I Woke Up Married to the Cursed King

Elian walked into the study with a plan.

Ask about the childhood. Keep it casual. Frame it as getting to know him better. Don’t make it sound like an investigation.

Simple.

Rowan was there, which he hadn’t accounted for.

Both brothers looked up when he came in.

"Good morning," Elian said.

"Morning," Rowan said.

Caelian said nothing. Just watched him with the particular attention he had when he knew something was coming.

Of course he knows, Elian thought. He always knows.

Elian sat across from him. "I wanted to ask you something."

"Go ahead," Caelian said.

"About your childhood."

Silence.

Caelian looked at him.

Rowan looked at Caelian.

"Specifically," Elian said, pressing forward, "about who was around you when you were young. Before you were king. Who you spent time with. What your life was like around the age of ten."

Nothing.

Caelian had gone very still. The kind of still that wasn’t calm — the kind that was holding something back.

Rowan shifted in his chair.

"I can—" Rowan started.

"No," Caelian said.

Just that. No.

Rowan closed his mouth.

Elian waited.

One beat. Two.

Caelian didn’t say anything else.

He’s not going to answer, Elian realized. He’s just going to sit there and not answer and wait for me to stop asking.

"Caelian," Elian said. "I need to know—"

"Rowan," Caelian said. "Give us a moment."

Rowan stood up immediately. He gave Elian a look on the way out — brief, unreadable — and pulled the door shut behind him.

The study went quiet.

Caelian looked at Elian across the desk.

"I have given you a great deal of freedom," Caelian said. His voice was even. Too even. "In this palace. In how you operate. In what you do and don’t explain to me." He paused. "That was a choice I made. It doesn’t mean you can come in here and demand things from me."

"I’m not demanding—"

"You are," Caelian said. He stood up.

Elian stood too. Instinct.

Caelian came around the desk.

He was taller than Elian. Elian knew this, had always known this, but it was different when Caelian was moving toward him with that expression on his face — the severity cranked all the way up, no warmth anywhere in it.

Elian backed up a step.

His back hit the wall.

Caelian stopped in front of him. Close. The violet eyes not cold exactly — something hotter than cold. Something Elian hadn’t seen before.

"Whatever you are doing," Caelian said quietly, "I have let you do it. The rituals. The salt. The people you’ve brought in. I let it happen because something was changing and I chose to trust that." He paused. "But my past is not part of the arrangement. My life before you arrived is not yours to dig through."

Elian opened his mouth.

"This is your last warning," Caelian said. "Don’t come into my life and take things I haven’t offered."

He stepped back.

Went back to his desk.

Sat down.

Picked up his pen.

Like Elian was already gone.

Elian walked out.

His heart was doing something loud and unpleasant and he ignored it completely.

Rowan was in the corridor. He’d clearly been standing exactly where he could hear through the door.

"He doesn’t mean it like that," Rowan said immediately. "He’s under a lot of stress and he—"

"Good for him," Elian said.

He kept walking.

"Elian—"

"I said good for him." He didn’t stop. "He’s right. It’s his life. I shouldn’t have pushed."

He turned the corner.

Got to the outhouse.

Pushed the door open.

Sable and Riven looked up.

"I can’t get through to him," Elian said. He sat down. "He won’t talk about his past. Won’t let anyone near it." He pressed his fingers together. "Which means I can’t get the answer from him directly."

"So we find it another way," Sable said.

"Yes." Elian looked at the table. "We dig. Without him. His childhood, who was around him, what happened in the years before I arrived." He paused. "Someone made a decision about him when he was ten years old. I need to know why. And since he’s not going to tell me—"

"We find it ourselves," Riven said.

"We find it ourselves," Elian confirmed.

He looked at the table.

His jaw was tight.

He unclenched it deliberately.

He’s allowed to be angry, he thought. He’s allowed to have things he doesn’t want touched. That’s not unreasonable.

It’s just inconvenient.

Very, very inconvenient.

"Where do we start," Sable said.

"Palace records," Elian said. "His father’s reign. Who was at court. Who had access to the family. And specifically—" He paused. "The king’s brother. Caelian’s father’s siblings. I want to know if there was anyone."

Riven looked at him. "Why the siblings?"

"Because someone decided a ten year old child was a threat," Elian said. "And people who see children as threats usually have something to gain from their death." He paused. "Succession. Power. Something."

Sable was already pulling out her notes.

"I’ll start with the genealogy records," she said.

"Good," Elian said.

He sat back.

Thought about Caelian’s face. The anger in it. The wall of it.

You’re protecting something, Elian thought. Something happened and you’ve been protecting it your whole life.

I’m going to find out what it is.

With or without you.

He spent the afternoon in the records room.

It was dusty. Nobody came here much. The palace kept meticulous documentation of everything — births, deaths, appointments, dismissals, court attendance — but nobody actually read it unless they had to.

Elian had to.

He pulled everything from twenty-five years ago. The years around Caelian’s birth. His mother’s death. The years when a child would have been ten.

He read for three hours.

Most of it was boring. Trade agreements. Seasonal reports. Council minutes that went in circles.

But he was looking for people. Specifically, people who had been at court during those years and then disappeared.

You don’t vanish from court records without a reason, he thought. Either you died, or you left, or someone made you leave.

He found three names that appeared regularly in the early records and then simply — stopped.

One was a physician. Died of fever. Natural.

One was a council member. Retired to his estates. Also natural.

The third was a lord. High ranking. Regular court presence for years and then — nothing. No death record. No retirement announcement. No transfer to another posting.

Just gone.

Elian stared at the name.

Lord Ervan, he thought. Who are you.

He wrote it down.

He’d ask Dunwick tomorrow. Dunwick remembered everything.

He came back to the bedroom late.

Caelian was there. Already in bed. Reading.

He didn’t look up when Elian came in.

Elian changed. Got into bed. Lay on his side facing away.

Neither of them said anything.

The silence was a different kind from their usual silences. This one had edges.

Elian stared at the wall.

You’re allowed to be angry, he thought again. You’re the king. It’s your life. You don’t owe me anything.

He paused.

But I need to keep you alive.

So I’m going to find out anyway.

And when I do, you can be as angry as you want.

He closed his eyes.

Behind him, he heard Caelian set his book down.

The lamp went out.

Dark. Quiet. The edges still there.

Elian lay still.

Eight days, he thought.

Lord Ervan.

The woman by the tree.

The eclipse.

He had eight days and a list that kept getting longer.

He closed his eyes.

This time he actually slept.

He had dinner alone.

Caelian was in a late session with the council. Rowan and Isolde had gone into the city for the evening.

The dining room was quiet.

He ate mechanically. Thought about Lord Ervan — the name that had disappeared from the records. No death, no retirement, just gone.

Someone who had to disappear, he thought. Not left. Not died. Made to disappear.

That was different.

That was the kind of disappearance that happened when someone knew something they shouldn’t. Or was connected to something they shouldn’t be.

Who were you, he thought. And what did you know.

He finished his food.

Took his plate to the kitchen himself — a habit he’d developed that the kitchen staff had stopped commenting on. He liked the walk. Liked the few minutes of ordinary human noise.

A maid was in the corridor on the way back.

Not the maid with the wrong aura. Just a regular maid, carrying linens, nodding at him as she passed.

He nodded back.

Thought about ordinary people going about ordinary lives inside a palace that had something twenty years old and patient living inside it.

They don’t know, he thought. None of them know.

He went back to his room.

Sat at the desk.

Wrote out what he had on Lord Ervan.

It wasn’t much.

But it was something.

He’d ask Dunwick tomorrow.

One more thread to pull.

He went to bed.

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