Page 59 of To Save a Kingdom

Her father took a deep breath. “Dillan Ishan, Regis Durack and Lataren Ridley.”

Aliya shut the door to her private suite and leaned against it with a sigh. Elessan stalked across the room and positioned himself where he could stare out the window into the darkness. This late in the day, there was nothing to see out there beyond the residual glow from the coals from Roland’s bonfire, so he was definitely brooding.

Crossing her arms, she pressed her hip into the door. “Spill it, El. What’s going on?” He had to know she didn’t suspect him, right?

“You need to throw me in the dungeon,” he said.

“What?” she yelped. She’d misheard. She must have. “But you didn’t do it.”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It’s obvious someone staged the whole thing to make it seem like I did. You can’t show me favoritism by not treating me as you would any other guard or nobleman suspected of a crime.”

Maybe that was something Malkov would’ve done, but… “I don’t like the idea of people being guilty until proven otherwise. That kind of thinking paves the way for punishment for baseless accusations. Imagine if I imprisoned everyone who had a disagreement with their neighbor and got accused of theft or whatever? We’d run out of space in the dungeons and have a lot of innocent people locked up. And it would be a needless drain on our resources.” Not to mention she only had a handful of jail cells near the front gate and one tiny room below the guard tower—the oubliette. The guards would no doubt toss him there rather than the more comfortable options.

“Perhaps,” he said, glancing at her. “But you can’t show favoritism.”

She sighed, running a hand through her hair. “El, did you do it?”

His eyebrows furrowed. “No, of course not. Like I said—”

Waving a hand, she cut him off. “Then I’m not going to throw you in the dungeon. That’s the end of it.” The windowless cell was so narrow he wouldn’t be able to stand or lay down comfortably. Plus, unless the guards took pity on him and left a torch, he’d be in pitch blackness the entire time. It was dank, and reeked of mildew and waste. Shaking her head, she crossed the room and took his hands in hers. “We’ll figure this out. My father’s smart, as much as I hate to admit it. He’ll chase down a few leads for us.” Hopefully like he would with Brooks and the remaining Whisperers.

“Meow?”

Aliya jumped as Shadow leaped from somewhere high—likely the top of one of Malkov’s bookshelves—onto his desk. Aliya shook her head, wincing as she glanced around the room. Her bookshelves, her desk. She needed to quit thinking of this as Malkov’s study. She was the queen—everything in this wing was hers now.

Tossing that uncomfortable line of thought aside for the moment, she fixed Shadow with a firm glare. “What, exactly, did you say to Roland that has him in such a tizzy?”

Shadow glared before licking her nose at Elessan.

Aliya released him and put her hands on her hips, turning the full power of her stare onto the cat. “Out with it. He must have said something to set you off.”

With a final huff, Shadow twitched her tail. “That male said all sorts of vile, inappropriate things, none of which I will be repeating here,” Shadow said, her claws extending and digging into the wood at the memory.

Elessan sighed, stalking to the far side of the room, electing to give them a small bit of privacy.

“Your response caused him to shred the agreement Tsara and I worked tirelessly to develop and burn it in a bonfire, along with all the food their portion of the treaty required!”

“I’m well aware of what he did, child. You think I don’t have eyes?”

Aliya wiped her hand across her face so hard it ripped some loose strands of hair that had the misfortune of falling into her eyes from her scalp. “Now we’re in a worse place than before I left, and even more desperate for allies and funds to help the people survive the coming winter!”

She wrinkled her nose, determined not to sniffle and betray how badly her eyes were burning. “I trusted you to maintain the status quo for a few days—a few stinking days—and I come back to a broken trade agreement and our most powerful ally storming out!”

Shadow hissed. “You don’t want to wed that self-centered, egotistical—”

“I wasn’t going to marry him!” She was shouting, and the guards could likely hear her through the door, but she didn’t care. “The treaty didn’t require it!”

Shadow flicked her tail, knocking a couple of pieces of paper off the desk. “Foolish child. You would’ve had a hard time keeping that contract in place without tying yourself to the bastard. Trust me, once elves decide they want something, they are single-minded in acquiring it.” She slitted her eyes. “Your adopted father did you no favors when he proposed your marriage to that knife-ears.”

Spinning on her heel, Aliya stormed to the hearth where she started to pace. “And now I have no official allies and am surrounded by nobles and guards who would happily see me dead at Brooks’ hands.” Swallowing, she took several deep breaths until she was sure her voice wouldn’t tremble. She stared into the flames, letting her vision lose focus. “There’s no one left I can trust,” she whispered.

“You can trust me.” Elessan’s quiet words rumbled across the room, the note of hurt in his tone further twisting the knife in her heart.

“Not if I arrest you like you want me to,” she muttered.

He opened his mouth but closed it again, his gaze drifting to the hearth as he skulked near the far wall.

“And you can trust me,” Shadow said, not to be outdone.