Chapter 8
VIENNE's POV
The east tower smelled like old books and secrets.
I let myself in with the key Cassian had given me, sliding through the door like a shadow, my senses tuned to every creak of the floorboard, every shift of the air.
The study was exactly what I'd expected from a man who spent more time planning wars than attending balls—maps covered every wall, military texts were stacked in leaning towers, and the desk was a disaster of ink-stained reports and half-eaten meals.
He really doesn't sleep, I thought, noting the cot pushed against the far wall, the blanket thrown back in haste.
I wasn't here for a social call. The bombing three nights ago had shaken the kingdom into a frenzy.
The King was clinging to life in the physicians' wing, the High Council had locked down the capital, and Morgana Ashford had been appointed "Royal Steward" until Aldric recovered—convenient—giving her control of the palace guard rotations.
Which was why I was here. Because the bomber hadn't been found. Because the only lead I had was a gold ring with a tower seal. And because Cassian's private study had something I needed: access to the palace's original architectural plans, including the passages the bomber had used to escape.
I was halfway through his desk when the door opened.
I had a dagger in my hand before I thought, body coiling into the space behind a bookshelf, ready to throw, ready to run—
"Put it down," Cassian said, closing the door and leaning against it. "If you kill me, you'll never figure out which floorboard hides the brandy."
He looked worse than he had in the cellar. The sling was gone, but his left arm was bound tight against his chest in a more professional wrap. Purple bruises bloomed across his cheekbone—new, not from the explosion. Someone had hit him. Recently.
"Who won?" I asked, sheathing the blade.
"Excuse me?"
"The other guy. The one who gave you the new face decoration."
His jaw tightened. "My uncle. He suggested—strongly—that I increase the bounty on your head. Make it public. Make it violent." He pushed off the door, moving to the desk with a stiff gait that suggested his ribs were still screaming. "I declined. He expressed his disappointment."
"He hit you?"
"He's a general. Disappointment is usually expressed with a closed fist." He opened a drawer, pulled out a bottle of amber liquid, and two glasses. "Drink?"
"It's barely noon."
"It's been barely noon for three days. Time loses meaning when you're avoiding assassination." He poured two fingers into each glass and held one out. "Sit. Please. If you're going to rifle through my private papers, the least you can do is pretend to be civilized."
I took the glass. I didn't sit. "I'm not civilized, Your Highness. I'm a ghost."
"So you've said." He sank into the chair behind his desk, wincing as his ribs protested. "Repeatedly. With increasing melodrama."
I almost smiled. Almost. "You should be more careful. Letting a wanted criminal into your private rooms. What would Lady Ashford say?"
"She'd say I'm a fool. She says that frequently." He took a long drink, his throat working, his eyes never leaving my face. "She also says you're a threat to the crown. That you should be executed immediately. Publicly. As a warning."
"And what do you say?"
"I say—" he set the glass down with a sharp click, "—that I watched a woman drag me through a collapsing palace, reset my shoulder in a wine cellar, and refuse to leave me behind even though it would have been smarter, safer, and infinitely more practical."
His eyes were blue ice and something warmer underneath. "So either you're the worst assassin in history, or you're telling the truth about not wanting me dead."
"I'm telling the truth," I said quietly. "Dead princes cause chaos. I need order."
"Yes. You've mentioned that." He leaned forward, his good hand flat on the desk between us. "What you haven't mentioned is who you are. Really. Under the armor and the threats and the convenient mafia wisdom."
The room went still.
I could lie. I was good at lying. Vienne Delgado had lied her way through a decade of syndicate politics, wearing masks like other women wore jewelry. I could spin him a story about amnesia, about trauma, about a woman broken by war and rebuilt by vengeance.
But I looked at him—at the bruises he'd taken for me, at the trust he was offering like a blade held handle-first—and I felt something crack. Not Iraia's memory. Not Vienne's training.
Me. Whatever I was now.
"I wasn't born in this world," I said.
The words hung in the air, heavy and strange.
Cassian didn't blink. Didn't laugh. He just waited.
"I was born in a city called New Carthage. A different version of this world, or a different world entirely. I don't know the mechanics. I don't know why."
I set my untouched glass on the desk and moved to the window, looking out at the capital's sprawl.
"I was an underdog. The lowest rank in a criminal organization called the Delgado Syndicate. The people who do the killing but get none of the credit. The disposable ones."
I touched the glass, my breath fogging it.
"I died there. Three months ago. Betrayed by my boss. Shot. Left on a rooftop in the rain."
I laughed, but it had no humor in it. "And then I woke up here. In Iraia Voss's body. On the Blood Fields. With her memories in my head and her rage in my chest and absolutely no idea how to be a noble warrior in a world that still uses horses for transportation."
Behind me, silence.
I turned.
Cassian was staring at me with an expression I couldn't read. Not shock. Not disbelief. Something more complicated. Something that looked almost like... relief.
"That's why you don't move like her," he said finally.
"What?"
"Iraia Voss was trained in the Aethelgardian classical style. Elegant. Balanced. Predictable."
He stood, slowly, moving toward me with the careful steps of a man still healing.
"You fight like a street brawler who learned to kill in alleys. You use pressure points I don't recognize. You hold your dagger wrong for our techniques but exactly right for... something else."
He stopped an arm's length away. "You speak in idioms that don't exist here. You looked at an Aether-lamp like you'd never seen magic before. You eat like—"
"Like what?"
"Like someone who's never been sure where her next meal is coming from." His voice was gentle. No pity. Just observation. "Iraia was a noble. She had manners. You have... efficiency."
I stared at him. "You believe me."
"Shouldn't I?"
"Most people would think I'm insane. Or possessed. Or a demon wearing human skin."
He smiled, small and tired. "Vienne, I've spent three months hunting a woman who survived a massacre that should have killed her. Who built an underground network in weeks. Who moves through my city like smoke and speaks to me like I'm an equal instead of a prince."
He reached up, his fingers brushing a strand of my silver hair where it had escaped my hood. "Insane would be easier. Demons would be simpler. But you... you're just a woman who died in the wrong place and woke up with a debt to pay."
My throat tightened. "You don't even know me."
"I know you reset my shoulder in a dark cellar and didn't use the opportunity to break my neck. I know you saved my father's life when letting him die would have been strategically smarter for whatever war you're planning.
I know you look at Jinx like she's the first person you've ever been allowed to care about."
His thumb traced my jaw, feather-light. "And I know that when you look at me, you don't see a prince. You see a target. Or a tool. Or..." he hesitated, "something else you're still deciding on."
I should have stepped back. Should have broken his fingers, or his nose again, or disappeared out the window.
Instead, I said: "I see a man who's too smart for his own good."
"That too."
We stood there, close enough that I could smell the liniment on his bruises, the brandy on his breath, the cedar-and-gunpowder scent that seemed permanently embedded in his skin. The silence stretched, charged, dangerous.
"Why are you really here?" he asked softly.
"For the plans. The architectural drawings. I need to know how the bomber got in and out."
"And?"
"And I need to know if you're going to stop me."
He dropped his hand. Stepped back. The loss of warmth felt like a wound.
"I'm not going to stop you," he said. "I'm going to help you."
I blinked. "What?"
"You heard me." He moved to the wall of maps, pulling down a rolled parchment and spreading it across the desk. "These are the original palace blueprints. Drawn two hundred years ago, updated every generation. The passages, the hidden doors, the structural weaknesses."
He pointed to a section near the east wing. "The bomber entered here. Through the old servants' aqueduct. It's supposed to be sealed, but the seal was broken from the inside."
"Inside job."
"Always." He looked up at me, his eyes sharp despite the bruises. "And I know who had access to that seal. Three people. My uncle. Morgana. And the Royal Architect, who died in the explosion."
"Convenient."
"Isn't it?" He traced a line on the map. "But here's what I don't understand. The bomber didn't just place the charge. They triggered it remotely. With a device that used no Aether. No magic. Just... mechanics. Physics."
He looked at me. "You called it modern. You said it came from your world."
"It did."
"Then whoever built it is either from your world, or learned from someone who is." He rolled the map up, handing it to me.
"I want them found. Not for the crown. Not for justice. For answers. Because if someone can bring weapons from your world into mine, they can bring more. They can change the balance of everything. And I need to know if I'm fighting a war with swords while my enemy is planning to fight with...
whatever you call that explosive."
"C-4. Or something like it."