Chapter 20: The Calm Before the Council

Ava's POV

The palace changed overnight.

I noticed it the second I stepped out of my room the next morning. The corridor smelled different, fresh polish and something floral underneath it, sharp and deliberate. Two maids I had never seen before were working the far end of the hall, moving fast, and a third was on a ladder doing something to the light fixtures that the light fixtures had clearly never experienced before.

Leta was waiting for me at the supply closet with an expression that meant she had information and had been waiting to deliver it since before I was awake.

"Delegation," she said, the moment I reached her.

"What?"

"Important visitors. Arriving in two days." She handed me a cloth and grabbed her own bucket. "The whole palace goes into preparation mode when this happens. Every surface gets cleaned twice, flowers come in by the cartload, and the kitchen starts cooking things that take three days to prepare."

I looked down the corridor at the sudden activity. "How important?"

"Important enough that Ryker combed his hair at breakfast."

I stared at her. "Ryker combed his hair?"

"I know." She looked genuinely unsettled by it. "I saw it with my own eyes. It was alarming."

We started on the east corridor together, moving faster than usual because the head maid had already been through twice this morning with a look on her face that suggested mercy was not available today. The whole palace had a different energy, tighter and more urgent, like something had pulled every person in it half a step forward.

"Who's coming?" I asked.

Leta's cloth moved in quick circles on the wall panel. "Nobody's said officially. But the guest quarters being prepared are the formal ones on the second floor, which they only open for pack leaders or council members."

"Council members," I repeated.

"Elder Council." She glanced at me sideways. "Powerful people. Old families. The kind of delegation that makes even the Triplets behave like actual diplomats instead of people who break things when they're annoyed."

I absorbed this and kept cleaning.

By midmorning the flowers had arrived. Enormous arrangements, white and deep red, carried through the main entrance by a steady stream of delivery staff. The head maid directed placement with the focused intensity of a general moving troops. I stayed out of her way and worked whatever room I was assigned and tried, very deliberately, to be invisible.

I was good at invisible.

I made it to the afternoon.

The kitchen was warm and loud when I arrived to return a tray, smelling like roasting meat and something sweet and yeasty from the ovens. Three cooks were working at the central table, and two more were managing the stoves, and nobody looked up when I came in because everyone was focused entirely on their own task.

I found a spare spot at the preparation counter and started on the vegetables that were sitting unattended in a large bowl. Nobody told me to. It just seemed like the thing to do.

I had peeled four potatoes and was starting on the fifth when the kitchen went slightly quieter.

Not silent. Just quieter. The particular quiet that happened when someone walked into a room who made people aware of themselves.

I kept peeling.

"Everyone out."

Ryker's voice. The kitchen emptied in approximately twenty seconds. I kept my eyes on the potato in my hand and did not turn around.

Footsteps crossed the kitchen floor. He stopped on the other side of the preparation counter, directly across from me.

I looked up.

He was looking at me with that flat, assessing expression that I still couldn't fully read after nearly three weeks in this palace.

"You need to be invisible for the next two days," he said.

"I am invisible. That's what I do."

"More invisible than usual." He put both hands on the counter edge. "This delegation cannot see you. I need you to stay in the back rooms, the lower corridors, anywhere they won't walk."

I set the potato down. "Why?"

"It's complicated."

"I can handle complicated."

"Ava."

"That's not an answer." I crossed my arms. "You're telling me to hide, which I am already doing, except now you want me to hide more specifically and from specific people. That means something. So tell me what it means."

He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes. Not the shifting quality that Zephyr had, something different. Something that looked almost like he was deciding how much the truth was going to cost him.

"The delegation," he said slowly. "It's not just council members."

"Okay."

"There's a pack leader coming with them." He held my eyes. "He requested the meeting himself. Called it a diplomatic visit."

"Which pack?"

He didn't answer immediately. His jaw tightened slightly. His hands on the counter edge pressed down a fraction harder.

"Ryker." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Which pack."

He leaned forward across the counter. Not aggressive. Quiet. The way he spoke when he wanted to make absolutely certain the words landed correctly.

"The man leading that delegation," he said, "is the one who rejected you."

The knife was in my hand.

Then it wasn't.

It hit the counter with a sound that seemed very loud in the empty kitchen, spinning once and going still.

My hand was open where it had been. I looked at it. Looked back up at him.

"Ryder is coming here."