A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANJ! Here is an extra special present just for you!

Interlude Three - In the Middle of the Night

By the time the King of Illéa made it back to his office, after all the meetings had concluded and the Report had wrapped up, it was well into the night.

Kaden wasn't used to such a high workload. Perhaps he did take much of what Elodie did for granted. Her assistant was a great help in finding necessary documents and navigating surface level through his eldest daughter's office, but Kaden found he missed her opinion. He missed sitting in a meeting and being able to communicate through a single look. It was taxing having to explain and justify his every thought to a rotunda of thirty eager-eyes, over-zealous politicians.

A drink was in order, and perhaps, a lazy morning to follow.

That was a beautiful dream. In reality, his desk was likely littered with a dozen more appeals and budget requests which he had missed while on set. The Governors got their weekends off, while the King of Illéa was never allowed to rest.

Kaden unlocked his office door and braced himself for the worst.

Instead of paperwork, he got the Queen.

"Looks like Delia's date went well," he said as he shut the door behind him, depositing his jacket on one of the two leather chairs facing his desk.

It was dark inside the office, but not dark enough that he couldn't see Finn. She stood behind the desk in the same sweater and skirt she'd worn all day, propped against his ergonomic leather chair, and spun it around in an invitation for him to sit. Kaden wasn't going to argue with that; he had been dying to put his feet up all day.

"I'm proud of her," Finn said, her voice sleepy but pleased. She rocked with the motion of the chair as it accepted his weight, but settled her hands on his shoulders, squeezing lightly. "She was so worried she would get it wrong."

"I wasn't aware she was so invested in...charity."

While much of Delia's jokes left a lot to be desired, Kaden found Delia's sincerity about helping the survivors of domestic abuse moving. He was afraid he was losing touch with Delia, especially over the past year, and it gave him hope that there was still something of the young woman he raised underneath all the free wheeling and dealing. Charity was a core role of the royal family, and to see her put serious thought into one was a sign that maybe she was in this Selection for the right reasons, but a smaller, darker part of Kaden had to wonder...why that cause?

He didn't want to think too deeply into it, but Kaden couldn't help it.

"Neither was I," Finn said, just as skeptical as Kaden. "But, then again, she surprised me in trivia as well. You should have seen her, Kaden. She knew more than the prompter."

"She always did love history. It was the only subject where she didn't fight her tutor."

"I know. She was actually having fun..." Finn sighed and pulled a tablet from her pocket, the screen lighting up the dark office. Kaden hated how harsh the damn things were, bright lights burning his retinas. The royal physician kept telling him he needed reading glasses. Perhaps it was time to listen. "This was the final question."

The light calmed, and Kaden was able to read: The assassination of this political figure created a domino effect of dissent and chaos throughout Illéa that ultimately culminated in what is now known as -

Kaden didn't have to read anymore. He knew the answer to this particularly grim question. And he knew that he would never, in a million years, approve it as part of Selection curriculum.

"How did this make it on here?"

"I'm not sure." Finn turned the tablet off, returning them to the dark and dim. "My first thought was that Delia was simply getting ahead of herself, but even on her worst behavior, she wouldn't hurt the family like this."

Frown lines carved their way down Kaden's mouth. He tried not to let his mind supply the worst case scenarios, tried not to imagine the Devil in his holding cell, pulling invisible strings with a smile.

"I'll have security run diagnostics on the tablet in the morning. Maybe someone was able to hack the programming."

Finn hummed and leaned in a little closer, her front pressed tightly against his back so that he may tip his head and rest it upon her collarbones. She ran deft fingers through his hair in soothing motions, enough to lull him to sleep.

"You should call her," she said, voice barely a whisper yet loud as a gunshot in the quiet office. "She deserves to know."

"I won't drag her back into this."

Promises made and promises broken. Kaden had a terrible track record. But he would do his damndest to prevent another incident. He owed her that much.

"He is her father."

Finn had a point. If it was his own father...well...everyone had a right to know exactly what their parents were and when they were going to go from this world. Kaden never got the chance to say goodbye to his father. Finn never got the chance to say goodbye to hers either. What a cruel person he would be to deprive someone of the right to say one last thing, even if that last thing was 'good riddance'.

Kaden scrubbed his hands over his eyes. "It's late, over there. It's the middle of the night."

"She'll be up. She's like you, in that way."

Something shifted in the mood. Finn stood up straighter and pulled away, walking back towards the front of the desk, out of reach. Kaden didn't like that at all. The chair lurched backwards without her to steady it. He felt unmoored.

"Finn - "

"I am my husband's lover, his confidante, the shoulder he leans on. I am his world. But I am not his soul mate. That honor belongs to someone else."

In thirty years of marriage, they had never spoken so plainly about the elephant in the room. Finn had never complained and Kaden had never pushed. Perhaps he should have. Because for the first time in thirty years, Kaden had no idea where he stood with Finn. She simply smiled from the doorway, calm and smiling, always always giving.

"It's not something I'm mad about, or something that can be changed. It simply is." She nodded to the phone. "So call her, and tell her the truth."

Kaden sat paralyzed, staring at the phone. He felt pulled in two directions: one beckoning down the telephone line, and the other headed towards the door.

"Finn."

She stood half way in the doorway, one side of her face covered with shadow.

"Yes?"

"I love you."

It was imperative she know this, that she did not go to bed questioning their entire marriage even if she was the one completely at peace with this situation and he was the one on the verge of panic. He simply had to let his wife, the one person in his life that he could not live without, know.

"I know." She smiled again, soft and slow. But she didn't say it back.

Without Finn, the office was too quiet, too empty.

Kaden walked over to the bar cart and poured himself a glass of whiskey, stiff. It was too late to drink and attempt sobriety in the morning. Kaden was too old for that, and yet, he felt far too young to have to deal with another tragedy.

One arm braced on the mantle as Kaden stared into the fire, watching the final embers lick across tinder and smolder glowing red. The clock by his ear ticked the minutes away, each one taunting him to make the call before it was too late.

He could die at any moment, Kaden thought.

"You should celebrate." The voice, familiar and haunting, brought shivers down Kaden's spine. He closed his eyes, knowing the ghost was coming. "The man who destroyed our family will finally be put to rest."

"You destroyed our family long before him," Kaden said, barely above a whisper. And then, a dry mock of a laugh. "Maxon Schreave is the epitome of all things good."

Kaden remembered that quote from the history book his tutor gave him before starting his world history course. He had been fourteen, wide-eyed and eager to believe that his father was the greatest ruler this world had ever known. Maxon Schreave had rid Illéa of the caste system. Maxon Schreave had freed his people from eighty years of oppression. Maxon Schreave was a hero.

Five years later, Kaden would learn that Maxon Schreave had his best friend's wife shot down in cold blood.

A year after that, all the history books were retracted, and history would tell another story.

"Is that really how you would have me remembered?" Kaden knew this ghost well enough to detect the bitterness, the polite outrage that his father was never keen to show. "You and I, are we really that different?"

"I am nothing like you."

"You killed Katrina."

"I was a child."

"Blood is blood." Such a simple statement, as damning as sin. The ghost wearing Maxon's face stepped forward, the aura overwhelming Kaden, stifling his breath. "You are a Schreave. You have violence in your veins, just as your children have it in theirs. Inherited chaos. Embrace it."

"Never!"

Kaden threw his whiskey into the fireplace, glass shattering as it hit the bricks, the alcohol shooting the flames back to life in a burst of heat. Kaden had to step back lest he get burned, embers catching and staining the hem of his pants. They were ruined, but a price worth paying to rid himself of the ghost of Maxon Schreave.

Fully rattled with nothing left to distract him, Kaden faced the telephone.

It was an old thing, still connected to a physical line that disappeared somewhere into the wall. All he had to do was punch in the numbers - familiar, memorized from years of repeated use - and just like that, he could contact a woman half way across the world. India was beautiful this time of year, balmy and full of color. If Kaden closed his eyes, he could imagine himself standing on the balcony of the Jaipur Palace, looking over sprawling gardens and the lights of the city, everything tinged in pink...

She answered on the first ring.

"I thought it was you." Her voice was gravel and smoke through the telephone, coated with sleep yet still full of the same fire, fierce enough to burn. "You never call the office line."

The office line was crowded and had the tendency to crackle. Calls had been dropped more than once. There was no privacy. But at this hour, it was safer than a cellphone. There were no implications, no ulterior motives to calling someone at their office in the middle of the night - just a plea of insanity. And Kaden needed that buffer. He needed the space between familiar and too familiar. He needed one thing in his life to be uncomplicated.

But that thing would never be Heather Bloomsdale.

"There's something I need to tell you, something that should be on record, just in case..."

The tone changed immediately. Heather didn't have to ask, "just in case what?" They had been down this road too many times.

"I'm listening."

He took a moment to gather himself, to swallow down his nerves and his fears and all his broken promises. No matter what he did, he always ended up hurting her. And this would hurt her in so many complicated, messy ways.

"It's your father, Heather." Even saying her name was like glass caught in his throat, a dozen mixed emotions rising to the surface along with the unwanted memory of blood. "He's dying, and he's asking for you."

She didn't say a word. Not a sound. Not even a breath.

The line went dead, and yet, Kaden still kept the phone up to his ear, heartsick and hopeful that she would call back.

.o.O.o.

Zahrah went down easily tonight, no requests to stay up later and later. Her curfew was close to midnight. Siddhartha found their daughter's nocturnal tendencies to be a cause for concern, but Heather knew the urge ran deep in her blood.

Even now, well past three in the morning, Heather was wide awake.

There would be no sleep for her tonight. Not with the knowledge that after nearly thirty years of silence, her father was asking for her. Her dying father was asking for her.

Time, Heather knew, would eventually take her father from her, and for that, she was glad. He was a monster. He deserved a death swifter than this, and yet, if there was anyone who could die painfully, slowly, in the worst possible manner, then Zachary Bloomsdale would be most deserving of that, too.

And yet...

And yet.

In a corner of Heather's office sat a desk she never used. It was a small, antique thing with a smooth wooden surface that lifted to reveal a storage space in the belly. Inside that belly sat a dusty jar of coins, a blue ribbon, a stack of yellowed letters, and a single journal.

Heather had read these letters a dozen times over, her fingers worn the edges soft enough to crumble. She knew each loop of delicate cursive, each splash of ink spilled in haste, and each responding slash of harsher, sharper print. The letters were not what she was after.

The journal was bound in tawny leather and engraved with an intricate mandala. A silk thread marked the space between gold-embossed pages. The pages were filled with the same sprawling cursive, the same over-eager splashes of ink. Just touching them made Heather feel warm, as if the passion inside had made its way into her.

Her father was dying, all but lost. But once upon a time, her mother had lost him too.

Perhaps Priya Bloomsdale could tell Heather what to do.