"Well," Julian said, letting his words settle in the silence of the corridor. "Better than when I left."
She tilted her head, her eyes narrowing slightly as if to asure so hidden truth.
"You’re different," she said at last.
Julian allowed himself a brief smile. "People keep saying that," he replied, a trace of amusent in his tone.
"Because it’s true." She paused, her gaze sweeping over him slowly. "The last ti I saw you, you were—" She hesitated, as though weighing each word before letting it escape. "You were not like this."
"Like what?" Julian asked, genuinely curious now.
She considered it and her eyes traced his face as if reading a map only she could decipher.
"Quiet," she said finally, her voice low. "You were never quiet before. You took up a great deal of space in every room you entered. You made sure of it." Her gaze lingered on him. "Now, you stand here in a corridor, and the corridor doesn’t even know you’re here."
Julian looked at her. "Is that better, or worse?" he asked.
She almost smiled at the question, the edges of her lips twitching in amusent. "I’m not sure yet," she admitted.
A brief silence stretched between them.
"What happened to you," she asked finally, her voice tinged with genuine curiosity and concern, "after the eting with the king? After the party? Everything changed, and no one would tell what. Father said you were being sent away—and that was the end of the explanation."
Julian processed her words carefully.
"So things happened that I wasn’t prepared for," he said finally. "And I handled them badly. Father made the decision he thought was right given that."
Vanessa’s eyes did not waver from him.
"That’s not an answer," she said.
"It’s the honest part of one," Julian replied evenly.
She looked at him for a mont longer, then seed to make a decision about how far to press.
"You t soone there," she said. "Didn’t you? At the party. Soone did sothing, or said sothing, and you ca back from it wrong. I noticed. I tried to ask you about it at the ti and you wouldn’t look at ."
Julian looked at her calmly.
She was not guessing. She had observed this and had it running on her mind since that day. She really was as intelligent as she looked.
This made her either the most useful person in this castle or the most dangerous.
"Sothing happened," Julian said finally. "Yes. I’m still understanding what."
She accepted this. Not because it satisfied her — he could see it didn’t — but because she recognized a boundary and was too composed to push past it in a corridor on the first day.
"Are you all right," she asked.
"Yes," Julian said. "I am."
She held his gaze for a mont, reading it with that sa focused attention. Whatever she found there seed to be sufficient, because she nodded once and the tension that had been running beneath the conversation released slightly.
"I’m glad you’re back."
"So am I."
She almost smiled again, and this ti it got slightly further.
But then, a footsteps rang out in the corridor. Both of them turned to see commander Aldric appearing at the corridor’s end. His eyes quickly assessed the scene, taking in Julian and Vanessa, before he adjusted his pace and ca forward. He stopped a few steps away and bowed his head briefly to Vanessa.
Then he looked at Julian. "Young lord," he said. "The duke has asked for you."
Julian studied him for a mont, then turned his attention to Vanessa.
"We’ll continue later," he said quietly.
"Yes," she replied. "We will
He held her gaze for one more beat, then turned and walked with Aldric back down the corridor.
Behind him, Vanessa remained where she was. He didn’t look back, but he didn’t need to. He could feel her attention following him until the corridor turned and took him out of her sightline.
She was going to be watching him carefully from here forward.
**
Aldric did not make any small talk on the way to the office.
Julian appreciated that.
The office door was open when they arrived.
Julian walked through it and saw that the Duke was standing beside the window, his eyes roaming across the courtyard.
Aldric ca in behind Julian and closed the door.
The Duke looked at his son for a long mont.
Then he said: "What have you done, Kraven."
He was not loud but wasn’t soft either. Julian could see the anger barely controlled beneath the Duke’s calm expression.
He stood in the center of the room and said nothing.
"One of Liam’s soldiers," the Duke said, moving away from the window and toward the desk, though he didn’t sit. "Dead. In the main corridor. Right here, in my castle."
He paused, placing his hands firmly on the desk’s surface, his gaze fixed on Julian.
"Do you understand what you’ve just handed him? The ssage this sends? Do you realize the consequences of what has happened under your hand?"
"An excuse," Julian said.
"An excuse," the Duke repeated. "Yes. An excuse. Which is the one thing I have spent months ensuring he did not have. Every provocation from his n, every disrespect at the gate, every deliberate breach of authority in this duchy — I have absorbed all of it without response because responding would give him exactly what he needs to take this to the King."
His jaw tightened once, visibly.
"And you have walked back into this castle after one afternoon and handed it to him."
The room held this for a mont.
"The soldier made a comnt about mother," Julian said.
"I know what he said."
"Then you know it required a response."
"It required a managed response," the Duke said, his voice sharpening at the edges for the first ti.
"A controlled response. A response that could be justified without escalating. Not—" He stopped. Looked at Julian with sothing that was not quite anger alone but anger mixed with sothing more complicated. "Not what you did."
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