Chapter 5
VIENNE's POV
The river was a snake of black glass, and I was running along its spine.
My dress was ruined—torn at the hem, stained with mud from the palace gardens, the silver chains at my back clinking like broken bells with every stride.
The wig was gone, lost somewhere in a hedge maze when I'd torn it off to keep it from snagging on branches.
My own hair, silver-white and unmistakable, caught the moonlight like a beacon.
Not ideal, my tactical brain supplied. But alive is better than invisible.
I followed the Argent downstream, away from the palace, away from the glowing heart of the capital where Aether-lamps turned night into artificial day.
The slums huddled closer to the water here—wooden shacks built on stilts, laundry lines strung between leaning buildings, the smell of fish guts and forge-smoke thick enough to taste.
This was my territory now. The places where the crown didn't bother to look, where the city guard walked in pairs and still kept their hands on their sword hilts.
I was halfway to the safehouse when I realized I wasn't alone.
It wasn't a sound that warned me. It was the absence of one. The river had a rhythm—water against stone, the creak of mooring ropes, the distant laughter of dockworkers finishing a late shift. And suddenly, in a stretch of shadow beneath the old stone bridge, the rhythm broke.
I stopped.
My hand went to the dagger at my thigh—not the decorative one I'd worn to the ball, but the real blade, strapped to my inner leg in a sheath that Jinx had sewn into the dress lining herself. Smart kid.
"You're following me," I said to the darkness. "Either you're very bad at it, or you want me to know you're there."
Silence.
Then a match struck. The flare of light illuminated a face I recognized—sharp cheekbones, winter-blue eyes, a mouth that looked like it had forgotten how to smile.
Cassian Thorne.
He leaned against the bridge's support pillar, dressed not in his royal finery but in black combat leathers, a sword at his hip and a pistol—a pistol, rare and expensive and illegal for anyone but the royal guard—strapped across his chest.
The match illuminated his face from below, carving shadows that made him look less like a prince and more like a demon.
"I wasn't following you," he said. "I was waiting for you. There's a difference."
"Is there?" I didn't relax my grip on the dagger. "Following implies uncertainty. Waiting implies you knew I'd come this way."
"I knew." He let the match die, but I could still see him in the dark, a shape of coiled tension and controlled violence.
"There are only three routes from the palace to the lower district that don't pass through guard checkpoints. Two are watched. This one—" he gestured at the river, the shacks, the shadows, "—is where the smart rats run."
Rats. He called me a rat to my face. Charming.
"How long have you known?" I asked.
"That you weren't Lady Vane?" He pushed off the pillar, moving closer with the lazy grace of a man who knew he held all the advantages.
"Since you stepped out of that carriage. Your forged papers are excellent, by the way. Lord Vane's actual second cousin died of fever three years ago in a village that no longer exists. Very thorough."
Shit.
"But that wasn't what gave you away," he continued. He was close now. Ten feet. Eight. Close enough that I could smell the gunpowder on his clothes, the faint trace of sweat beneath the cedar.
"It was the way you looked at General Thorne during his speech. Most women look at him with admiration. Or fear. You looked at him like you were measuring him for a coffin."
I smiled. "Maybe I just don't like loud men."
"And maybe," Cassian stopped five feet away, his hand resting casually on his sword hilt, "you're Iraia Voss. Commander of the dead. The woman whose body we never found in the Blood Fields. The ghost who's been haunting my eastern territories for three months, stealing my soldiers,
bribing my informants, and generally making my life extremely complicated."
He tilted his head. "Am I warm?"
I laughed. It wasn't the practiced, breathy laugh of Lady Vane. It was Vienne's laugh. Hard. Sharp. Uncompromising.
"You're warm, Your Highness. But you're not quite right." I let the dagger slide fully into my palm, the blade catching the moonlight.
"I'm not Iraia Voss. Not anymore. She was loyal. Trusting. Stupid enough to believe that a crown meant honor."
I stepped toward him, closing the distance to three feet.
Close enough to strike. Close enough to die.
"I'm what came after. I'm the receipt for what you people did to her. And I'm here to collect."
His eyes dropped to the dagger, then back to my face. He didn't draw his sword. Didn't reach for the pistol. He just looked at me with an expression I couldn't read—something between fury and fascination.
"You didn't come to the ball for information," he said. It wasn't a question.
"No."
"You came to see me. To see the general. To look us in the eyes before you killed us."
"Also no." I circled him slowly, and he let me, turning to keep me in front of him.
A predator's dance. "I came to see who was lying. Who knew about the betrayal. Who's profiting from a legion of dead women."
I stopped, facing him fully. "And I learned plenty. Your uncle is a murderer. Your betrothed—if the rumors about Lady Ashford are true—is a viper. And you, Prince Cassian..."
I met his eyes. "You're either the most talented liar in this kingdom, or the most clueless pawn. I'm still deciding which."
Something flashed in his expression. Not anger. Not exactly. It looked almost like—
Pain.
"I led the campaign," he said quietly. "I gave the order to reinforce the Voss Legion. I watched the signal fires from the ridge, thinking we were saving you. Thinking—" his voice caught, just slightly, just enough, "—that we were arriving in time. Instead, we found a massacre.
And my uncle told me the Legion had turned. That they'd attacked our forces. That the 'reinforcements' were actually a preemptive strike against traitors."
He took a breath. "I believed him. For three months, I believed him. Do you know what that makes me?"
I stared at him. The moon moved from behind a cloud, painting his face in silver and shadow. He looked young. Younger than twenty-six. Young enough to still be haunted by his first mistake.
"It makes you complicit," I said. "Or it makes you a fool. Either way, it doesn't make you innocent."
"I know." He nodded, slowly. "That's why I'm here. Not to arrest you, Commander Voss. Not to kill you." He reached into his jacket—slowly, carefully, watching my dagger—and withdrew a folded parchment. He held it out. "To give you this."
I didn't take it. "Traps usually come with better bait."
"It's the original battle report. The one my uncle filed. The one that convinced the council to declare the Legion traitors."
His arm didn't waver. "Compare it to the troop movements, the supply requisitions, the communication logs. You'll find discrepancies. Dates that don't match. Signatures that aren't his. Someone orchestrated this, Commander. And it wasn't me."
I looked at the parchment, then at his face. At the burn scar on his hand. At the exhaustion in his eyes that no amount of royal training could hide.
"Why?" I asked. "Why help me? If you're innocent, go to the council yourself. If you're guilty, why hand me evidence that could hang you both?"
"Because—" he started.
I never heard the rest.
The shot came from the roof of the fishmonger's shack across the river—a crack of sound that split the night, a muzzle flash that painted the water orange for a fraction of a second.
Cassian moved. Fast. Faster than I'd expected. He tackled me, driving us both into the mud and stone of the riverbank as the bullet—bullet, modern, high-velocity—shattered the air where my head had been.
We rolled. I ended up on top, my knees bracketing his hips, my dagger at his throat before I could think. He had his pistol drawn, aimed past my shoulder at the rooftop.
"Not me," he gritted out. "Not my men. I came alone."
I believed him. Not because he said it, but because the second shot took a chunk of stone from the bridge pillar two feet from his head.
Someone else wants us both dead.
I rolled off him, landing in a crouch. "How many?"
"One shooter. Maybe two. Rooftop, east side." He was on his feet, back pressed to the pillar, pistol steady.
"They followed you from the palace. Or they followed me. Either way—"
"Either way, we're in the open and they're in cover." I scanned the riverbank. The shacks. The shadows. "Can you swim?"
"Can I—"
I didn't wait for the answer. I grabbed his wrist—royal protocol be damned—and ran.
We hit the water together. The Argent was cold enough to steal breath, fast enough to pull at our legs. I kept hold of his hand, kept my head down, kept moving downstream as two more shots peppered the surface where we'd been.
The current carried us past the bridge, past the shacks, into a stretch of river bordered by warehouses. I found a mooring chain and hauled us both onto a loading dock, gasping, shivering, my dress plastered to my body like a second skin.
Cassian coughed water, his hair plastered to his forehead, his pistol still miraculously in his hand. "You—" he wheezed, "—are completely insane."
"And you're heavy," I shot back, checking the rooftop line. No movement. The shooter had either lost us or was repositioning. "Next time, don't wear leather to a swim."
He laughed. It was a startled sound, rusty, like he hadn't expected to find anything funny in the last three months. "I'll keep that in mind."
I stood, dripping, my dagger still in my hand. He stood too, slower, his eyes on the shadows above us.
"That was a modern round," I said quietly. "Not Aether-forged. Not kingdom standard."
"I know." His voice had gone hard again. "I've seen those weapons before. In the eastern territories. On bodies that didn't belong to any army I recognized."