Closed the door quietly.

Lay down on top of the covers beside him, fully clothed.

The voices were quieter. Already, just being in the room, quieter.

He turned his head and looked at Elian’s sleeping face.

"Cold man," he said. Quietly. Not loud enough to wake anyone.

Elian didn’t stir.

"I don’t understand most of what you do," Caelian said. "I’ve accepted that. But I understood enough — I understood that whatever you were doing was keeping me from going somewhere I couldn’t come back from." He paused. "And then you stopped."

The room was quiet except for Elian’s breathing.

"You could have told me," Caelian said. "Whatever it is I did. You could have said it to my face. I would have — I don’t know. But something. We could have talked about it." He looked at the ceiling. "Instead you decided distance was better than a conversation. Which is what cold people do."

Elian breathed. Peacefully. Without guilt.

"I know you don’t owe me anything," Caelian said. Quieter now. "This marriage wasn’t something either of us chose. I’ve always known that." He paused. "But somewhere in the past few months I started sleeping. Properly. For the first time in years. And the headaches were less. And the—" He stopped. "And I don’t know if that was you or something you did or coincidence. But it stopped when you moved back to this room."

He looked at the ceiling a while longer.

"I’d like you to come back," he said. "If you want to. You don’t have to. But I’m asking."

He closed his eyes.

He was asleep in minutes. In a way he hadn’t been for a week.

Beside him, Elian slept on. Deeply. The sleep of someone who hadn’t properly rested in days and had finally, without meaning to, run out of the ability to stay awake. He hadn’t heard a word.

Caelian had said it all to no one.

The room was quiet. The voices were quiet.

For the first time in eight days, they both slept.

* * *

In the morning, Edmund brought tea.

Elian was already awake. He heard the knock, heard Caelian say come in in the rough voice of someone who’d been asleep three seconds ago, heard the tray being set down.

He lay still with his eyes open and listened to Edmund move around the room with the familiar efficiency.

"Will there be anything else, Your Highness?"

"No. Thank you, Edmund."

The door closed.

Elian heard Caelian pick up his cup. Drink.

He thought about what he’d said in the dark.

I’d like you to come back. If you want to.

Caelian had no idea Elian was awake. No idea he’d said it to someone who could hear him. He’d said it to a room, to a sleeping person, to the ceiling — and it had been true in a way that things people said to empty rooms always were. No performance in it. No calculation.

Just true.

Elian lay still.

You could tell him you heard, he thought. You could say — I was awake, I heard everything, I’m staying.

He didn’t.

He wasn’t ready. Or he was ready and he didn’t know what came after. Or he knew what came after and wasn’t sure he deserved it.

He lay still until he heard Caelian set the cup down, stand up, start his morning.

Then he opened his eyes.

"Good morning," he said.

Caelian looked at him. "You were awake."

"Just woke up," Elian said.

Caelian looked at him for a moment longer. Something in the violet eyes that wasn’t quite belief.

Then he went to get dressed.

Elian looked at the ceiling.

I’m staying, he thought. I already am.

He just hadn’t said it yet.

* * *

He thought about the voice while Caelian slept.

The specific warmth of it. The way it sounded reasonable. The way it had been telling Caelian for years that the weight was permanent and the world had never given him anything and there was a simple way to stop carrying it.

And he’s been saying no, Elian thought. Every time. Alone, without telling anyone, without asking for help. Just — no.

He thought about four seconds at the dinner table. Caelian’s hand flat on the surface. The moment that had looked like consideration.

He’s been saying no for how long, Elian thought. Since he was a child. Since before the curse was placed. Since before he knew what was happening to him.

Just — no. Every day. Alone.

He looked at Caelian sleeping.

At the bracelet on his wrist.

You deserved better than this, Elian thought. You deserved someone who noticed sooner. Who asked sooner. Who didn’t spend months doing everything except the one thing that might have helped, which was just — being here.

He pressed his lips together.

He was being here now.

That would have to be enough.

The clock on the wall ticked.

Outside, the palace was quiet.

Elian sat in the chair and watched the man who had said I’d like you to come back to an empty room and waited for morning to come.

It came eventually.

It always did.