To heal a Rogue

JOHANN

My mother laughed. Loud, sudden, and utterly without warmth.

”That grimy, opportunistic family,” she said, shaking her head slowly. ”After everything I’ve done for them over the years. Every debt I quietly forgave, every favor I extended without a second thought.” She wiped at her eye, still chuckling. ”They’ll be rudely awakened soon enough, when they realize Lysander isn’t someone they can simply latch themselves onto now that it’s convenient. That girl will never be seriously considered by him. He clearly already has his eyes set on someone else entirely.”

”Really?” I said, leaning forward despite myself, some old, familiar curiosity flaring up. ”Who?”

”You should see how he behaves around the healer,” she said. ”Even a blind man could see the hunger between them from across a room.”

”What?” I said, sitting up straighter.

She waved a hand, dismissing the topic entirely, her attention clearly drifting somewhere else already, her eyes going distant and unfocused in a way I recognized from childhood, the particular look she wore whenever some new scheme was assembling itself behind her expression.

”What are you thinking about,” I asked.

”It just clicked,” she said.

”What did?”

”Forget Amaranthine for now,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. ”Once you have the throne properly secured, she’ll come crawling back on her own, mark my words. For the moment, we push the narrative that you were the one who ended things with her. Not the other way around.”

”Why does that matter,” I said.

”There’s a witch I’m going to introduce you to,” she said, a slow, satisfied smile spreading across her face. ”Willow. She’s going to be your new fling.”

I blinked at her. ”What? I don’t even know a witch named Willow.”

”You will,” my mother said, standing and smoothing down the front of her coat with the brisk efficiency of a woman already three steps ahead of the conversation we were currently having. ”Soon enough.”

”Mother, slow down,” I said, standing too, though my legs still felt half asleep beneath me. ”You’re moving through about six different plans in the span of ten minutes. Amaranthine, the DNA test, some witch I’ve apparently never met who’s now supposed to be my fling. Can you at least explain one thing properly before jumping to the next?”

She studied me for a moment, something almost fond crossing her tired face, the kind of look she used to give me as a boy whenever I’d asked her to slow down while she braided my hair or read to me too fast.

”Alright,” she said, sitting back down. ”Let’s start with the witch, since that seems to have caught your attention the fastest.”

”It has,” I admitted.

”Her family, the Shelters, have served the royal house loyally for generations,” my mother said. ”Trusted implicitly by everyone who matters. If you’re seen with her publicly, courting her properly, taking her to functions, letting the court witness genuine affection between you, it accomplishes two things at once. It buries the story of Amaranthine leaving you, replacing it with a narrative you control. And it ties you visibly to a bloodline nobody would ever suspect of scheming against the crown.”

”That’s actually clever,” I said, grudging respect creeping into my voice.

”I have my moments,” she said, something dry in her tone.

”But why her specifically,” I said. ”Out of every eligible woman in this kingdom?”

Something flickered across my mother’s face, quick and calculating, gone before I could properly read it.

”Because I trust her,” she said simply. ”And because circumstances have made her rather... available, recently.”

I narrowed my eyes at that phrasing, something in it not quite sitting right, but exhaustion and the sheer volume of information already dumped on me tonight kept me from pressing further.

”Fine,” I said instead. ”Introduce us. I’ll play along.”

”Good boy,” she said, and the old childhood warmth in that phrase, despite everything, still managed to loosen something tight in my chest.

She stood again, straightening her coat a second time, though it hadn’t wrinkled in the first place.

”Get some rest,” she said. ”You’ll need your wits about you when Bradley comes for that blood sample. Show no hesitation. No fear. Let him see exactly the confident, wronged prince the court needs to start believing in again.”

”And the rogue,” I said, catching her hand before she could reach the door. ”You’re absolutely certain nothing connects back to us?”

”Absolutely,” she said, and something in the flat certainty of her voice, the complete absence of doubt, should have comforted me more than it actually did.

”Trust me, Johann,” she said, softer now, pressing a kiss to my forehead the way she used to when I was small enough to believe she could fix anything simply by wanting to badly enough. ”I have never once stopped fighting for you. Not for a single day of your life. And I don’t intend to start losing now, not when we’re finally this close to everything we’ve worked toward.”

She left then, her footsteps fading quickly down the corridor, and I stood alone in my room for a long while afterward, staring at the door, turning over everything she’d said, the shape of every plan she’d laid out in the span of a single conversation.

A witch named Willow. A blood test I apparently had nothing to fear from, for now. Amaranthine already forgotten, already recast as someone I’d discarded rather than someone who’d left me standing alone in a room surrounded by broken furniture.

And underneath all of it, quiet and persistent, the thought I couldn’t quite shake loose no matter how hard I tried.

My cousin. My mate-obsessed, throne-stealing, insufferably self-righteous cousin.

In love with a healer who’d apparently seen fit to save his life not once, but twice now, in the span of a single night.

I climbed back into bed, though sleep felt impossibly far away now, my mind already turning over every possible way to use that particular piece of information against him, once the moment finally came to use it properly.