Chapter 7
“I understand,” Adi replied softly.
She chose not to press the issue, though Bert was watching her with a look of clear amusement.
Adi had spent the last seven days acting as the Duke of Woodpecker’s guardian, and in that time, Bert had become her most frequent companion. Bert was naturally familiar with the scandals trailing the Grimaldi name. He had made it his business to investigate her history the moment he learned the escort roster had been shuffled just before their arrival in Pallesa.
Initially, the news that Adi had been knighted by the Crown Prince raised Bert’s suspicions. He assumed she was a spy, considering the Crown Prince viewed Duke Woodpecker with more hostility than he did his own siblings.
“If you’re finished with your interrogation, do you mind if I take a turn?” Bert asked.
Adi remained silent, her expression one of exhaustion.
Socializing had never been her forte. Having grown up isolated and without a silver tongue, she found the art of conversation grueling. Her lack of experience was a glaring vulnerability when faced with a seasoned talker like Bert. She hadn’t realized how much she relied on people ignoring her until this man began systematically stripping away her privacy through sheer persistence.
Over the week, Bert’s inquiries had been relentless.
He poked at everything. He questioned why a newly minted knight would bother with the capital and why her reputation was so abysmal. He even pried into her culinary preferences and her romantic history with both sexes, joking that such complications were inevitable when men lived in close quarters.
“His Highness granted your title personally, didn’t he?” Bert prodded.
“It was a formal appointment in writing,” Adi clarified.
“Still, he wouldn’t bestow such an honor without a motive. What were the strings attached?”
Bert’s research confirmed the knighthood was legitimate, yet it was public knowledge that the Crown Prince and Adi Grimaldi had never actually met. While titles were often traded like currency, it was unusual to elevate a man whose face you had never seen.
“Perhaps there were conditions,” Adi conceded.
The Grimaldi name carried a weight that invited such deals.
“But I am not privy to them.”
If a bargain had been struck, it was between the Crown Prince and Spencer Grimaldi. At the time of the appointment, the real Adrian had been so frail he could barely sit up in bed.
“A secret, then?” Bert smirked.
“No. I genuinely didn’t know. At that time, I…” She trailed off, thinking of the brother she replaced. “I was convinced I was dying.”
The real Adrian was already in his grave.
“The curse was taking hold,” she added.
“And yet, it was your sister who perished instead,” Bert noted.
A wave of survivor’s guilt crashed over her. Sometimes, it felt as though she had stolen a life that wasn’t meant for her.
“The Duke had three siblings of his own,” Bert remarked casually, dipping a crust of bread into his bowl. “And an older brother. None of them survived.”
It was a piece of history Adi hadn’t heard.
“Lord Yuls is the sole survivor,” Bert continued.
“Is it wise to share such family secrets with me?” Adi asked.
“You’re likely the only person in the kingdom who hasn’t heard the gossip.”
He wasn’t wrong. Her own ignorance didn’t change the fact that the world loved to whisper about Duke Woodpecker.
“One died at birth,” Bert listed. “Another was slaughtered alongside the previous Duke and Duchess. One fell to their death, and the last simply vanished.”
Adi felt a sudden, sharp connection to the boy. People who had never met her spoke of her life as if they owned the facts, weaving truth and lies into a narrative she couldn’t control. Seeing the Duke through the lens of public gossip felt like looking in a mirror.
“Lord Yuls is only alive today because I make sure of it,” Bert added.
Adi felt a pang of sympathy for the Duke, realizing his only true ally was this talkative, blunt man. Then she caught herself; she was in no position to pity a Duke when her own life hung by a thread.
“Is he hiding in Pallesa to stay alive? To dodge assassins?”
Bert scoffed as if she had said something incredibly dim. He looked at her like she was a sheltered provincial soldier. “You really are a palace-dwelling simpleton, aren’t you? Have you ever left these walls?”
“I’m not from here,” Adi corrected.
“I’m aware. You’re from Grimaldi. It’s a striking region.”
He spoke with the confidence of a traveler. While knights often wandered, few ventured that far north.
“I heard that during the purges, they used fig trees for the executions,” Bert said. “They liked the way the wood smoked while the women burned. Brutal business.”
“Figs and chestnuts are our primary exports,” Adi said flatly. “The chestnuts had to be harvested in the autumn, which coincided with the hunts. So they used the fig trees instead.”
“Figs grow in that climate? I assumed it was too cold for anything but greenhouses.”
“It isn’t as frozen as people think. We get snow, but the trees endure the winter.”
“I didn’t realize that,” Bert admitted, looking genuinely surprised.
Adi didn’t mention the darker rumors—that the wood was chosen specifically to prolong the agony of the condemned. She couldn’t be certain that wasn’t also true.
“Anyway, the specifics are classified, but his presence here is tactical. The Duke needs a betrothal.”
Adi frowned. The Duke was thirteen. Even if his intellect was that of a man twice his age, he was still a child.
“He lacks a political base,” Bert explained with a sigh. “He needs a partner from a powerful house to anchor him. Someone to provide the strength he’s missing.”
Adi found the statement absurd. Woodpecker was the King’s nephew and a Duke in his own right. In the south, his power was so absolute he was practically a sovereign. He didn’t need someone else’s strength; he was the one who granted it.
“It’s a pity about your sister,” Bert mused.
Adi blinked. “Pardon?”
“Think about it. The Grimaldi curse is a smudge, sure, but the lineage is prestigious enough.”
“You think a family of executioners is a prestigious match?”
“Executioners? I’d say witch-hunters.”
“There were plenty of innocent people among those ‘witches,’” Adi countered.
“Perhaps. But does that really change their status?”
Adi stared at him, realizing this cold pragmatism was exactly why the kingdom remained haunted by curses.
“I suppose,” she whispered.
Just like her brother.
“You’re right,” she added.
Just like herself.
“With those flaws, they might have been a perfect match,” Bert continued. “Though I doubt the Count would have allowed it.”
“Why not?” Adi asked.
Bert looked at her with genuine disbelief, wondering how she could be so blind to her own family’s value. Adi remained silent under his scrutiny.
“What do you think the reason is?” he asked.
“I don’t have an opinion on it.”
“A man needs to think if he wants to survive, Adrian.”
“As a subordinate, I find it’s better to just follow orders,” Adi replied. “It makes me a more efficient tool.”
It was a cold, logical stance for a common soldier. But Bert didn’t think it fit the heir to the Grimaldi line.
Men like Bert, who had clawed their way up from nothing, had to be calculating. But nobles—even those on the fringes—were expected to lead and decide.
“You are the rightful successor to Grimaldi, aren’t you?” Bert asked.
He wondered if she was playing a part to hide her true ambitions. Adi merely gave a ghost of a smile.
Ambition was a foreign concept to her. She hadn’t been raised to have a will of her own.
Spencer Grimaldi didn’t want a daughter with thoughts; he wanted a vessel to preserve the bloodline. Adrina was nothing more than a placeholder for a dead boy.
If Adrian had lived, he would have been used as a political pawn. Because he was gone, Adrina had to play his part. Even if she eventually bore an heir, she would always be the dirt, never the flower.
“Perhaps I will lead,” she said.
She knew that once a garden was established, the soil was ignored. She would likely be discarded the moment she was no longer useful.
“Or perhaps I won’t.”
Spencer Grimaldi likely already had a plan for the next generation that didn’t involve her. If she gave him a grandson, her purpose would be fulfilled. Whether that meant she would be set free or buried, she didn’t know.
She was simply a soldier waiting for the next command.
“I have no power of my own,” she concluded.
Bert found her lack of agency unsettling, and his suspicions only deepened. Adi, however, just focused on her meal.
She hoped the final order would come soon. She wanted the charade to end.
But Adi couldn’t have guessed the form that final command would take.
