Chapter 7: A King's Suspicion

Chapter 7: A King's Suspicion

The silent, soundproofed walls of Elara’s new suite in the North Tower were a double-edged sword. The solitude was a blessing, a haven where she could finally hear herself think, where the roaring grief for her sister could subside to a manageable, throbbing ache without fear of being overheard. But the quiet was also a magnifying glass for her desperation. Time was a luxury she did not have, and Kaelen’s confusing, unwanted favors had only served to remind her of the power wielded so casually in this place—power she desperately needed to access.

Her focus narrowed once more on Julian Croft. Kaelen’s public accusations had made a direct approach impossible; he was poisoning the well every chance he got. She needed a new strategy, one that operated outside Kaelen’s line of sight.

She found her opportunity in a shared elective, Environmental Science, a class Kaelen, with his disdain for anything that didn’t involve economics or power, would never take. She caught up with Julian after a lecture on soil reclamation, using a question about the professor’s assigned reading as a natural opening.

“It’s dense stuff,” she said, falling into step beside him as they walked out into the crisp autumn afternoon. “The statistical analysis on watershed contamination feels… incomplete.”

Julian pushed his glasses up his nose, offering a shy but appreciative smile. “I thought so too. He glosses over the long-term mutagenic effects. It’s all very surface-level.”

It was the opening she needed. “Mutagenic effects… that’s adjacent to your father’s field, isn’t it?” She kept her tone light, academically curious.

Julian’s smile tightened instantly. The open, friendly student vanished, replaced by a guarded heir. “We don’t really talk about his work,” he mumbled, his gaze fixed on the path ahead. “He’s… protective of it.”

“Of course,” Elara said smoothly, sensing she was near a precipice. “It must be difficult, having a parent in such a high-stakes field. The pressure, the privacy concerns.”

He let out a short, bitter laugh that surprised her. “You have no idea. My father trusts no one. He thinks every person who speaks to him, who speaks to me, wants something. A job, an investment, inside information.” He glanced at her, his expression a mixture of apology and warning. “He’s built a fortress around himself. Around us. There aren’t any doors.”

The words landed like stones in her stomach. A fortress with no doors. It confirmed her worst fears. Dr. Alistair Croft wasn’t just reclusive; he was paranoid. Her plan to simply get a meeting, to plead her case, felt laughably naive. Despair, cold and sharp, pricked at her, but she forced it down.

“That sounds… lonely,” she offered, the word tasting true on her own tongue.

Julian’s shoulders slumped. “It is,” he admitted, his voice quiet. For a moment, a genuine connection sparked between them—two lonely people, trapped in their respective fortresses.

From the window of a second-story lounge overlooking the quad, Kaelen Blackwood watched them walk together. He saw their heads tilted towards one another, saw the brief, shared smile from Julian, saw the intense focus on Elara’s face. He had gifted her a sanctuary, and she was using it to plan her siege on another kingdom.

The sight curdled the strange, protective instinct that had been growing inside him since the garden. His confusion and nascent empathy were incinerated by a hot, possessive flash of jealousy. The image of her tear-streaked, devastated face warred with the one before him now: a calculating hunter, closing in on her prey. His mind, unable to hold both truths, defaulted to the one he understood. The one that made him the center of the conflict.

She was defying him. After he had deigned to help her—in his own twisted way—she was still chasing after Croft. His favors had been dismissed, his truce ignored. The king had extended a hand, and the girl had spat on it.

He strode from the lounge, his jaw set like granite. The fragile truce of the midnight lab was shattered by the cold fury of a monarch scorned. He had tried to understand her on his terms, to solve her problems his way. It had failed. Now, he would force her into the light using the one tool that had never failed him: the overwhelming, invasive power of the Blackwood name.

Back in his own suite—the penthouse of the North Tower, a space that made Elara’s look like a servant’s quarters—he pulled out his phone. He didn’t dial a number. He pressed a single contact on a secure app.

“Davies,” he said, his voice clipped and cold when the call was answered.

“Mr. Blackwood,” came a smooth, professional voice. Davies was the head of his family’s private security and intelligence division, a man who moved silently through the digital world, acquiring information the way a shark acquires fish.

“I have a name for you,” Kaelen said, pacing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked down upon his campus kingdom. “Elara Vance. She’s a scholarship student here.”

“I see. And what is it you’re looking for, sir?”

Kaelen’s mind raced, solidifying his suspicions into a concrete theory. “Everything. I want to know who she really is. Is she a corporate spy planted by a rival of Croft Industries? Check her financials, her family’s, every connection. Is she a professional gold-digger? I want a full history. Every relationship, every association. She’s targeting Julian Croft, and I want to know why. Find the dirt, Davies. Find out who she’s working for.”

“It will be done, Mr. Blackwood.”

The next forty-eight hours were torture. Kaelen saw Elara in the library, in the dining hall, a ghost moving with purpose through his world, and every glance was a fresh wave of suspicion. The mystery of her was an intolerable itch under his skin.

Then, Davies called back.

“Mr. Blackwood. We have the preliminary report on Elara Vance.”

“And?” Kaelen demanded, his heart thudding with anticipation.

“It’s… clean,” Davies said, a note of professional surprise in his voice. “Distressingly so. No corporate ties. No shell companies. Finances are exactly what you’d expect from a working-class family in a low-income bracket. No unexplained deposits. No criminal record.”

“That’s impossible,” Kaelen snapped. “Dig deeper.”

“We have, sir. That’s the issue. There isn’t much to dig into. She has no digital footprint to speak of before two years ago. And her juvenile records are sealed. Tightly.”

Kaelen froze. “Sealed how?”

“Medically,” Davies said. “A significant portion of her file, and her younger sister’s, is locked down by multiple layers of medical privacy protections. We can break them, of course. But it constitutes a class-three privacy breach. It will be… invasive.”

Medical records.

The words didn't fit Kaelen’s narrative. He was hunting for a spy, a con artist, a villainess worthy of his obsession. He expected to find clandestine financial transactions or secret communications with corporate rivals. He did not expect to find a wall of sealed hospital files. The memory of her in the garden, that raw, guttural sob of pure agony, flashed in his mind. How much time?

A flicker of doubt, of conscience, pricked at him. This was a line. A real one. Not the petty lines of social cruelty he crossed every day, but a fundamental violation of a person’s most private self.

But his obsession was a ravenous beast. It devoured his doubt. The need to know, to finally understand the contradiction that was Elara Vance, was stronger than any moral reservation. He had to see what was behind that wall. He had to know the source of the pain he’d witnessed.

He took a breath, the decision solidifying like ice in his chest.

“I don’t care what it takes, Davies,” he said, his voice a low command. “Break them. I want to know everything.”