The Spy the Queen Sent Me to Find Was the Kindest Adjutant
The Queen's study. A private meeting.
Morning sunlight streamed through the stained glass, painting a wavering rainbow across the floor. On any other day I might have paused to call the sight beautiful; today I had no leisure for that. I was in a fucking great mood.
Elena's messenger hawk had arrived at dawn with a heavy beat of its wings. Nine in the morning. The study. Alone. Three words. When the queen summoned you in three words, it was no social call.
Elena hadn't bothered with tea. What waited on the table instead was a single map and a thick bundle of documents, set down with a dull thump.
"Sit."
I sat. The atmosphere was nothing like our last meeting. Where warm chamomile should have been, there was only the smell of cold intelligence reports. None of the softness she'd shown in this same room remained in Elena's violet eyes. These were a ruler's eyes.
"A demon spy inside the Knight Order." Elena cut straight to it.
"A month ago, the demons mounted a surprise operation. They knew our patrol routes to the letter. Intelligence concluded the leak came from inside."
She slid a document across the table with a hiss of paper. The Knight Order's personnel records.
"The Third Knight Order is the prime suspect. One hundred and thirty men. The spy is among them."
One out of one hundred and thirty. A needle in a haystack.
"Is there evidence for that?"
"It's the intelligence corps' analysis. Trace back the clearance level required to access what was leaked, and the trail narrows to the Third Knight Order's command staff or their aides."
Command staff or aides. Fifteen to twenty people, then. A great deal better than a hundred and thirty.
"Under what cover will I be going in?"
"A Mental Instructor. Your front-line record is the pretext—you'll be conducting mental care training for the entire Knight Order."
A well-built cover. With my track record of raising return-to-combat rates through frontline counseling, a posting to a knight order would look perfectly natural.
"And the timeframe?"
"As long as you need. Take too long and the spy will smell it. Give yourself two weeks."
Two weeks to flush out a spy.
"Does the intelligence corps know?"
"No. This mission is known to the two of us alone."
Elena's violet eyes held mine. There was trust in them—not complete trust, but the cold judgment that I was a tool worth using.
"Is there a reason to exclude the intelligence corps?"
"There may be a problem within the corps itself."
So it really is that bad. The queen can't even trust her own intelligence corps—just how rotten had the board become?
"Understood, Your Majesty."
"You must not fail."
"I won't fail."
Elena nodded, and for the first time her expression softened.
"I ask this of you."
The queen had chosen a request over a command. It meant there was almost no one left she could trust. What I'd been handed was an internal investigation disguised as counseling.
The next morning.
I rode a carriage out to the Third Knight Order's garrison. Jolt. Jolt. Roughly two hours from the capital's north gate, a stone fortress rose from the open plain—four towers, outer walls about fifteen meters high, the Knight Order's banner snapping in the wind. Flutter. Flutter.
The carriage rolled to a stop before the gates, horses whinnying.
"Identify yourself."
"Royal Psychologist Kang Do-hyun. My appointment as Mental Instructor."
I held out the sealed letter—the queen's insignia stamped in wax. The sentry at the checkpoint verified the seal and snapped a salute.
"I'll escort you to the Knight Commander."
I studied the garrison on the walk to the commander's office. Stone buildings, paved walkways, barracks built for pure function. In the training yard, knights ran sword drills, steel ringing against steel—flawlessly drilled, yet fatigue showed everywhere. A knight with sagging shoulders. An aide swallowing a yawn. An officer with bruised shadows under his eyes. The tension of the front line and the exhaustion of a long war lived side by side here.
The Knight Commander, Heinrich. Mid-fifties, white beard, built like a bear.
"So you're the Royal Psychologist. Heard the name from the front."
We shook hands, and the grip crushed bone. Calluses molded by years of sword hilts covered Heinrich's palm. A hard hand.
"I'll be overseeing the knights' mental training."
"Needed work. The war's dragged on, and more of the men are breaking down by the day. Nightmares, panic, drink. The younger the knight, the worse it gets."
"I saw the same symptoms at the front."
"So that's why Her Majesty sent you. Your quarters are assigned to the officers' wing. I've had an instructor's office cleared out—make use of it."
"Thank you."
"Ah—and one more thing. Helga. Come in."
The door creaked open.
Silver hair.
Short-cropped silver strands fell to her jawline. Sharp gray eyes. A Knight Order cloak over leather armor. She was tall—a good hundred and seventy centimeters, maybe more—broad through the shoulders, posture perfectly straight. A soldier's stance. But the swell of her chest that the armor couldn't quite hide, and the long curve running from waist to hip, made her too much a woman to be only a knight.
...Fuck, what's underneath the armor is even worse. The covering only makes me want to see more. My lower belly pulled tight on its own. I pressed down hard with my thigh as my cock tried to lift its head. Hold it. You do not pitch a tent the first time you meet someone—not while you're supposed to be the Mental Instructor.
A jolt ran through me. Thirty-three years old. A widow. A female knight turned instructor.
"This is Instructor Helga Schital. She assists with the training."
"Instructor Schital."
Helga's voice was low and cold. I offered my hand anyway; she didn't even glance at it.
"A psychologist?"
Gray eyes swept over me from head to toe in one slow pass. A gaze taking my measure. Her brow creased, as if the verdict were already in.
"A man who can't even swing a sword is going to teach knights?"
Heinrich cut in with a low "Helga," but she paid him no mind.
"I hear you made a name for yourself at the front. But this is the Knight Order. We speak with swords here, not with words."
Cold. Not outright hostility, but a wall with a sign on it: I will not acknowledge you.
I observed. Helga Schital, thirty-three. Dark circles worn chronic—measured in months, not nights. Tension knotted through her shoulders, deep chronic muscle tightness. A pale band on her left ring finger where a ring had sat—removed recently. The corners of her mouth set at a habitual angle of discontent. And behind her eyes, an exhaustion that had nothing to do with sleep.
This woman had been sealing her grief inside that armor for two years. Her husband, Arnon—fallen in battle two years ago, and she had shut every door of feeling since. Taking off the ring recently: was that giving up? Or a step into something new?
"Instructor Schital."
"What."
"I understand this is a place that speaks with swords. But it's the hand that grips the sword, and the brain that moves the hand. A strong mind forges a strong blade. That's what I've come to help with."
Helga held my gaze for three seconds. Then she turned her head away.
"Commander Heinrich, have the adjutant show him around."
Her boots receded down the corridor. Clack. Clack. Clack. Not a single step wavered. A soldier's walk.
Fierce as hell. And honestly? That glare of hers keeps catching my eye. Shit. Which means there's one more knot I'm going to have to untie.
Heinrich smiled, apologetic.
"Helga's edges have sharpened of late. That was never her nature—not since she lost her husband."
"So I heard."
"Arnon was a fine knight. He and Helga were the pride of this order. Two years ago, in a demon raid. He died shielding her."
He died shielding her. Then what Helga carried wasn't grief alone. There was guilt beneath it—the conviction that he had died for her sake. The most stubborn combination clinical psychology knew: mourning braided with survivor's guilt.
"Give me some time," I said to Heinrich. "Two weeks. That's what I need to earn the knights' trust—and to bring down Instructor Schital's wall."
"Two weeks will be enough?"
"I won't know until I try."
Heinrich nodded, white beard swaying gently.
"I'll look forward to it."
The adjutant, Lebrann, walked me through the facilities—training yard, barracks, mess hall, armory, stables.
Lebrann. Early thirties. Black hair, an open face. Gentle eyes, courteous speech. The kind of man people instinctively liked.
"This is the instructor's office. It doubles as your quarters, sir."
The room wasn't large, but it was clean: a bed, a desk, a wardrobe. The window looked out over the training yard.
"Thank you, Adjutant Lebrann."
"If you need anything at all, just say the word."
We shook hands. A firm grip.
The moment my fingers closed around Lebrann's, I triggered [Memory Reading]. A light brush—zero point five seconds. A contact reading; the accuracy would be high.
"Sir?"
"Ah—no, my apologies. I drifted off for a second."
I let go with a smile. Lebrann wished me a good rest and let himself out. The door clicked shut, and I sank onto the bed.
A suspicious fragment of memory. A seal that looked like a demon crest. The words the knights' deployment. Fear and duty tangled into one emotional signature. But certainty would have to wait—half a second of surface memory wasn't enough to condemn a man. He might have handled demon-related paperwork in the line of duty.
Still, it stank. That was the first thing clinical training had drilled into me: never ignore your intuition. Gather the evidence that proves it right or wrong.
The trouble was that this fucking intuition had never been wrong once. I'd taken too many people apart. Nowadays a handshake was all it took to see what was inside. Blessing or curse—no telling which.
After Lebrann left, I drifted to the window. Helga stood at the center of the training yard, drilling two apprentice knights through their basic stances. She rapped the flat of her own sword down against an apprentice's wrist angle. The apprentice corrected his form; she struck it again. Five, six times, until the last fine adjustment was made, while he stood there dripping sweat and enduring it.
Strict. Cold. Emotions locked away. But those three things were also the qualifications of a good instructor. An instructor with feelings plays favorites; Helga played none. She was exactly as cold to everyone, and that even coldness was what kept her apprentices safe.
I understood now why Karin respected her. With her whole body, Helga was teaching those apprentices that a knight has the right to be trained fairly. Two years of grief had only frozen that coldness solid; the philosophy beneath it had never bent.
Lebrann. Early thirties. Adjutant. Direct access to the command staff, and his information clearance would be high as well. It matched the intelligence corps' analysis to the letter.
He was kind, and his record was perfectly ordinary. Which was precisely why he was worth checking first. I wrote his name into tomorrow's training-counseling roster.
Evening. The Knight Order's mess hall.
A broad hall filling the entire ground floor of the stone building. Long wooden tables stood in rows, and the knights ate with their armor set aside. The food was far better than anything at the front—roast meat, potato soup, bread baked that morning. Humble compared to the inn; heaven compared to frontline hardtack.
I took a seat at the officers' table. The knights' glances slid toward me.
"That's him—the Royal Psychologist."
"A psychologist? What's he even do?"
"Reads minds, or something like that."
"Hah. And he's going to train knights with that?"
Curiosity and wariness, split evenly down the middle. As expected. The temperature difference between the in-group and the out-group—and I was the out-group. Trust would take time and proof. I'd start manufacturing that proof at tomorrow's training.
I tore into the bread and chewed. Hard as a rock, but nutty and good. Decent wheat, apparently.
Halfway through the meal, a shadow dropped into the seat across from me.
Helga.
She set down her tray and sat. Directly opposite me.
"…"
"…"
A long stretch of silence. Why here, of all places?
Helga began her meal without a word. The motion of her knife through the meat was exact. Scrape. Scrape. A soldier's table manners.
...Why is the wrist she carves meat with doing it for me? The veins standing on the back of her knife hand, the straight fingers, the precise angle. That immaculate cleanliness made my gut pull tight. My cock jumped once under the table. Hold it together, Kang Do-hyun. A man who gets hard over dinner isn't a man. I clamped the napkin down firmly over my lap.
Twitch.
I watched the way she ate. She didn't tear her bread—she cut it with the knife. She lifted soup on precisely the tip of her spoon. She set her glass down at a perfect right angle to the table. Compulsive order. A behavioral ritual for holding emotion in check—a pattern I'd seen a hundred times in clinic. Inner chaos leaking out as outer order, the classic presentation.
The ring mark still showed white on her ring finger. The groove where a wedding band had rested—removed recently, the skin dented pale against the sun-browned rest of her hand.
Where was that ring now? A drawer? On a cord around her neck? Had she thrown it away?
She probably hadn't. She couldn't. To throw it away would be to let him go, and Helga hadn't managed that yet. Not even after two years.
"Be at the training yard at eight tomorrow morning. The training begins tomorrow."
"I'll send the trainee roster to your office."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. I'm doing it because the commander ordered it."
Cold. But not uncooperative. A woman who does it "because she was ordered to" is, technically, cooperating.
"Will you be observing as well, Instructor Schital?"
"Give me one reason to skip it."
"None. I'd be glad to have you. I consider an instructor's evaluation part of the training itself."
"Evaluation?"
"Yes. Watch whether I do this properly. If it looks wrong, call it out on the spot."
Helga's brow shifted, barely. The expression of someone handed an answer she hadn't anticipated.
For the first time, Helga looked at me properly. Her gray eyes caught the candlelight and flashed silver. Three seconds.
"Suit yourself."
What a piece of fucking work.
Helga finished her meal and rose. I watched her carry the tray away—silver hair swaying faintly at her nape, back perfectly straight. That back looked heavy. A back carrying two years of grief.
Helga lifted her tray and left, the straight line of her spine bearing two years of sorrow beneath that silver hair. If I wanted to find the spy, I first had to understand the Knight Order that back had spent all this time guarding.
Night. The instructor's quarters.
I lay on the bed and sorted through the day.
One: the spy. Prime suspect, Adjutant Lebrann. Grounds: the demon-tainted memory fragment I'd caught through [Memory Reading]. Confirmation still needed—I'd have to attempt a deeper read with longer contact. Build trust, wait for the opening. A drinking table would be the most effective ground of all. Pretend to be drunk, lay a hand on his shoulder, extend the contact that way. Drink was woven into the Knight Order's culture; nobody would look twice.
Two: the mental training, starting tomorrow. The knights' trust had to come first. Lean on the front-line experience; open with real combat cases. Crack one or two veteran knights and the rest would follow. Group psychology, page one.
Three: Helga Schital. Nothing tied her directly to the mission, but her cooperation was essential to moving freely inside the order. The instructor's approval translated directly into how the knights treated me. And, honestly—she was on my mind.
On my mind?
I stared at the ceiling. In the dark, silver hair surfaced behind my eyes. Cold gray eyes. Dark circles. The ghost of a ring mark.
This is professional interest. The interest of a clinician, not of a man. An unresolved case of grief fused with survivor's guilt. A case solid enough to submit to a conference.
Right. Professional interest. Absolutely not me finding her hot.
Absolutely not.
Shit, the excuse is running long. The longer an excuse gets, the further the truth stands from it—I'd read that line in a counseling textbook once. Which meant that remembering it now had already handed me the answer. Fucked. I was already drawing the picture of that woman undone. A grief-stricken lady knight, armor coming off. So this is what I'd become. The bastard I am—might as well admit it.
Outside the window the moon was climbing—the enormous silver moon of this world. Along the ramparts, the shadows of sentries crossed back and forth. Clack. Clack.
The queen's mission. The spy hunt. Lebrann's suspicious memory. Helga's two years of grief. Marisa's inn. Elena's study. And Rosa's herb shop. My head had knotted itself into a proper mess. Lesson from clinical psychology: the messier the situation, the harder you focus on one thing. The immediate priority was the knights' trust.
Tomorrow's training was where I had to show them exactly that. That this man was the real thing.
And Karin. When Karin came to this garrison, she would meet Helga. Karin was Helga's former student—the very teacher she'd once said she wanted to learn from again. The reunion of those two women would happen here. The Karin I had unraveled would come to the Helga I had yet to unravel. The threads were weaving themselves tight.
Shit. The map of this world grew wider with every step I took—and the net drew that much tighter with it.
I pulled the blanket up with a rustle. Bedding far softer than anything the front had ever offered. Not Marisa's inn bed, but more than enough.
Marisa. I missed her, all of a sudden. The heat of her body yesterday. The scent of chamomile. The voice that called my name.
Focus, Kang Do-hyun.
I'd have to send a messenger hawk to Irene—ask her to take good care of Marisa. Irene could be trusted. A letter to Rosa, too. An herb merchant like her might well have delivery routes running near the garrison. Useful, as a source of information.
Too many women was its own problem. I used to think a crowded hunting ground was pure profit—turns out the maintenance costs climb in a straight line. What a high-maintenance fucking life. Every hole was one I'd dug myself, so there was nobody to blame.
Before sleep took me, I wrote down three names. Lebrann. Helga. Heinrich. My first counseling subject the next morning would be Berndt, a rookie knight in Lebrann's own squad. Before uncovering the spy's identity, it was time to find out who was trembling because of his lies.