Chapter 2: The Brother's Poison
The gown was the color of new willow leaves, light and flowing enough that she could almost forget the weight of the day. Elowen stood before the vast fireplace in the guest dining chamber, watching the flames lick at a log of fragrant applewood. The room was oppressively grand, the long oak table set for two with enough silver to ransom a small town. Tapestries depicting Vaelorian triumphs—cavalry charges, falling flags—lined the walls, their woven heroes staring blankly across the room at their own glory. She felt like an intruder in a museum of someone else’s victory.
She’d chosen the green deliberately. A small act of rebellion against the expected mournful blues or political reds. It made her feel pretty. It made her feel like herself, a tiny shoot of life in this stone monument.
The door behind her opened.
She didn’t turn, assuming it was a servant, or finally, Gareth. The footsteps were too soft, too deliberate. They stopped close behind her.
Then hands came down on her bare shoulders.
The grip was instantaneous and absolute, fingers digging into the muscle with a practiced, bruising force. Her breath hitched. A cold, familiar dread flooded her veins, turning them to ice.
“Hello, little bird.”
Evander. His voice was a honeyed whisper, his breath disturbing the curls by her ear. She went rigid, every instinct screaming to shrink away, to flinch. But she had trained herself not to. Movement only made him clamp down harder.
“You look… optimistic,” he murmured, his thumbs pressing cruelly into her collarbones. “Silly girl. Did you think you were coming to a fairy tale? You’re just the prize cow, led to a different barn.”
She said nothing. She stared into the fire, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
“Let me paint you a picture of your future,” he continued, his lips almost touching her ear. The intimate horror of it made her skin crawl. “Your brooding prince? He’s not just awkward. He’s broken. Last summer, a stable hand laughed at the wrong moment during a thunderstorm. Spooked one of the precious warhorses. Gareth beat the man to a pulp right there in the straw. The healers said his skull was like a cracked egg. He died whimpering.”
Elowen’s eyes widened. The dancing flames blurred.
“Then there’s the widow in the lower city,” Evander went on, a conversational, terrifying rhythm to his words. “Her husband died in his regiment. She came to the palace gates with her three children, barefoot in the snow, begging for the pension he was owed. Your beloved prince rode right past them. Didn’t even slow his horse. One of his guards threw a crust of bread at them, like they were street dogs.” He squeezed harder, and she bit her lip to stop a sound. “He’s a hollow thing, Elowen. A monster wearing a prince’s skin. And you’ll be chained to him. You’ll lie beneath him. You’ll bear his vicious children. And he will break you, slowly, because it’s the only thing that makes men like him feel anything at all.”
Tears of pain and fury stung her eyes. She couldn’t pull away. His hands were anchors of malice.
The door swung open again.
Evander’s hands transformed. The brutal pressure melted into what looked, from a distance, like a brotherly squeeze. His voice warmed, became polished and loud, the nightmare whisper vanishing as if it had never been.
“Ah, Your Highness!” he said, turning both of them slightly toward the door, his arm now draped affectionately around her stiff shoulders. “You’ve caught us. I was just telling my dear sister how fortunate she is to have won your favor.”
Gareth stood in the doorway. He had changed into a dark, simpler jacket. He looked from Evander’s friendly smile to Elowen’s frozen profile. She was pale, her eyes too bright. The flames painted her in gold and shadow, but they couldn’t hide the stark tension in her neck, in the white-knuckled grip of her hands at her sides.
He saw it. He saw the performance in Evander’s posture, the terror held just beneath the surface of Elowen’s stillness. His own frustration from the afternoon curdled into something colder, sharper.
He didn’t smile. He walked into the room, his boots soundless on the rug.
“She didn’t win my favor,” Gareth said, his voice flat, cutting through Evander’s facade with the bluntness of an axe. He stopped a few feet away, his dark eyes holding Elowen’s for a heartbeat before switching to her brother. “Her father bought it. With six iron mines and a promise not to raid our northern borders for five years.” He let the crass, unvarnished truth hang in the air between them. “The transaction was complete before she ever got in a carriage. Now, leave us.”