Autumn wished that she’d had more time to decompress between almost kissing Knight and having to sit down with Eltanin and endure his incessant self-satisfied smugness. As it was, her nerves were shot, and she did not feel herself capable of maintaining a pleasant or diplomatic conversation. But she could not afford to offend the king, so it was with deep trepidation that she showed up to the dining hall that night — only to find him missing.

The table had been set as usual and the candles lit, therefore she assumed that dinner had not been cancelled, and that the king was merely late. Nothing to be alarmed about. She exchanged an uncertain glance with Knight and then took place. A few minutes passed. One of the hare servants came over to offer her a goblet of wine with a shake of the head and a shrug. She tapped her nails on the table, now starting to regret having rushed here.

Finally, the doors opened to admit the king. Instinct almost made her jump to her feet, as it would have been unthinkable in Veld to not stand when a king walked into the room. But then she forcefully reminded herself that she did not owe him any manners and remained firmly sitting.

“Ah, Lady Autumn, do forgive my tardiness. A matter kept me longer than anticipated.”

He crossed the hall to reach his seat and, as he passed behind her chair, let his hand trail over the carved shape of the backrest. He leaned in, far too close for a man who had sworn not to touch her, and murmured into her ear: “I do hope that I did not leave you wanting.”

His breath was warm and his voice so, so deep. She shivered despite herself. Then the King smoothly and — she might even say — sinuously sat down at the head of the table. Her heart beat double time for several minutes afterwards as the constructs began serving the food.

He had been so dangerously close.

Almost close enough to touch. His fingers, sliding over the edge of her chair where her hair might have whispered against his knuckles. His lips, breathing on the shell of her ear. His eyes, running down her body with the weight of a caress.

He started talking, asking her about her day. She cleared her throat and willed her hands to stop shaking. Good lord, but how she hated that he could do this to her. He had almost wiped all thoughts of Knight out of her brain simply by being near, and he was not half as deserving of her attention.

“It was pleasant, thank you very much.”

“I am glad to hear it. And what did you think about the sunroom, then?”

He smiled at her like an oil slick, but his eyes were piercing. There was a riddle here, a trap being laid in wait. Unfortunately for him, Autumn didn’t have the patience that night to play his games. She opted for brutal honesty.

“It looks like it has been assembled by someone who has only ever heard of a sunroom but never seen one. The furniture is all wrong.”

The King raised a fine but glacial eyebrow in her direction. “I am sorry you feel that way. I suppose it is fortunate that she is not here to hear you speak thus.”

Autumn narrowed her eyes. “She...?”

“The princess who designed the room,” the king clarified. He speared a bite of salad on the tines of his fork and chewed it slowly before tilting his head at her, seeming genuinely puzzled (which, of course, meant that it was an act). He said: “Surely you didn’t believe that you were the only one who’s ever assigned herself a task to occupy the two months?”

Her hands flexed on her knees underneath the table. She breathed in deeply and then let it out. “Interior design?” she asked, because it was a better alternative than to think about how many women must have sat in this same chair, having this same conversation. Did the King even bother to keep track of them, the way he did his constructs? Or did he simply turn them loose to his castle and his woods and only take notice when they either managed or failed to show up at dinner?

“She came here to die,” he said, bluntly.

“Didn’t they all?”

His eyebrows rose, then lowered. Autumn, tired of cowering, glared back at him. She wouldn’t apologize for the question, even though she’d blurted it out without thinking.

“She was ill,” he clarified. “Deathly so. Marriage was never even an option, though I did offer it. I could have healed her, probably, but marriage would have been the cost, and she declined. She came here to die, so I indulged her.”

It was her turn to feel glacial. “You indulged her. How?”

“She wanted a view. I put constructs at her disposal, and she built the sunroom. It was her chosen deathbed; a shame that you have deemed it ugly.”

Now she felt wrong-footed, and she didn’t like that very much. Combativeness rose within her, along with the urge to poke at his story until it revealed itself for the sham that it was. There was no way — no way! — that the Evil Wizard King had ever tried to ’indulge’ one of his princesses, or remembered one with such apparent wistfulness. He was attempting to trick her, but for what purpose?

“What was her name?” she challenged.

He held her stare. Similarly as what had happened with Knight earlier, it was as if a shutter was pulled behind his eyes. The vulnerability disappeared from his expression as if it had never been there at all. But unlike with the construct, she had no inclination to see it as self-preservation on his part. Rather, she chose to read it as the king discarding an act that had not gathered him the intended result. It was a return to his naturally smug and uncaring state.

“It was a very long time ago,” he drawled. “I’m sure even her own kingdom doesn’t remember her name now.”

She held his stare still until he was the one to look away, in the unaffected manner of a cat trying to pretend he hadn’t been caught wanting and failing to obtain something. The King poked at his salad some more, until finally he pushed the dish aside and declared: “You may redecorate a few rooms as well, if you wish so. Starting with the sunroom, given as it seems to be the one least to your tastes.”

Several replies crossed her mind and died on her tongue, many of them far too rude even for her current state. In the end, she settled on something tame and vaguely polite, which she forgot almost as soon as it left her mouth. She was offended that the King had tried to sell her such a sob story about the sunroom, only to turn around and offer to let her change it as if it didn’t matter. Worse, she was uncertain whether the tale of the poor dying princess was true or not, which meant that she effectively couldn’t renovate the damned place until she knew for a fact that the king had lied to her.

She risked a glance towards Knight standing in the shadows, something that she had avoided doing so far. He looked long-suffering, and when he noticed her attention, he shrugged.

Very well, she decided. Fine. One problem at a time. She would first take care of herself. If she was still around after the wedding — if there was a wedding — then she could see to the memory of her predecessors. But she needed to remain alive, for that. And in order to survive, it was crucial that she figure out who Eltanin Darkmore truly was behind all of the smirks and lies.

***

“This man has a serious problem,” she declared, standing with her arms crossed in front of the King’s wardrobe.

His bedroom, it turned out, was boring. It had a bed, a desk, a changing screen, and a wardrobe. That was it. And as one might expect, the sheets on his bed were black, the clothes in the wardrobe were black, and the changing screen was — oh, surprise! — black, although adorned with a pleasing pattern in silver filigree.

She glanced at Knight, who stood ramrod straight in the middle of the room, looking as if he profoundly regretted inciting her to come in here. His eyes kept flicking to the bed, then to her, then to the ceiling as he slowly turned deeper and deeper shades of red. Autumn had also blushed, the first time that she had noticed him doing this. But he had been caught in a loop for almost twenty minutes now, while she had long ago gotten distracted by the opportunity to be nosey.

She’d searched high and low for the King’s secrets and had found nothing in either his parlour, his bedchambers, nor his bathroom, which Knight had categorically refused to enter. That left his study, which she assumed was at the top of the spiral staircase leading upwards into the tower.

She coughed delicately. Knight’s attention snapped to her, and she inclined her head towards the stairs. As expected, he came over and offered her his arm, and they ascended together.

Two doors greeted them at the landing. One opened up to the parapet, the other to the study. Autumn confidently grabbed the doorknob and stepped in, so certain was she that the king had gone out to walk the wall as Knight had promised her.

At the desk, Eltanin’s head snapped up.

“Oh, my apologies!” She squeaked. She backed up into the construct behind her, who let out a yelp of alarm. He pulled her out of the room as she yanked the door closed, and soon they were back on the landing, staring at each other in wide-eyed horror.

“You said he would be gone!” she hissed.

“He always is, at this hour!”

Autumn looked at the door, mind running a mile a minute. Eltanin had definitely seen them. Could they pretend as if they’d arrived via the parapet, and not through his rooms? Perhaps, but only if they didn’t say anything about it, as explaining was the way of liars. She turned back towards Knight, who was white as a sheet, and grimaced.

“Well, nothing for it,” she declared, and pushed the door open once again, ignoring the small noise of alarm that came from her companion.

Autumn strolled into the study as if she owned it, and immediately started looking around. Eltanin was still sitting behind his desk, she noticed, and he didn’t seem particularly angry. In fact, he mostly appeared puzzled to see her there.

“May I help you?”

“No, thank you,” she said with all of the dismissive dignity that she could muster.

The study was fascinating, in that here was finally a room that actually felt lived in. There were papers strewn on mismatched furniture, shelves filled to bursting with books, and several rugs on the floor (black, of course). Opposite the King’s desk and working area, there was a grand fireplace with a sofa and two stuffed chairs as well as a low table. It looked positively inviting, which Autumn had not expected coming from such an austere and cold man.

She noticed a door in the wall to her left, and only once she had opened it did she realize that two of the castle towers were touching, and this doorway led to another circular chamber almost as large as the king's study. She immediately identified this new area as a war room; centred in the space was a massive table, empty now, but on which she could easily see a map being unrolled. Inspecting the sparse decor there did not take too long, and once she finished, she returned to the study to find Knight standing at attention in front of the door to the stairwell. His expression was perfectly neutral, yet his hands shook.

The king, for his part, had seemingly dismissed them from his notice and was bent once more to his writing. Autumn crossed the room towards the shelves that flanked his desk. She caught Knight’s eye, tilted her head subtly in the direction of the King, then shrugged. Knight’s lips thinned, but his fists did uncurl at his sides.