I Woke Up Married to the Cursed King

Two days before the eclipse.

Five days had passed in silence. Work. Walls. Stubbornness from both sides.

Elian walked into the study, took Caelian’s hand without saying a word, removed the old bracelet, put the new one on, and walked back out.

Caelian let him.

Didn’t say anything either.

Fine, Elian thought as he walked away. Two can be stubborn.

He spent the day hitting walls.

Every direction he looked — nothing.

The network records stopped. The name Lord Ervan led nowhere. The surviving members — if any existed — had buried themselves so completely that twenty years of digging hadn’t surfaced a single real lead.

He sat at the desk and stared at his notes.

I hate this, he thought.

In twelve years of being a con man he had never once failed to get information he was looking for. Not once. If someone had it, he found a way to get it. Charm, misdirection, patience, bribery — something always worked.

Now he was sitting in a palace with a man ten feet away who had the exact answer he needed and he couldn’t get it out of him.

In my best days, he thought, I could con anyone. I got information out of gang bosses. I got confessions out of people who had no intention of confessing. I operated in three countries and nobody ever caught me.

And I am being outmaneuvered by one stubborn king who won’t open his mouth.

He put his head in his hands.

This is humiliating.

Riven came in at some point. Looked at him. Left without saying anything.

Sable came in later. Looked at the notes. Looked at him.

"Still nothing?" she said.

"Still nothing," Elian said.

"Two days," she said.

"I know."

She left too.

That night Elian was done with the silent treatment.

He got into bed. Caelian was already there, reading. They’d been existing in the same space for days without actually occupying it together.

Elian looked at the ceiling for thirty seconds.

Then he turned.

"Tell me about your father," he said.

Caelian kept reading.

"Caelian."

"I heard you," Caelian said.

"Then answer."

"No."

Elian sat up. "Why not?"

"Because it’s not your business."

"It is my business." Elian’s voice was rising and he didn’t care. "It became my business the day I found a death curse on you. It became my business when I spent months clearing spirits out of this palace. It became my business when your bracelet started going dark and you didn’t tell me for three days."

Caelian set his book down.

He turned.

The anger was back. Elian had been expecting it.

This time he didn’t step back.

"Don’t," Caelian said.

"Don’t what? Ask? I’m going to keep asking. What did your father do that was so bad that twenty years later you’d rather carry a death curse than say it out loud?"

"Drop it."

"Was it heinous? Did he do something that actually deserved the response he got? Is that what you’re protecting?"

Caelian stood up.

Elian stood up too.

Caelian was still taller. Elian had to look up slightly and he hated that right now.

"You need to stop," Caelian said. Low. Dangerous.

"I need information," Elian said. "And you’re the only one who has it. So no. I’m not stopping."

"Curiosity killed the cat."

"I don’t care if I get killed." Elian’s voice cracked slightly on it. "If I don’t know what I’m dealing with, I can’t protect you. Do you understand that? I cannot protect you from something I don’t understand. And in two days—"

"Enough."

"—the eclipse happens and whatever comes after it, I need to be prepared—"

"I said enough!"

The voices had been rising. Both of them. Loud enough that neither of them heard the knock until it came a second time.

They both stopped.

Looked at the door.

"Your Highnesses." Edmund’s voice. Calm. Professional. "Is everything alright?"

Silence.

Caelian looked at the door.

Then at Elian.

"We’re fine," Caelian said. His voice was perfectly even. "Thank you, Edmund."

A pause.

"Of course, Your Highness. Good night."

Footsteps retreating down the corridor.

Silence.

They looked at each other.

Elian opened his mouth.

"Listen to me," Caelian said.

"No," Elian said. "You listen—"

Caelian took his face in both hands and kissed him.

It wasn’t gentle.

It was the specific desperation of a man who had run out of every other option and landed on this one. His hands were firm. His mouth said stop talking more clearly than any words had.

Elian’s brain went completely offline.

It took several seconds to come back.

When it did, Caelian had pulled back. Just slightly. His hands were still on Elian’s face. His eyes were right there, close enough that Elian could see everything in them — the exhaustion, the fear under the anger, the thing he’d been carrying that he didn’t know how to put down.

"Some things," Caelian said quietly, "need to stay in the dark."

Elian stared at him.

His brain was doing nothing useful.

Say something, he told himself. You are a con man. You have talked your way out of everything. Say something.

He said nothing.

Caelian’s hands were warm on his face.

The eclipse was in two days.

The bracelet on Caelian’s wrist had three whole beads left.

Elian’s brain remained completely and thoroughly offline.

Caelian stepped back.

Sat back down on the bed.

Picked up his book.

Like nothing had happened.

Elian stood there.

Did that just, he thought. Did he just—

He looked at Caelian. At the book held in front of his face. At the very deliberate way he was not looking at Elian.

He kissed me to shut me up, Elian thought. That’s what just happened. He ran out of ways to end the argument and he kissed me.

His face was doing something. He could feel it doing something. He had no control over it whatsoever.

He sat down on his side of the bed.

Stared at the wall.

Some things need to stay in the dark, Caelian had said.

What things, Elian thought. What is so bad—

He stopped.

His brain was still not fully operational.

He looked at the ceiling.

Okay, he thought. Okay. New information. Processing.

He thought about the hands on his face. The specific desperation in it.

He was scared, Elian realized. Not angry. Scared. The anger was covering scared.

Scared of what coming out, he thought. Scared of what I’d find.

He looked sideways at Caelian.

Caelian was staring at the same page he’d been on before.

Neither of them said anything.

The clock on the wall ticked.

Two days, Elian thought.

Two days and then the eclipse.

And I still don’t know what his father did.

He lay down. Pulled the covers up.

His brain was slowly coming back online.

Mostly.

I’ll figure it out, he thought. I always figure it out.

He looked at the ceiling.

The kiss had been — he wasn’t going to think about the kiss right now.

Later, he told himself. Think about the kiss later.

He closed his eyes.

Caelian turned a page.

Neither of them slept for a long time.

He lay awake long after Caelian’s breathing had finally evened out.

I like you, he’d said.

In anger. In desperation. Blurted out because the argument had backed him into a corner and he’d run out of other things to say.

But he’d meant it.

He still meant it.

He looked at the ceiling.

This is not how I planned this, he thought. Any of this. I arrived here by dying. I woke up in a borrowed body married to a stranger. I had a list — divorce, find a way home, do the minimum required to survive.

He thought about the list.

The list is gone, he thought. I don’t know when it went. Somewhere between the bracelets and the clearing and the salt in the corners and watching him almost step off a railing and deciding I was not going to let that happen.

The list is gone and I don’t miss it.

He turned his head.

Caelian was sleeping. Face slack. The severity gone. Just a person, tired, finally resting.

"Some things need to stay in the dark," he’d said.

Whatever your father did, Elian thought. Whatever happened. I’m going to find it anyway. Not to expose it. Not to use it. Just to understand what I’m fighting.

And then I’m going to end this.

He closed his eyes.

I like you, he thought, at the sleeping profile beside him.

That’s extremely inconvenient.

But it’s true.

He slept.

He thought about the kiss for another five minutes.

Then he firmly stopped thinking about it.

The eclipse is in two days, he told himself. You have the dampened ritual and eight days of preparation and a Varek that outsmarted you last time and something in this palace that nobody knows about yet.

You do not have time to think about the kiss.

He looked at the ceiling.

You’re going to think about it anyway, his brain offered helpfully.

I know, he thought back. But not tonight.

He closed his eyes.

Two days.

Then the eclipse.

Then whatever came after.

He’d deal with the kiss after that.

Probably.