THE KING’S DAUGHTER | A Z R I E L
PART IV - The List. (Maelís' POV)
(PART I) (PART II) (PART III)
Pairing: Azriel x Maelís (The King of Hybern’s Daughter. (OC))
Summary: Like her Brothers, the daughter of Hybern was supposed to be a threat.
Azriel just hadn't expected her to be the kind that kept him awake at night.
Azriel had been sent to Hybern to observe the king’s surviving bloodline. Assess the threat. Remove it, if necessary. But the female standing in the rain below him did not look like a remnant of a dead court. She looked like the reason the ruins had not collapsed yet. And when Maelís lifted her eyes toward the parapet where no one should have been able to see him, Azriel understood two things at once. She knew death was watching. And she was amused.
Maelís did not go back to the council chamber immediately.
That would have been expected.
Alaric would be waiting for her return with his mouth sharpened around some half-formed insult. Ciar would be watching to see whether the interruption had unsettled her. Oran would be sitting with his priests and pretending he had not noticed the way every commander in that room had looked to her before deciding whether to breathe.
Let them wait.
Waiting made men honest in ways conversation rarely did.
She walked instead through the western arcade, rain still cold in her hair, the three dragons moving behind her with varying degrees of grace. Eiresone was silent, measured, claws touching the stone as if the entire fortress belonged to her personally and everyone else was merely being tolerated. Xorox remained close to Maelís' left side, his dark wings half-tucked, the line of his body still angled toward the outer courtyard. Nymoriax had recovered from his supposed near-murder and was now attempting to nose beneath Maelís' hand with great tragedy.
“You are not neglected,” she told him.
Nymoriax made a mournful sound.
“You were lying in the cart path.”
Another sound. Softer. More wounded.
Maelís glanced down at him. “Yes, I’m sure the grain offended you deeply.”
Eiresone huffed.
It might have been agreement.
It might have been judgement.
With Eiresone, the distinction was often unnecessary.
The fortress corridors opened around them in long ribs of black stone. Hybern architecture had always favoured intimidation over comfort. Narrow windows. Heavy doors. Iron brackets. Corners built for ambush rather than beauty. Even the arches seemed less designed to lift the eye than to remind a person what weight hung over them.
Maelís knew every inch of this place.
That did not make it safe.
It only meant she knew where the danger preferred to stand.
Her steps slowed as she reached the first interior junction. Three paths branched from it: left toward the council chamber, right toward the household wing, straight ahead toward the old west tower and the records rooms beneath it.
Behind her, Marek’s replacement at the stairwell looked briefly uncertain.
Maelís saw it without turning her head.
Good.
Uncertainty meant he was awake.
“Tell Lord Nerevan I will return shortly,” she said.
The guard bowed. “Yes, my lady.”
“And if my brothers ask?”
A pause.
“They already have.”
Of course they had.
Maelís looked back at him then.
He was young. Too young to have survived the war as anything but a boy behind walls, though Hybern had been skilled at turning boys into witnesses long before they were old enough to choose whether they wished to become soldiers.
“What did they ask?”
“Lord Alaric wanted to know whether he should continue in your absence.”
That almost made her smile.
“Did he phrase it that politely?”
“No, my lady.”
“Wise of you not to repeat it.”
The guard lowered his eyes.
Maelís turned back to the corridor. “Tell him he may continue doing whatever he believes himself capable of doing.”
This time, Eiresone definitely huffed.
Marek’s replacement fled with commendable speed.
Maelís did not take the left corridor.
She went straight.
Xorox’s head lifted.
He had been watching the same places she had, then.
Good.
The watcher in the rain had not followed obviously. That meant very little. Anyone skilled enough to stand where they had stood would not reveal themselves by padding obediently down a corridor after her. But absence did not comfort her. Absence was often only another shape of presence.
Someone had been watching.
That much she knew.
Not one of the stablehands. Not one of the household guards. Not a servant sent by Ciar, unless her brother had suddenly discovered the discipline to employ someone who did not smell of smugglers’ cologne and poor decisions.
Alaric’s men were worse. Too heavy-footed. Too proud of their own silence.
Oran’s priests watched differently. Their attention had a damp quality, devotional and invasive at once, as if they believed witnessing was a form of ownership. She had known the sensation of their eyes since she was thirteen and one of them had informed her father that female ambition was a sign of divine disorder.
Her father had laughed.
Then assigned that same priest to oversee her morning lessons in court scripture for three months, because he had enjoyed watching people discover whether his daughter could be made obedient by boredom.
She had not been.
The priest had later choked on a fish bone during supper.
Entirely unrelated.
Mostly.
Maelís reached the old west tower door and placed her palm against the iron latch.
The metal recognised her.
Not in words. Metal did not speak as people imagined it might. It remembered pressure, heat, shape, violence. It knew the hands that used it often. It knew blood. It knew fear, if fear came with force.
The latch softened beneath her touch.
Not melted. Not broken.
Persuaded.
She slipped inside and closed the door behind her.
The dragons could not fit through the narrow entry at their current size. Nymoriax complained immediately. Xorox gave the door a look of personal offence. Eiresone simply folded herself down in the corridor outside, blocking half of it with the serene entitlement of a queen.
“Stay,” Maelís said.
Xorox’s tail struck the floor once.
“Yes, I know you hate that word.”
Another strike.
“Then stop behaving like it applies.”
She closed the door fully before he could argue further.
Silence met her on the other side.
The old west tower had once housed records from the coastal territories: crop reports, shipping ledgers, tax obligations, conscription lists, marriage contracts between families who had believed bloodlines were investments. Most of the documents had been moved during the war. Some burned. Some stolen. Some carefully altered by people clever enough to understand that history was often decided by whoever survived with ink.
Maelís kept her own records elsewhere.
The tower was useful for a different reason.
It was one of the few places in the fortress where everyone believed there was nothing left to find.
She descended the curved stair, one hand trailing along the damp stone. At the bottom, the air grew colder, threaded with the mineral smell of old water and sealed rooms. No torches burned. She did not need them. Thin lines of pale faelight slept inside the metal sconces, and at a brush of her magic, they stirred to life.
Not bright.
Never bright.
Only enough to reveal the corridor ahead.
She passed three doors before stopping at the fourth.
This one had no visible lock.
That was because the lock lived inside the frame.
Her father had installed it years ago, amused by secrecy for secrecy’s sake. He had enjoyed hidden rooms. Hidden children. Hidden threats. He had believed concealment made a thing more powerful.
He had never understood that secrets were only useful if one knew when to spend them.
Maelís pressed two fingers to the frame.
The inner mechanism shifted.
The door opened.
Inside was a narrow chamber lined with shelves, most empty, some stacked with papers and small sealed boxes. No windows. No second entrance. One table. Two chairs. A basin of clean water refreshed daily by a servant who believed this room belonged to no one and therefore worried it was haunted.
Maelís entered and shut the door.
Only then did she breathe properly.
Not because she had been afraid.
Fear was not the problem.
Fear was an old companion. Familiar. Occasionally useful. Often irritating.
Exhaustion was worse.
The endless measuring. The constant awareness of who stood where, who wanted what, who had looked away too quickly, who had not looked away at all. Her brothers thought power was a thing to seize and hold above one’s head until enough fools mistook it for a banner.
They had no idea what power cost when one had to survive it.
She crossed to the table, unfastened the narrow dark circlet from her brow, and set it down.
The room seemed to loosen around her.
Only slightly.
Her reflection looked back from the basin’s water: rain-dark hair, brown skin gone cool from the storm, honey-brown eyes too steady to be mistaken for rest. A small streak of mud marked her jaw where Nymoriax had pressed his snout against her.
She wiped it away with the heel of her hand.
Then stilled.
The watcher.
Her mind returned to that wrongness in the rain. Not a sound. Not a shape. No scent carried clearly enough through storm and dragons and wet stone. But attention had weight if one had been made to live beneath it long enough.
And Maelís had been watched her entire life.
By tutors.
By guards.
By priests.
By brothers.
By servants who pitied her and servants who feared her and servants who wanted to sell the details of her moods to whichever royal son seemed most likely to win the week.
By her father, most of all.
The king had never watched like a father.
He had watched like a collector waiting to see whether a weapon would crack during forging.
She had learned very young not to crack where anyone could see.
The watcher in the rain had been different.
That was the part that annoyed her.
Different meant unknown, and unknown meant she had to spend time she did not have making a list.
She went to the far shelf and removed a slim ledger bound in dark leather. Not the real ledger. That one was hidden in a place none of her brothers had the patience to consider. This ledger was bait of a subtler kind: enough truth to interest a thief, enough falsehood to poison whatever hand tried to use it.
Maelís opened it to a blank page.
Then wrote six names.
Alaric.
Ciar.
Oran.
Nerevan.
Prythian.
Other.
She stared at them for a moment.
Alaric first.
He had motive. He always had motive. He wanted her frightened, diminished, reactive. But Alaric preferred intimidation that announced itself. If he had sent someone, the watcher would likely have wanted to be noticed eventually. A threat. A reminder. A staged discovery of treasonous correspondence or a dead servant outside her rooms.
Crude, but useful to him.
Still possible.
She drew a short line beside his name.
Ciar.
More likely. Ciar collected information the way some men collected jewels, admiring each piece more for what it might buy him than for its own value. His spies were better than Alaric’s. Quieter. Often underestimated because Ciar liked surrounding himself with people who seemed decorative until they put knives in ribs.
But the presence in the rain had not felt like Ciar’s usual web.
No perfume. No arrogance. No little signature of cleverness left for her to find and resent.
Possible.
Another line.
Oran.
Maelís tapped the pen once against the page.
Oran’s priests had grown bolder since their father’s death. They spoke of blood, destiny, divine right, Hybern purified through sacrifice. Oran himself liked clean hands too much to wield the knife, but he had no objection to blessing the person who did.
If his faction suspected Maelís intended to block a holy restoration of their father’s rule, they might watch her.
They might also try to kill her.
That was tedious, but not surprising.
Another line.
Nerevan.
Her pen hovered.
Old general. Ruined eye. Careful mouth. He had served her father because men like him served structures, not souls. He understood supply, discipline, morale. He also understood that Hybern could not survive another fool with a crown.
He watched her, yes.
But openly enough that she respected it.
Would he send someone to study her privately before choosing where to place his remaining loyalty?
Absolutely.
Would that someone stand unseen in a storm with that level of skill?
Possibly.
She marked his name.
Then Prythian.
The word sat on the page like a lit match.
Maelís leaned back.
Prythian had every reason to watch Hybern. More than watch. If she were High Lord of any court across that sea, she would already have spies buried in every port, every ruined command post, every surviving noble house with enough coin to hire ships.
The Night Court would be the most likely.
Not because they were the only ones ruthless enough.
Because they were the ones most likely to be quiet about it.
She had never met Rhysand.
Not properly.
She had seen him once across a battlefield in the last hours of the war, a dark figure half swallowed by power and distance. She had been younger then, though not young enough for innocence. The sky had been full of screams. Her father had still been alive. The world had not yet decided which monster would survive the day.
She remembered the Night Court’s Illyrians.
Wings against smoke.
The impact of them striking Hybern’s lines.
She remembered, too, the shadows.
Not many details. War did not grant the luxury of studying every nightmare individually. But there had been one presence among them, a darkness that moved with intent rather than chaos. A blade slipping through a battlefield as if violence itself had decided to become quiet.
The Spymaster.
Azriel.
Even in Hybern, his name was known.
Not spoken loudly. Never with laughter.
Her father had once called him Rhysand’s most useful monster.
Maelís had been sixteen.
She had asked, unwisely, whether that made her one of his.
Her father had laughed for a long time.
Then sent her to train until she bled through both gloves.
She looked down at the word Prythian.
Would Rhysand send Azriel?
If the rumours about him were true, yes.
If Rhysand was as intelligent as his reputation suggested, also yes.
Would Azriel stand in her courtyard in the rain and watch without leaving a trace her guards could find?
Yes.
Would he allow himself to be sensed?
That gave her pause.
Perhaps she had not sensed him.
Perhaps she had sensed only the place where the world had briefly refused to be ordinary.
There was a difference.
And there were other possibilities.
Assassins from the continent. Human agents. Her father’s old allies testing whether Hybern’s remaining blood was worth supporting. Her brothers’ enemies. Her own supposed allies. A servant with more courage than sense.
Other.
The largest category.
Always.
Maelís closed the ledger.
She did not cross out any name.
Certainty was a luxury for people who liked dying surprised.
Instead, she opened the first sealed box on the shelf and removed a set of thin metal markers, each no larger than a fingernail. She had made them years ago from scraps of old armour, each pressed with a fragment of her magic. Not enough to track a person. Tracking magic could be detected, reversed, followed back to its maker by anyone competent.
These were simpler.
Question marks made of metal.
Placed in corridors, doorways, window ledges, unused stairwells. If disturbed, they would remember contact. If moved by magic, they would remember flavour. If ignored entirely, they would still tell her something.
A watched fortress was not a problem.
A fortress that reacted to being watched was.
She selected twelve markers.
Not too many. Too many would announce concern.
Then she paused and selected three more.
Because she was concerned.
She was simply not stupid enough to announce it.
A soft scrape came from the other side of the door.
Not claws.
Not boots.
Scales against stone.
“Nymoriax,” she called, “if you are lying on the floor with your eye pressed to the crack beneath the door, I will know.”
A faint, guilty chirp.
Despite herself, Maelís smiled.
Only for a moment.
Then it faded.
She gathered the markers into a small leather pouch and returned the ledger to the shelf.
When she emerged, all three dragons were exactly where she had left them, though Nymoriax had arranged himself with his head suspiciously close to the threshold. Xorox’s gaze swept the corridor before settling on her. Eiresone watched Maelís with ancient patience, which was impressive for a creature who had once eaten an entire basket of sugared plums and pretended not to understand why everyone was upset.
Maelís rested a hand briefly on Eiresone’s snout.
“I know,” she murmured.
Eiresone’s eyes softened.
Of the three, she understood most clearly when the game changed.
Xorox understood threats.
Nymoriax understood hearts.
Eiresone understood consequence.
Maelís slipped the pouch of markers beneath the side of her armour and began walking.
This time, she took the right corridor instead of the left.
Not because she feared being followed.
Because if someone had been watching long enough to learn her habits, they deserved to be inconvenienced.
By the time she returned to the council chamber, Alaric had indeed continued without her.
Poorly.
His voice carried through the doors before she opened them.
“—cannot allow ourselves to be ruled by hesitation dressed as strategy.”
Maelís paused with one hand on the latch.
Behind her, the dragons stopped.
Marek stood beside the doors now, apparently having returned from wherever she had sent him without needing to be called. His expression remained professional, but his eyes flicked once to the pouch hidden beneath her armour.
He noticed too much.
That was why she trusted him.
Mostly.
“Any developments?” she asked.
“Lord Alaric suggested a vote.”
“How democratic of him.”
Marek’s mouth twitched.
“Lord Ciar suggested wine first.”
“More sensible.”
“Lord Oran said bloodlines should not be subject to votes.”
Maelís sighed. “And Lord Nerevan?”
“He asked who would feed the soldiers while they argued about destiny.”
That time, Maelís almost smiled properly.
Almost.
Inside, Alaric was still speaking.
Inside, her brothers were still performing certainty for men who wanted someone else to decide what shape the future would take.
Inside, everyone would look at her when she entered, whether they hated themselves for it or not.
And somewhere beyond those walls — or perhaps within them — someone disciplined enough to feel like absence was watching the fortress breathe.
Maelís did not know who.
That was fine.
She would.
She opened the doors.
The chamber fell quiet almost immediately.
Alaric’s expression soured.
Ciar looked amused.
Oran looked righteous.
Nerevan looked, as always, tired of men who confused noise with command.
Maelís returned to her seat halfway down the table.
Not the head.
Never the head.
Not yet.
She sat, folded her hands before her, and looked at her eldest brother.
“Please,” she said mildly. “Continue.”
Alaric’s mouth tightened.
He had forgotten where he was in his speech.
Good.
Maelís leaned back, listening as he tried to recover the thread of his own ambition, and beneath the table, unseen by everyone in the room, she let one small metal marker slip from her sleeve. It landed silently against the iron brace beneath her chair.
A question.
A warning.
A beginning.
If someone wished to watch Hybern’s daughter, then let them watch. But let them understand one thing clearly.
She was watching back.
