Chapter 446. Strategically Selective with the Truth (and Other Lies We Tell at Banquets)

Chapter 446: 446. Strategically Selective with the Truth (and Other Lies We Tell at Banquets)

Kaela laughed properly, not the practiced, melodic tinkle of a princess performing for courtiers, but a real, unguarded laugh. Her shoulders shook, and the sound reverberated off the ancient stone walls, shattering the suffocating stillness that had clung to the corridor.

For the first time all evening, the air didn’t feel like it was made of glass. William felt the tightness in his own jaw dissolve without permission; the defensive armor he wore like a second skin simply fell away.

She wiped at her eyes again, but this time there was no pretense of fatigue. She didn’t bother to hide the moisture there.

The vulnerability was raw, but it was honest.

"You are the worst liar I have ever met," she said, her voice still breathless from the laughter.

William offered a crooked, self-deprecating smile. "I’m not lying. I’m simply... strategically selective with the truth."

Kaela snorted, shaking her head. "That doesn’t even mean anything... That’s just word salad."

"It means whatever I need it to mean to survive the evening," he countered.

She rolled her eyes, a gesture so ordinary and human that it made William feel like he could finally breathe again. With a grunt of effort, she pushed herself off the wall, rising to her feet.

The laughter faded, leaving behind something quieter, something more fragile but less poisonous. She stood there in her silver gown, looking down at her bare feet against the cold stone, before meeting his gaze again.

The mirth was gone, replaced by something steadier.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "For not saying anything in there..."

"For staying silent." Her eyes searched his, sharp and knowing. "I saw you, Instructor Wade..."

"I saw the way you looked at him... I know you wanted to tear that smile off his face."

William didn’t flinch. He didn’t retreat behind a lie.

"I wanted to say a great deal more than that," he admitted, his voice dropping to a low murmur. "But if I had spoken up, the fallout would have landed on you."

"It would have turned into a scene of spectacle, and then every hungry eye in that hall would have been fixed on you..."

"I wasn’t going to make your burden any heavier."

Kaela looked away for a moment, studying the shadows dancing on the wall. "You understood that I would have been the one left to pick up the pieces."

"I know how these games work," William said. "The Prince gets to play the wronged lover, and the Princess becomes the unstable problem."

A silence settled between them, not the tense, suffocating silence of the banquet hall, but something shared. A recognition between two people who had both learned how to fight invisible wars.

"Training tomorrow?" she asked suddenly, breaking the spell.

Her voice had regained some of its steel.

"Nine o’clock sharp," William agreed. "I have a desperate need to hit something."

"And you’re the only person in this entire palace who can take a hit back."

Kaela straightened her shoulders, the silver fabric catching the dim lamplight like armor. "I’ll try to be gentle with you."

William’s expression hardened into something grim, something almost hungry. "Please don’t."

Kaela smiled at him then. It wasn’t the rehearsed, porcelain smile she had worn like armor at the banquet; it was something raw, crooked, and exhausted. It was a smile that belonged to her alone—genuine, slightly defiant, and achingly human.

She picked up her shoes by the straps, her bare feet silent against the stone as she walked down the corridor. She moved with her chin held just a fraction higher than before, as if she had reclaimed something small but vital from the evening’s wreckage.

William watched her until her silver skirts disappeared around the corner. He remained standing in the shadows for another minute, the silence of the corridor pressing against his ears.

His jaw was still tight. A dark, visceral thought flickered through his mind one he had never before felt with such clarity: he wanted more than anything to introduce Alden’s perfect face to a stone wall.

Hard enough to shatter the bone, hard enough to make the honeyed words spill out as blood.

Four days later, the palace held that peculiar, hollow quiet that descended in the middle of the afternoon. The ministers were locked away in session, their voices muffled by thick oak doors, and the servants had retreated to the kitchens and laundry wings.

William had been assigned a small, functional workroom in the north wing. To the court, it was a space for consultations with the royal guard regarding training methods.

In reality, it was his nerve center, a place where he kept his travel case hidden and his growing list of questions organized. He was moving through the corridor toward that room, hands shoved deep into his pockets, his mind occupied by a letter from Albert that had arrived that morning.

He was dissecting Albert’s coded warnings when he passed the advisors’ council chamber.

The door stood open just a few inches.

Under normal circumstances, William would have walked past without breaking stride. But the air changed.

His wind sense that instinctual awareness that had sharpened dangerously since Selena’s lessons flared like a warning beacon. He began to feel the room not as a space, but as a current.

He felt the subtle pressure differentials, the way the air swirled around two bodies seated inside. He felt the room like a fisherman feels the slow, deceptive pull of a river before a storm.

Two people were inside. And a thread of that current carried words out into the corridor as easily as smoke drifting from a dying fire.

"...the preparations for the ceremony are nearly finished."

William froze. His boots squeaked against the polished floor, a sound that felt like a gunshot in the quiet hallway.

He stopped so abruptly his muscles coiled instinctively, ready to either flee or fight. He recognized that voice immediately.

It was flat, clinical, and utterly devoid of the honeyed performance from the banquet. This was not the voice of a lover preparing for his wedding; it was the voice of a butcher discussing the slaughter.

"We only need to make sure the additional contract on the harbor rights is signed before the ceremony takes place and not after," the voice continued.

"His Majesty, your father, is concerned about that timing," came the second voice.

William placed it instantly: Lord Vane.

The man sounded like oil poured over silk—smooth, slippery, and impossible to grasp.

"He wants the asset firmly bound before we push any further."

’The asset.’ The word struck William like a physical blow.

He felt a cold rage begin to crystallize in his gut.

"The asset," Alden repeated.

There was no anger in the Prince’s tone. Worse, there was amusement. "Will secure Delmore’s influence along the eastern coastline for generations to come."

"There is no reason to rush, Vane... But there is also no reason to delay without cause." A pause, then a cold, transactional finality: "Make sure everything proceeds on schedule."