Chapter 15: Under Watch

Naya woke slowly, the ceiling coming into focus before the rest of the room did. She hadn’t truly slept. Every time she’d closed her eyes, Ronan’s words from the night before had returned to her, circling like something with teeth.

Keep your secrets. I’ll find out what your family sent you here to do.

She lay still for several seconds, listening to the quiet. Then she realized Ronan was already awake beside her.

She turned her head. He was watching her, and it wasn’t the softness she’d glimpsed during the dance, or the heat that had passed between them when he’d almost kissed her. This look was cold. Calculating. Naya felt her stomach tighten.

Whatever fragile ground they’d built had been undone by that letter.

She said nothing. She sat up and swung her legs off the bed, already reaching for her robe.

"Going somewhere?" Ronan asked.

She paused, then turned back to face him. "Do I need your permission to leave the bed now?"

He sat up slightly, his face unreadable. "I need to know where my wife is."

Naya laughed, short and humorless. "No. You need to know where your suspect is."

The words landed heavily between them. Ronan’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t deny it, and neither of them apologized. Naya crossed to the washroom and shut the door before he could see how much his suspicion had gotten under her skin.

She could still feel his eyes on her through the wood.

Mira helped her dress that morning, quieter than usual, and Naya was quieter too. Mira noticed but didn’t push.

They left Ronan’s quarters together, and Naya spotted two guards posted along the corridor. At first she assumed they were simply part of the palace’s usual security. Then she and Mira started walking, and the guards fell into step behind them.

She glanced back once. They were still there.

She said nothing at first. Instead, she turned suddenly down a side corridor, testing them. The guards followed. She stopped walking. They stopped too.

Naya turned to Mira. "Are those guards following me?"

Mira’s expression shifted, not with surprise but with discomfort.

"Are they?" Naya pressed.

"They’re under His Majesty’s orders."

That was enough. Naya’s anger rose fast and hot. "Has he officially put me under guard?"

"I don’t know the exact wording of his orders, my lady."

Naya gave a bitter laugh. Of course he hadn’t imprisoned her outright. That would have been too honest. Instead he was letting her walk freely while making sure she knew she was never truly alone.

She looked back at the guards standing at a respectful distance, and for the first time since arriving at the palace, every hallway felt like a cage with the door left open just to mock her.

"I’m going to speak to him."

Mira didn’t need to ask who she meant. "My lady—"

But Naya was already walking, fast enough that Mira had to hurry to keep pace.

She didn’t stop outside his study door. She didn’t knock. She pushed it open and walked straight in.

Ronan looked up from the documents on his desk, his expression hardening the moment he saw her face. "What are you doing here?"

Naya shut the door behind her. "Why are your guards following me?"

He didn’t pretend not to understand, and somehow that made her angrier than if he had.

"They’re there for your protection," he said.

She laughed again, sharp and without any warmth in it. "Protection from what?"

"You don’t need to concern yourself with that."

"Then perhaps I should concern myself with why I need protection to walk from one hallway to another."

He finally looked at her directly. The room went tense and quiet, and Naya waited him out.

He didn’t offer another excuse. "Until I know what your father told you, I don’t trust you."

For a moment she said nothing. The words hurt more than she expected. Not because she’d thought he trusted her completely already, but because after the dance, after he’d defended her in front of the council, after he’d almost kissed her, some foolish part of her had let herself hope they were moving toward something else.

Instead they were exactly where they’d started.

She gave him a bitter smile. "Finally. An honest answer."

His eyes narrowed, jaw tight.

The argument grew from there. Naya reminded him of everything he’d done. He’d accused her of stealing Seraphine’s necklace. He’d refused to hear her side of it. He’d ordered her punished and humiliated her in front of the entire council, and told her more than once that their marriage meant nothing to him.

"You want me to trust you enough to sleep beside you every night," she said, her voice climbing, "but you don’t trust me enough to walk through your own palace alone."

That landed. Ronan went quiet, because she was right and he had no answer ready.

"You don’t have to sleep beside me," he said instead, defensive.

She stepped closer. "Don’t I?"

Silence.

"You brought me into your room," she said. "You made rules about which side of the bed I could sleep on. And now you want to stand there and act like any of it was my choice?"

Something flickered across his face. Frustration, maybe guilt, maybe both.

"If you think I’m plotting against you," she said, "then send me away."

"No." It came too fast.

Naya’s anger faltered into confusion. "Why not?"

For the first time in the argument, he had no answer ready. Finally he said the same thing he always said. "Because you’re my wife."

Her temper snapped. "Stop saying that like it explains everything."

The room went completely still. Ronan stared at her, and her breathing had gone uneven. She was tired of his contradictions, tired of being his wife only when it suited him, tired of never knowing whether he was protecting her or simply keeping her close enough to watch.

She stepped closer to his desk, no longer looking afraid.

"You’re right," she said. "You don’t trust me. You don’t like me. You don’t want me." She watched something shift, faintly, in his expression, and kept going anyway. "But you won’t send me away. You wouldn’t let Kael tend to me. You wouldn’t let him dance with me. And now you have guards following me through your own home."

They were close now, close enough that the air between them felt charged.

"So tell me, Ronan," she said, lowering her voice. "What exactly do you want from me?"

He said nothing. For the first time since she’d walked in, he had no answer at all, and Naya realized, watching him, that he genuinely didn’t know. That seemed to unsettle him more than anything she’d said.

"You’re pushing your luck," he said finally.

"That’s not an answer."

He stepped closer, closing the last of the distance between them. "Neither is lying to me." 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

Everything in her went still. The letter surfaced in her mind without warning, her father’s words rising up like something clawing its way out. Get pregnant with his heir. Kill him if the opportunity presents itself.

She stepped back, not because Ronan had moved, but because she’d remembered exactly what she was hiding from him.

He noticed. The fear. The retreat. His suspicion returned to his face immediately, and neither of them spoke. The argument had reached a place neither of them knew how to move past.

Naya turned and walked out. He didn’t stop her.

She found her way to one of the quieter gardens instead of returning to his quarters, needing air and needing to be somewhere he wasn’t. She sat alone for a while before Mira found her and settled beside her without a word.

Eventually Naya asked, "Do you think it’s possible to live with someone and never trust them?"

Mira considered it. "You’re asking the wrong question."

"What’s the right one?"

"Can you live with someone who doesn’t trust you?"

That landed harder than she expected, because it was exactly the reality she was living. She thought of sharing his bed, of him defending her before the council, of the dance and the almost-kiss and the way he’d looked at her that night. Then she thought of his voice that morning. I don’t trust you.

She admitted to herself, quietly, that it hurt. Not because she trusted him. She didn’t. But because some part of her had wanted to believe they were becoming something different.

Mira didn’t press further. She simply stayed, offering the one thing Naya hadn’t had much of lately. Company without demands.

Night came, and Naya returned to Ronan’s quarters. He was already there. Neither of them spoke as they got ready for bed, and they lay down on opposite sides, the space between them wider than it had ever felt before.

Neither slept.

After several minutes, Ronan spoke into the dark. "The guards will remain."

"Then I suppose I’ll get used to being watched," she said quietly.

She expected silence. Instead his voice came again, low and strange.

"Not by them."

She turned her head toward him. His face gave nothing away, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. She didn’t understand what he meant, whether he intended to watch her himself, or protect her, or something else entirely. He didn’t explain, and somehow it seemed like he didn’t fully understand it either.

Naya turned back toward her side of the bed. Neither of them spoke again.

They lay there, a few feet apart, separated by an entire war of distrust neither one knew how to end.