Whispers in the Forest
Copyright© 2025 by Jody Daniel
Chapter 13
The Palace of the Old Crown.
That invitation changed the rules of the game.
I read the invitation three times. Not because the words were complicated—but because they were precise.
“Accompany Her Majesty, Queen Alexandra I, as her personal escort...”
Personal escort.
Not just in attendance. Not just assigned security. Not just household staff.
Escort implied proximity. Visibility. Intent. The second line did the rest of the damage.
Dress: Formal. Decorations as appropriate.
There was no ambiguity there either. That meant the uniform. The full one. Chief Pilot of the Royal Flight. Director of Royal Aviation Modernisation. Gold braid. Insignia. Ribbons. The kind of presentation that made people stop whispering and start taking notes.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling of my office, listening to the distant soft sound of the Palace HVAC system. Somewhere below me, clerks hurried, aides argued quietly, and history rearranged itself in small, bureaucratic increments.
This was pre-engagement. No announcement. No ring. No permissions sought or granted.
Which meant Elena—Lena when the doors were closed—was walking a line sharper than a wing’s leading edge.
At this stage, the Queen could not afford an undefined romantic partner lingering in public view. That wasn’t scandal—it was instability.
She could not allow informal influence at court, especially not from someone without a title, bloodline, or centuries of dust behind his name.
And yet she had done this. She wasn’t declaring me anything.
She was introducing me.
Letting the court, Parliament, the Church, and every foreign envoy slowly get used to the idea that when the Queen entered a room, there was a man at her side who belonged there. Not as a lover. Not yet. But as a constant.
A fixture.
A professional presence with authority, rank, and a reason to stand where I stood.
She was shaping perception before it could harden into resistance.
And she was trusting me to understand that this wasn’t about us.
Not tonight.
Tonight, my job was to support her without claiming her. To be steady without being intimate. To stand close enough to signal confidence, and far enough to deny gossip oxygen.
That was harder than flying through weather.
I stood and crossed to the garment rack where the uniform waited, sealed in plastic. For the first time, the weight of the braid didn’t feel ceremonial—it felt political.
I exhaled slowly.
If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.
Which meant I needed rules. Boundaries. Protocol. The kind of clarity only one person in this palace truly possessed.
I grabbed the invitation, straightened my jacket, and headed for the door.
Time to find Svetlana.
Svetlana’s office was exactly where I expected it to be—and exactly where I wished it wasn’t.
Directly adjacent to the Queen’s private office. Not outside it. Not subordinate to it. Beside it. Close enough to hear the rhythm of power, far enough to never be accused of eavesdropping.
The door was closed. Frosted glass. Her name etched neatly beneath the Royal cipher.
I knocked once.
“Enter,” came her voice immediately. No pause. She’d known it was me.
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
The room was immaculate in a way that had nothing to do with cleanliness. Everything had a purpose. A desk of dark wood without ornamentation. Two chairs placed with mathematical precision. A wall-mounted display scrolling through schedules, arrivals, and colour-coded warnings that meant nothing to anyone not trained to read them.
Svetlana stood behind her desk, reviewing something on a tablet. She did not look up at first.
“You received the invitation,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” I replied. “I wanted clarity before I misstep.”
That got her attention. She lifted her eyes and studied me—not as a man, but as a variable.
“Wise,” she said. “Sit.”
I did.
She set the tablet down and folded her hands.
“Tonight,” she said, “you are not Captain Venter, the private pilot who extracted Her Majesty from Africa.”
I nodded.
“You are not the man who sleeps in a suite with a secret passage behind his bookcase.”
I kept my face neutral. What else did she know?
“And you are not,” she continued evenly, “the Queen’s lover.”
That one landed. Harder than the rest. Dammit!
“Tonight,” she said, “you are the Queen’s escort.”
She let the word settle.
“Escort implies three things,” she continued. “Proximity. Protection. Restraint.”
She stood and walked around the desk, stopping in front of me.
“You will walk at her left. Always. Half a step behind unless she stops. You will offer your arm when protocol requires it—never before.”
I absorbed that.
“You will not touch her unless she touches you first,” Svetlana went on. “And if she does, you will respond with courtesy, not familiarity.”
I allowed myself a breath. “No hand on the small of the back?”
“Absolutely not,” she said, without missing a beat.
“No lingering eye contact?”
“Brief. Respectful. Controlled.”
“And conversation?”
“You speak when spoken to. You do not speak for her. You do not correct her. You do not joke unless she does.”
She tilted her head slightly. “You may smile. Moderately.”
Of course.
“What about foreign envoys?” I asked. “Some of them will probe.”
“They always do,” Svetlana replied. “You are to be polite, professional, and uninformative.”
She allowed herself the ghost of a smile.
“If asked about your relationship with Her Majesty, your answer is: ’I serve at the pleasure of the Crown.’ Nothing more.”
“And if they push?”
“They will,” she said. “Then you repeat it.”
I nodded slowly. “Understood.”
Svetlana studied me again, this time longer. Measuring something beyond rank.
“You understand what this is,” she said quietly.
“Yes,” I replied. “She’s introducing me without naming me.”
“She is normalising your presence,” Svetlana corrected. “There is a difference.”
I met her gaze. “And you’re here to make sure I don’t ruin it.”
She smiled then. Just barely. Sharp as a blade.
“I am here to make sure she isn’t ruined by anyone else’s impatience—including yours.”
Fair.
She picked up her tablet again.
“One more thing,” she added, as if it were an afterthought. “You will not leave the reception early.”
“I wasn’t planning to. I am the Queen’s escort,” then threw her words back at her. “I serve at the pleasure of the Crown.”
“You will want to,” she said.
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because,” she said, tapping the screen, “at some point this evening, someone important will decide you are either temporary—or inevitable.”
She looked up.
“And how you behave in that moment will determine which.”
The weight of that settled squarely on my shoulders.
Svetlana stepped back toward her desk.
“You have forty minutes,” she said. “Dress properly. Report to the antechamber at nineteen hundred.”
I stood.
“And Captain?”
“Yes?”
Her expression softened—not kindly, but honestly.
“Careful,” she said. “The Crown does not forgive accidents.”
I nodded once.
“Neither do pilots.”
I turned and left her office, the door closing softly behind me, already rehearsing how to stand close to the woman I loved—without touching her at all.
The Great Hall had been rearranged for diplomacy. That was the first thing I noticed.
Gone were the banners and the riot of colour from the coronation. In their place stood symmetry: flags aligned by precedence, seating arranged by protocol, chandeliers dimmed just enough to encourage conversation without warmth. Everything about the room said civilised. Which meant nothing here was accidental.
I stood at Elena’s left, half a step behind, exactly where Svetlana had instructed. The uniform sat heavy on my shoulders—dark blue wool, gold braid catching the light, ribbons aligned like coordinates on a chart. I could feel eyes on me already, cataloguing, calculating.
The Queen entered.
Not dramatically. Not late.
Precisely on time.
Conversation died the way sound does when a jet passes overhead—cut cleanly, abruptly. Every ambassador, cleric, and minister turned as one.
Elena moved forward with unhurried confidence. She did not look at the crowd. She didn’t need to. They leaned toward her instinctively, as if gravity itself had shifted.
I offered my arm when protocol demanded it. She accepted it briefly, lightly—no squeeze, no pause. Enough to be seen. Enough to be noted.
We took our position beneath the Crown standard.
The receiving line began.
The Ambassador from the Eastern Federation was first. Tall, immaculate, smiling with his mouth but not his eyes.
“Your Majesty,” he said smoothly. “Volynia has surprised many of us with its ... recent assertiveness.”
Elena inclined her head. “Stability often looks like surprise to those accustomed to chaos.”
A polite chuckle rippled through the nearby delegates.
The ambassador’s gaze flicked to me. Lingering. Assessing.
“And this is...?”
I felt the pause. Deliberate. A test.
Elena answered without looking at me. “Director Venter. Chief Pilot of the Royal Flight.”
Nothing more.
The ambassador smiled wider. “A pilot. How ... practical.”
I said nothing. The asshole could see the freaking gold wings on my chest.
Silence, I was learning, could be a blade. If you held it steady.
Next came the Western bloc—warm handshakes, exaggerated friendliness, the kind that assumed entitlement.
The EU envoy leaned in a fraction too close. “It is refreshing to see Her Majesty embracing modern advisors.”
Advisor.
Not escort. Not officer.
I remained still and silent.
Elena’s reply was gentle. “I value competence.”
The envoy nodded, eyes flicking again to my insignia, recalculating.
Further down the line, the Church made its presence felt.
The Patriarch did not bow deeply. He inclined his head just enough to remain technically respectful.
“Your Majesty,” he said. “The Church prays that the Crown will remain ... guided.”
Elena’s smile did not change. “The Crown listens carefully.”
His eyes slid toward me, cool and measuring. “Guidance is most effective when unclouded by personal influence.”
That one was meant for me.
I kept my gaze forward.
If I reacted, I confirmed the accusation. If I spoke, I legitimised it.
Elena responded instead. “Faith, Your Eminence, has always coexisted with strength.”
The Patriarch inclined his head again, more stiffly this time, and moved on.
By the third circuit of the room, I understood what Svetlana had meant.
I wasn’t there to be impressive.
I was there to be unavoidable.
Every whisper happened in my peripheral vision. Every half-finished sentence recalibrated when they realised I wasn’t leaving her side. Diplomats tested boundaries with tone. Clerics tested with implication. Politicians tested with omission.
And through it all, I did nothing.
I didn’t lean in. I didn’t touch her unless she initiated. I didn’t answer questions that weren’t directed at me, and when they were, my responses were short, neutral, precise.
“I serve the Crown.”
That phrase became armour.
At one point, the Ambassador from a neighbouring republic laughed lightly and said, “You are very quiet, Director.”
I met his eyes for the first time that evening.
“Aircrew learn early,” I said calmly, “that unnecessary noise causes accidents.”
He blinked.
Elena’s lips twitched—just barely.
As the evening wore on, the tone shifted.
The questions softened. The glances grew less curious and more resigned. Not acceptance—but recognition.
I wasn’t a passing indulgence.
I wasn’t a scandal waiting to erupt.
I was part of the Queen’s silhouette now.
When the final ambassador departed and the hall began to empty, Elena turned her head slightly toward me.
“You did well,” she said softly, for my ears alone.
I allowed myself a breath. “I said almost nothing.”
She smiled faintly. “Exactly.”
As we moved toward the exit, I understood the lesson she had been teaching me all evening.
Power did not always announce itself.
Sometimes it simply stood beside the throne—and refused to move.
The next morning.
I was drinking coffee—black, three sugars—the way my father drank it, and staring at the tablet Volkov had slid across my desk without a word.
The coffee was good. Strong. Palace beans, probably sourced from some ethical cooperative in Ethiopia. It did nothing to soften what was on the screen and in the newspaper.
The tablet glowed with the homepage of The Daily Mail.
WHO IS THE QUEEN’S SHADOW?
The headline screamed in bold sans-serif font, aggressive and hungry, stretched across the width of the screen like a challenge.
Below it was a high-resolution photo taken at the reception the night before.
Elena was caught mid-motion, turning slightly toward the French Ambassador. She looked radiant—composed, luminous, carved from certainty. The crown sat easily on her head, as if it had always belonged there. The light loved her.
And there—hovering just over her left shoulder like a fault line in the image—was me.
I studied myself with the detached curiosity of a pilot reviewing crash footage.
I looked stiff. Too stiff. My jaw was locked in a line that suggested I was moments away from violence or prayer, possibly both. The gold braid on my uniform caught the flash hard, bright enough to draw the eye. My eyes were scanning—not the Ambassador, not the Queen—but the room beyond the frame.
I didn’t look like a Director of Aviation.
I looked like a man whose job was to notice things before they went wrong.
I scrolled down.
He stands half a step behind her. He wears a uniform that doesn’t exist in the standard military registry. He speaks to no one.
That was not entirely true.
Who is Captain Ruan Venter? The Palace calls him ‘Director of Aviation Modernisation,’ but insiders are already whispering a different title: The Queen’s Shadow.
I exhaled slowly through my nose.
I then looked at the newspaper.
Le Monde.
L’Aviateur et la Reine
(The Aviator and the Queen.)
The article was smoother. Less froth, more knife.
Speculation about proximity. About timing. About how a foreign pilot with no noble lineage had appeared precisely when the Crown needed extraction, protection, and silence.
They referenced South Africa. The escape. The Regent’s purge.
They didn’t say lover—not yet—but the negative space around the words was loud.
I pushed the tablet and the newspaper away until it bumped softly against the edge of the desk.
“They make me sound like Rasputin with a pilot’s licence,” I said.
Volkov, leaning against the doorframe, crunched loudly into an apple.
“Better Rasputin than a gigolo,” he said around a mouthful. “Besides, the polling is good.”
I frowned. “Polling?”
“Social media,” Volkov replied, tapping his own phone with one thick finger. “#TheQueensShadow is trending.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
“The younger demographic thinks it is ... how do they say?” He searched for the word. “‘Romantic.’ The older demographic thinks you look capable of violence.”
He smiled faintly.
“That comforts them. They all like you, the old and the young.”
“I don’t want to be polled,” I muttered. “I want to check the fuel manifest for the Bell 430 and argue with a procurement officer about turbine filters.”
“You are a public figure now, Ruan,” Volkov said, inspecting the apple as if judging its integrity. “The press is hungry. They smell a mystery. A South African bush pilot living in the Palace? Standing at the Queen’s shoulder but never touching her? The story is like catnip to a feline.”
He crossed the room and glanced out the window.
Down below, beyond the iron gates, a press van idled. Another was pulling in behind it.
“They are camped out already,” Volkov observed calmly. “If you leave for the airport in a convoy, they will follow. If you try to sneak out, they will chase. Someone will trip. Someone will shout. Someone will invent a scandal.”
I stood up, the chair legs scraping softly against the floor.
“Now that the ‘cleaners’ had been turned around and crawled back into their dark slum hole, we’re flying to Knysna tomorrow,” I said. “How do we get Lena out without turning it into a circus?”
Volkov turned from the window and smiled.
It wasn’t his usual predator’s grin. This one was warm. Almost fond.
“We do not sneak,” he said. “We use the oldest trick in the book.”
“Which is?”
“We give them something else to look at.”
“A decoy,” I said.
He nodded. “At 06:00, the Royal Motorcade departs for the Summer Palace in the south. Flags flying. Sirens. Cameras. Very impressive.”
“And us?”
“You and the Queen,” Volkov said, tossing the apple core neatly into the bin, “together with her security detail and me will take the laundry van to the hangar at 06:30. I’ll let Dmitri drive. All alone by himself up front and us in the back with all the luggage.”
I blinked. “The laundry van.”
“It smells of bleach and starch,” he conceded, “but it has excellent tinted windows.”
I laughed despite myself. “From the Falcon to a laundry van. I’m really climbing the social ladder.”
Volkov stepped closer and rested a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Just bring her back, Captain,” he said quietly. “The people like their Queen’s Shadow.”
He paused.
“But they love their Queen more.”
For the first time that morning, the coffee finally tasted better.
As Volkov walked away down the hall toward his own office, his footsteps fading into the polished quiet of the Palace, my mind drifted back to the previous night—and to the moment I’d very nearly caused an international incident with canapé witnesses.
Specifically, my confrontation with the Russian Ambassador during the Reception Ball.
Epic didn’t quite cover it.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.