Chapter 6

The back office reeked of old paper and floor polish, a cramped space off the service corridor that the palace groundskeepers had once used for maintenance logs. A cracked leather couch sagged against one wall, a Stanley thermos sat on a filing cabinet next to a stack of yellowed forms, and a single barred window let in the dim red glow of the outside emergency beacons. The medics had gone, leaving Elena propped on the couch with a glass of water and a blanket that smelled faintly of dust.

Victoria stood by the window, her hand resting on the warped sill, watching the light pulse across the courtyard below. Marcus sat in a wooden chair opposite Elena, elbows on his knees, his tie loosened for the first time that evening. A silence stretched between them, comfortable and heavy at once.

"This is not quite the gala I imagined," Elena said, a small, tired smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

Marcus almost laughed. "I'm sorry. This was supposed to be a quiet evening. A toast to your grandfather's memory."

Elena looked down at her hands. "Did you know him well?"

"Better than most men know their own brothers." Marcus leaned back, feeling the joints in his knees protest. "We served together for twelve years. He was the bravest man I ever met. Not in the swaggering way — in the quiet way, the way that means you'd trust him with your life and your daughter's life and the whole mountain, too."

"He never talked about it," Elena said. "The war. I knew he'd been a soldier, but he never … he used to say that the past was a country he'd already left."

Marcus nodded. "That sounds like him." He paused, and something flickered behind his eyes. "There's one thing you should know, and it may change how you feel about me."