10. Kaedryn #2
I am. The thread in my chest has pulled tight enough to ache, and the certainty rises before I can stop it. But certainty like that is the one thing in this room I cannot afford to explain, so I bury it and hand her a reason she will believe instead.
“I have spent the morning being told my betrothed is too unwell to sit at a table. Either that is true and she needs aid, or it is not, and I have been politely managed since I sat down. I would like to know if the princess is okay.”
Selvara’s smile holds, but something behind it recalculates.
Varek’s patience breaks in a quiet, controlled way. He lifts one hand, and frost crawls over the lock in a jagged bloom before the mechanism cracks open. The door swings inward. The room beyond is dim, and for one breath, no one moves. Then Varek steps inside.
I follow.
The chamber smells faintly of lavender smoke, cold ashes, and something bitter beneath it. Herbs, perhaps. Medicine. The bed curtains are drawn. The hearth is low. A folded shawl rests over the back of a chair. At first glance, the room looks occupied.
Then I see the small signs of something out of place.
A porcelain dish sits crooked on the table. A chair is pushed back at an angle. One drawer near the vanity is not fully closed. A faint line in the rug near the hearth is barely wrong, the pattern interrupted as though it has been moved and replaced in haste.
Freya stands beside the bed. She is pale, yet there is nothing frantic in her face. No wild fear. No helpless shock. Only grief and resolve.
That concerns me more.
“Where is she?” Varek asks.
Freya lowers her head. “Her Royal Highness is resting.”
Selvara crosses to the bed, her expression already smoothing into something gentle for whoever might be watching. “Poor Adelina. She has always been delicate after an event.” She reaches for the curtain.
Freya steps forward. “Your Majesty, please. She needs rest.”
It’s the first mistake.
“Move,” Varek says.
Freya does not. For one long breath, the room holds. Then Varek crosses the distance himself and rips the curtain back.
The bed is not empty. For one brief, irrational moment, relief loosens something in my chest. Then I look closer.
The shape beneath the blankets is wrong. Too still. Too slight. No breath shifts the fabric. No silver hair spills across the pillow. Varek tears the cover aside, revealing pillows arranged beneath the blankets with a folded nightdress and pale cloth placed where a shoulder might be.
Silence settles around the empty bed.
Freya closes her eyes.
Varek turns slowly. “Where is my sister?”
Freya says nothing. The silence answers more loudly than any confession could have.
Selvara’s softness disappears so quickly it’s almost fascinating. “Freya!”
Still nothing.
Varek steps toward her, and frost begins to creep over the floor beneath his boots. “You will answer your king.”
Freya lifts her chin. Her hands tremble at her sides, but her voice, when it comes, is quiet and even. “I have served this house since before you wore a crown.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No, Your Majesty.” The restraint in her tone is deliberate. She is not trying to save herself.
I realize it in the same moment Varek does. A cold, clear thought moves through me.
She is delaying us.
“Search the room,” Varek snaps.
His guards move at once. So do mine because they know me. Sylas moves toward the balcony doors. Rowan crosses to the windows. Soren’s gaze lowers to the floor, to the rug, to the faint disturbance in the pattern near the hearth. Merritt and Kellan start sweeping the adjoining rooms.
For half a second, my mind goes to kidnapping. The thought turns everything inside me cold and sharp. “Was she taken?” I ask.
Freya looks at me. There is grief in her face. She still says nothing.
Varek’s head turns toward her. “If someone entered these rooms, you will tell me now!”
Freya lowers her gaze. Silence.
Selvara inhales slowly through her nose, and when she speaks, her voice is soft enough to be more dangerous than shouting. “Freya, if the princess has been harmed because of your stubbornness, no loyalty you imagine yourself to possess will save you.”
The old nurse’s mouth tightens. Still, she says nothing.
Soren kneels near the rug. “The floor has been disturbed.”
Freya’s eyes flick toward him. Only once. Barely a movement at all. But I see it.
So does Varek.
For the first time since we entered, fear breaks through Freya’s composure. It’s not fear for herself. It’s fear that she has given Adelina away too soon.
“The rug,” I say.
Rowan is already there, pulling it back before anyone gives the order. The stone beneath looks seamless at first, dark and smooth, worn by years of footsteps. Then Soren runs his fingers along the carved border near the hearth.
“There is a mechanism,” he says.
Varek shoves forward, but Sylas steps between him and Soren with a pleasant smile that does not reach his eyes. “Careful. We’d like it open, not shattered.”
Varek looks ready to break him.
Soren presses something. The stone clicks, and a seam appears. The trapdoor opens into darkness.
No one speaks.
The tunnel breathes up at us, damp and cold, the faint glow of pale stones disappearing downward into the earth.
The possibility of kidnapping still holds.
Someone could have used this passage. Someone could have entered through it, drugged her, carried her out before anyone knew what had happened.
The arranged bed, the locked door, Freya’s silence.
All of it could be fear. All of it could be shock.
But the passage is narrow and silent.
Varek turns on Freya, and the last of his composure thins into something far uglier. “Where does it lead?”
Freya says nothing.
Selvara moves closer to her. “Think carefully.”
The old nurse lifts her chin. “I have.”
Varek strikes her. It happens fast, a backhand across the face that snaps her head to the side and sends a sound through the room that empties everything else from it.
I move before thought catches up. My hand closes around Varek’s wrist. What unsettles me is not that I stopped him. It’s that I didn’t choose to. My hand moved before judgment did.
The king of Dravaryn looks down at my grip, then up at me. The chamber goes deathly still.
“Don’t,” I say.
His eyes burn. “Release me.”
“Not if you intend to strike her again.”
“She has betrayed her crown!” Varek snarls.
“She should be properly questioned.” I keep my voice calm.
“She is a servant.”
“She is an old woman.”
“She is mine to discipline.” The word mine leaves his mouth like a truth he has never had reason to examine.
My grip tightens. “Nothing living is yours by right of temper.”
Varek’s power rises. So does mine. For one dangerous heartbeat, the room balances on the edge of something neither kingdom can afford.
Frost crawls along the walls. Shadows deepen near my shoulders as my wings press closer to being called, armor waiting beneath skin and command.
My guards shift. His guards do the same.
Selvara steps in before either of us can make the mistake. “Enough.” Her voice is quiet, but it slices cleanly through the pressure. “This helps no one.”
Varek’s eyes remain on mine and mine on his. I release his wrist, slowly, and he pulls back.
Selvara turns to the guards holding Freya. “Take her to a secure room. She is not to be harmed further until the king has questioned her formally.”
Freya’s eyes flick to me once. I can’t read everything there, but I see enough. She wanted Adelina gone. She wanted time. She wanted someone in this room to see that whatever had happened here was not simple betrayal.
I’m not sure I’m ready to grant her that mercy, especially if the princess is hurt.
The guards lead her out, and the room feels emptier after she is gone.
Varek turns toward the open trapdoor. “Send riders. Close the gates. Search the town. Every road south and west is to be watched.”
“South and west are the obvious routes,” I say.
He looks at me. “You presume to know my sister’s mind after one evening?”
“No. I presume whoever planned this is not a fool.”
His mouth tightens.
I kneel at the edge of the trapdoor, ignoring the bite of cold rising from below.
The tunnel is narrow and old, the ladder dusty except where every rung has been scuffed by a recent climb.
The glowing stones embedded in the wall tell me someone maintained it, or at least knew it would still respond when needed.
“She didn’t leave without help,” I say. “If she went through here, she went with a route in mind.”
“If?” Varek repeats.
I stand and look toward the passage. “If,” I say, because the evidence has not finished speaking.
But the thread beneath my ribs has already tightened, already turned my body toward pursuit.
I step down into the tunnel.