42. The King of Ashvold
T he engagement party is cancelled. Selene is indisposed. Unwell. It’s a tidy word for what she really is.
She feels like she is dying, like someone has carved a hole in her chest. It’s a dark, burrowing, festering wound. She can feel it growing. She imagines herself as a shattered mirror. All pieces, nothing whole. All she is is shards.
This was what Dorian felt when he lost her. She had never truly understood it until now.
He got up, she reminds herself. He tried again.
She knows she will have to, too. The question is merely when.
Footsteps approach outside her door. Low voices converse. There’s the rustle of a gown, followed by a hand turning the knob. Selene doesn’ t move.
Her mother enters. Selene knows it’s her before she can even speak. She recognises the sound of her breathing, the clink of her heels.
But she’s not just Selene’s mother anymore. She’s the woman who toppled a nation.
And her husband’s murderer.
Because even though there’s a version of Dorian living and breathing, he isn’t her Dorian. Everything they were to each other has been wiped from the world like chalk from stone.
Her own mother did that, and so many other awful things.
Selene can’t look at her. She scrunches her eyes tight and pretends to be asleep.
The door clicks shut behind Lady Duskbrair, and the sound feels deafening in the stillness. Selene lies motionless beneath the blankets, curled on her side, her back to the room, to the light, to her .
Silken skirts whisper across the floorboards. Her mother pauses at the edge of the bed.
“Selene.”
She doesn’t respond. Not even a breath. She keeps her face pressed into the pillow, eyes shut, her jaw locked so tightly it hurts.
The bed dips.
A hand slips beneath the covers, finds the curve of her back, and begins to rub slow, careful circles—like she’s a child again, feverish and frightened, and her mother is playing at being gentle. The touch is cold. Hollow. Of course it is. Lady Duskbriar was never the soft sort.
Selene flinches, but only slightly. Enough to feel it. Not enough for her mother to stop.
“Speak to me, my darling.”
Selene has no plans to do so until her mother is in chains. She can’t bring Dorian back, but she can see her mother punished. She just needs proof of the alliance, and she will find it if it’s the last thing she does.
“Whatever you think you can’t tell me, whatever it is that has upset you, you can tell me, my dear,” her mother says softly, her voice smooth as glass. “I will understand. There’s no need to hide from me.”
No need? No need?
Selene bites her lip. She wants to scream, to tear off the blankets and accuse her.
You killed the man I love.
You poisoned him.
You toppled a nation in the name of progress.
But she doesn’t. Because what could she say that wouldn’t sound like madness?
Her mother sighs and withdraws her hand. The mattress rises again as she stands.
“I’ll return tomorrow,” she says. “Perhaps we can speak properly then.”
Her footsteps recede. The door opens and closes.
Selene doesn’t move. Not until the echo of her mother’s perfume has faded from the room. Then, finally, she exhales—sharp, shuddering.
Selene is alone in the dark once more.
Alone with her thoughts.
Why this day?
Dorian said that he and Soren were often pulled back to this day.
At the time, Selene assumed it was because it was a year before Ashvold’s invasion, and the day she accepted the Duke’s proposal, but it isn’t a full year—it’s a couple of days out, and surely returning before this day would have been better?
There’s something about this day that they haven’t realised yet. Her mind runs through other events that occur on this day, other visits, transactions, occasions—
Selene bolts upright.
It’s the day her mother invited her down to the bower house to celebrate her engagement.
If she was using the bower house at Nocturne Hall to hide her correspondence, it stands to reason that she was doing the same thing here—that all the ladies in her circle are using the houses for the same purpose.
It’s why Dorian’s never found anything before .
She can find something now.
Selene goes to her wardrobe, fingers trailing past silks and velvets, brocade and lace, until she finds what she’s looking for—plain cotton, dyed a gentle green. It’s the simplest of her gowns, something she’s only worn once before. She pulls it out and lays it on the bed.
The colour isn’t far off the shade worn by the maids. It’ll do.
She undresses quickly, trades pearl buttons for fabric ties, and reaches for the cap she keeps at the back of the drawer—meant for bathing, not disguise, but it will serve.
She winds her hair tightly, tucking each strand out of sight, and ties the cap low over her brow.
In the mirror, she sees someone else staring back.
Not a lady. Not a duchess. Just a girl in green.
It’s the best she has.
The sun is still up, though it hangs low in the sky now, stretching long shadows across the courtyard as she slips out the servants’ entrance.
The garden is still, the air warm and scented faintly with rosemary.
She doesn’t see anyone as she moves past the hedge-lined paths and broken fountains, past the mossy statuary.
Not a single footfall behind her. No voices, no laughter.
Only the quiet crunch of gravel beneath her shoes.
The bower house sits nestled at the far edge of the grounds, half-hidden by climbing ivy.
A woman’s refuge, forbidden to all those but wives and widows.
Once as a girl, Selene worked up the courage to follow her mother after a luncheon and saw her hide the key behind a loose stone in the garden wall.
It was the closest she ever came to going inside.
Selene kneels. The stone is still there.
She eases it free, brushes away the dust, and finds the key waiting.
Her hand doesn’t tremble as she unlocks the door.
Inside, the bower is nothing like the one at Nocturne Hall. Here, the room is light and airy, filled with the scent of drying lavender. Dust motes turn lazily in the golden light. A vase of silk flowers sits on the writing desk, beside an ivory-handled letter opener and a lace fan .
Selene gets to work.
She searches thoroughly: drawers, cupboards, beneath cushions, behind books.
She runs her fingers along the underside of the writing desk, checks for false bottoms, listens for hollow knocks.
She finds a secret drawer tucked neatly in the panelled wall—clever, if not too well hidden—and pries it open with a quiet breath of hope.
Empty.
She stares at the dark hollow, then presses her lips into a thin line and continues.
She checks everything. Even the seam behind the bookshelf, where the plaster doesn’t quite meet the floor. But there’s nothing.
No notes. No names. No sign that anything had ever been there at all.
Selene stands slowly, brushing her skirts down, her hands faintly trembling now from frustration more than anything else. All of it, for nothing. Either her mother moved the letters, or there had never been anything to find in this bower at all.
The quiet hums in her ears as she locks the door behind her.
The sky is dipped in amber by the time she returns to the house, and the shadows have grown longer still. She enters the way she came, unnoticed, unseen. Her room is just as she left it. Cool. Dim. Still.
She closes the door behind her, leans against it for a moment, and finally exhales.
She knows, without even trying, that her mother will not keep her correspondence anywhere obvious. Selene had been sure that it would be in the bower house. There is nothing else interesting or unique about this day. Just her engagement and her first trip to the bower house. Nothing else—
Selene stops. There was something else.
The gossip the day of her engagement. People asking if King Alden would be in attendance and deciding he wouldn’t be, as the King of Ashvold was visiting, and would be leaving the next day.
Leaving after the Duke had secured Selene’s hand, she had no doubt .
Because it wasn’t just about her, or the Duke, or even her mother. At the heart of it, it was Ashvold’s greed behind the invasion. It was Ashvold that needed to be neutralised.
A plan is already forming in Selene’s mind by the time she scrambles upright and rings the bell. It’s not yet evening. She still has time.
Cassie arrives in under a minute. “My Lady, are you all right?”
“Help me dress,” Selene demands, already pulling off the simple gown. “I need—I need to visit the palace.”
Cassie blanches. “Whatever for, Lady Selene?”
“I cannot say—not yet,” Selene rushes. “But you must promise to tell no one where I am going, especially my mother. The fate of the country may depend upon it.”
Cassie’s eyes widen. “Lady Selene—”
“I know I sound mad. Perhaps I am, a little, but I need you to trust me, Cass. On Elspeth’s life, I beg you.”
“On Elspeth’s—what do you know about her?”
“I know that you love her, and she loves you, and I promise, if I manage to pull this off, you two can come and live with us freely and openly, but right now, I need you to help me dress.”
Cassie doubtless has a dozen other questions, but she decides now is not the moment. “A dress, you say?”
“Yes,” Selene returns. “A fine one.”
She leaves the house half an hour later, out the back door. She’s wearing green silk, fringed with black lace. It’s beautiful. Powerful.
Both beauty and power will be needed for what comes next.
This is madness, Selene tells herself .
And perhaps it is, but she’s out of other choices, other options. The King of Ashvold leaves tomorrow, and her chances will be ruined. She has to do something, anything, to stop him. To end this madness once and for all.
It’s what Dorian would have done, if he could.
“It’s you,” he’d said as he lay dying. “Selene. Selene, it’s always been you…”