CHAPTER TWELVE
Blood in the Market
LUCIAN
Seraphine was hiding something.
The bond did not give me her thoughts, but it gave me absence.
A wall where there had not been one before.
I told myself I had no right to demand more.
She was my unwilling mate, temporary ally, and attempted assassin. Trust was not included in any formal agreement.
Then the south market exploded.
The blast shook the windows of the council chamber shortly after noon.
A second detonation followed before the first echo died.
I was on my feet before anyone spoke.
Darius met me in the corridor.
“South market.”
“I heard.”
“Memorial procession was gathering.”
My blood went cold.
Hundreds of people.
We ran.
Smoke rose over the eastern roofs.
The market square had become chaos. Stalls burned. Glass covered the street. Wolves carried the injured toward the fountain while guards fought to keep panicked crowds from trampling one another.
Seraphine was already there.
She knelt beside a boy with blood on his face, pressing cloth to his head.
Our eyes met.
The bond flooded with horror.
Not guilt.
Not exactly.
But something close enough to fear that I noticed.
“Your Majesty!” A guard captain pushed through the smoke. “We found this beneath the eastern arch.”
He held up a black feather tied around a broken silver coin.
The Raven’s mark.
Seraphine went still.
There.
The wall in the bond cracked.
She knew something.
“How many?” I asked.
“Seven dead. More than thirty wounded. Could rise.”
My wolf clawed beneath my skin.
“Seal the gates. No one leaves the capital.”
Seraphine stood. “Lucian.”
“Not now.”
“We need to talk.”
“I know.”
Her face changed.
I turned to Darius. “Find the blast origin. I want residue, witnesses, every sewer access within three streets.”
He nodded and moved.
I took Seraphine into an abandoned spice shop at the edge of the square.
The door had lost its glass.
Smoke drifted through the opening.
“What do you know?” I asked.
She folded her arms as if cold. “The Raven is in the capital.”
I waited.
She looked at the floor.
“He contacted me last night.”
Rage came fast.
Not because she had concealed a rebel.
Because I had trusted her enough to be hurt by it.
“You knew.”
“He said he planned to take the palace, not bomb civilians.”
“You knew he planned an attack.”
“I knew he planned an uprising.”
“And you said nothing.”
“He is my brother.”
The words stopped me.
“Elias.”
“Yes.”
Presumed dead.
Alive.
The Raven.
Of course.
I laughed once without humor. “Fate has become almost theatrical.”
“He would not do this.”
“Seven bodies say someone did.”
“Malrec has forged royal seals. He can forge a feather.”
“Or your brother has become a man you no longer know.”
She flinched.
I regretted the words immediately.
Too late.
“You think I don’t know that?” she said.
“I think you wanted to believe him.”
“And you wanted to believe your father once.”
That landed exactly where she aimed.
We stood in the ruined shop with shouting outside and smoke between us.
The bond went hard and cold.
“I should have told you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t.”
“No.”
“What now?”
I looked at her.
There were a hundred answers expected of a king.
Arrest her.
Interrogate her.
Use her to find the Raven.
I chose the answer that felt most dangerous.
“Now you help me prove whether your brother did this.”
Her gaze lifted.
“You still trust me?”
“No.”
Pain flashed through the bond.
I continued before pride could stop me.
“But I want to.”
Her anger softened into something worse.
Honesty.
“We’ll find the truth,” she said.
Darius appeared in the doorway.
His coat was dusted with ash.
“You’re both going to want to see this.”
Beneath the eastern arch, hidden behind the Raven’s mark, he had found a second symbol carved into the stone.
A broken crescent.
And in the cracks around it, blue myrrh.