Chapter Thirty-Three #2
Inside, there were bundles of letters. Dozens. Some were frayed; others crisp. I reached for the one on top, the parchment Dorian had given me.
It wasn’t long. A few lines, written in efficient, courtly script:
“Intercept the envoy before Wildervale. Focus on the soft one. The girl with the healer’s hands. If the forest doesn’t take her, Riven will.”
I could feel my face fall open wide, the raw sting of unshed tears burning behind my eyes.
I opened another letter, this one marked with Kaelen’s personal seal; faint, but still visible beneath the cracked wax.
“Ensure the knight dies. He’s very loyal. Burn the bond before it forms.”
My mouth went dry.
“Payment approved for intercept at Wildervale. Risk is high, reward is higher. Remove the girl quietly. Do not damage the face.”
And finally, the last letter and the most chilling: “The girl bears a mark. But her fire is not from birth. Watch her. She is not what she believes she is.”
My knees buckled. I sank to the ground, scrolls sliding from my lap like wilted petals.
He knows my gift.
He tried to kill us.
Not random bandits and mercenaries. Not misfortune. Not fate.
Kaelen.
He’d sent Riven, planned the attacks. Approved assassination orders were like diplomatic paperwork.
We were all meant to die before we ever reached Caerthaine.
Instead of a sob, a sound clawed its way from my throat, hoarse and guttural. It was the raw, protesting sound of grief trying to break free.
But no tears came. Crying was something you did when the pain still belonged to you.
This pain belonged to all of us.
A truth burned behind my ribs, terrible and certain.
If Kaelen had his way, we wouldn’t be negotiating a union.
We’d be burying the last of my people in foreign soil.
I didn’t remember leaving the archive. One moment, I was kneeling on the floor, scrolls splayed around me like broken wings; the next, I was stumbling through a half-lit corridor, my hands trembling, my skin cold and damp.
Now, I tucked the letters under my arm, crumpling them slightly from how tightly I clutched them.
My feet moved of their own accord, taking me nowhere in particular.
The castle was silent but not still. Caerthaine always breathed beneath its own stone, whispering through cold halls like a thing alive.
The sconces flickered low, casting warped shadows that trailed behind me like ghostly apparitions.
Each step echoed.
He planned this.
He paid for my death. Everyone’s death.
I couldn’t get the words out of my head. They looped like a fever chant, each time twisting deeper, sicker. My heart was beating too fast and too shallow.
“You’ll sign it. We both know you will,” Kaelen had said to me. “Shame the wilds didn’t take you.”
Coward, I thought bitterly. Monster.
I walked faster.
I didn’t know where I was going. Only that I couldn’t stop.
The door clicked shut behind me.
I stood alone in the cold hush of my room, the scent of lavender and stone trailing in my wake. The letters burned beneath my cloak like coals pressed to my ribs.
I didn’t pace. I didn’t panic. I moved.
Near the fireplace, there was a seam in the wall. I’d noticed it during my first night here, where the stonework dipped ever so slightly behind the carved screen. I knelt and pressed along the edge, fingers trembling, until I found a groove. The stone shifted under pressure.
The hollow behind it was small enough to tuck something thin and fragile.
The sound of my heart pounded in my ears as I slid the letters inside, still wrapped in the cloth with my family’s crest. The moment the stone clicked back into place, it was as if I had buried a body. The weight of the secret settled like earth on a grave.
I stood slowly, brushing dust from my skirt.
The room was silent, but not still. My thoughts howled louder than any wind.
Was it enough?
The letters named him not in signature, but in implication. The wax seals were cracked, and some of the handwriting could be challenged. There were no witnesses, no confession. Just words.
Is that all it takes to end a life? To unravel a peace?
I crossed to the window and placed my palm against the glass. Caerthaine stretched beyond in perfect rows of icy beauty, every spire and square washed in moonlight.
My reflection stared back. I saw my pale skin, hollow eyes, wrapped in silk that didn’t belong to me.
This kingdom was a construct of appearances and calculated power, where the masks had been worn so long they had begun to rot into the very skin.
Would they believe me? Or would they say I’d wandered where I shouldn’t have? That I was weak. Or hysterical.
The wind rose outside, rattling the panes.
The tears refused to fall once again. Instead, a seismic rift tore through my core, leaving a jagged fissure between who I was and who I would become.
Behind me, the fire whispered in its hearth.
If I stayed silent, I would marry him. If I spoke, I risked everything.
My fingers curled at my sides.
There was no safe path. There had never been.
But in the morning, I would choose one anyway.
I lit a single candle.
I sat at the edge of my bed, the silk hem of my nightgown clinging to my ankles, and pulled the worn journal from beneath my pillow.
Its spine was cracked now, corners curled from damp and travel. But the pages still held me like an old friend. A version of me I wasn’t sure still existed.
I opened to a fresh page. Dipped the quill. Let the words bleed out, steady as breath:
I always thought betrayal would come with shouting. With anger. With something loud.
But it came in silence.
It came in ink on parchment. Orders tucked inside a drawer. Words written so cleanly, so confidently, that they didn’t even feel like murder. They felt certain.
He was going to kill me. He was going to kill us.
And all this time, I thought I was navigating a court. I didn’t realize I’d stepped into a cage.
I keep wondering what I did wrong. What softness I showed, what questions I asked, what part of me cracked open enough for him to slip the blade in.
But maybe it’s not about weakness. It’s about threats.
Maybe he saw something in me that scared him. Something that still burns.
I haven’t told the others. Not Alaric. Not Jasira. Not Erindor.
What would I even say? Did I find proof that our peace is a lie? That I’m sleeping a stone’s throw away from the man who wants to kill me? No one can protect me from this. And if I speak too soon, I could ruin everything.
But the silence is rotting me from the inside. And I don’t know how long I can keep it. I want to scream. I want to run. I want to burn this whole place down and start again.
But I won’t. Not yet.
Instead, I’ll sleep with the truth pressed between my ribs. And in the morning, I’ll decide whether to stay quiet. -W
Chapter Thirty-Four
Wynessa
The walls were too white.
Not the soft, garden-bathed white of moonflower petals. No, these were bleached and unyielding. I’d stared at them all morning, pacing between them like some trapped creature circling its own enclosure.
The fire in the hearth snapped as if resenting the silence.
I’d tried to sit down three times. The edge of the bed, the window ledge, the little velvet chair by the writing desk. Each time my body refused to stay still, my bones too tightly coiled with dread.
The letters were still safely stashed in the hollow behind the hearth. That was the safest place for them. Who knows what I would do if they were in my hands?
I had gone for breakfast.
Sat next to Alaric at a long, polished table, gold-fringed and gleaming, while the Caerthaine nobles sipped chilled wine and commented on the mildness of the wind.
I’d nodded when spoken to and smiled when required.
But my food remained untouched, while my tea, once steaming, grew tepid and left a bitter taste on my tongue.
Erindor had been there too, posted by the pillar, as always. He hadn’t spoken, but I felt his eyes linger more than usual, as if he were memorizing my silence.
Lunch had been worse. The clang of cutlery was too loud; the candlelight too bright. I tried to say something to Jasira, anything, but my throat felt lined with smoke and ash.
She had leaned closer, brushing my hair from my shoulder.
“You’re too quiet,” she’d whispered. “That usually means your brain’s on fire.”
I hadn’t replied. I’d only taken her hand and squeezed it beneath the table.
Because how could I explain what I had found? How could I look my brother in the eye, or Erindor, and say, I know now? I know it was never a chance. The forest wanted me dead, and Kaelen held the leash.
The knowledge wasn’t just poison. It was weight. Thick, oozing weight that clung to my skin and pooled behind my ribs.
What do I do?
I had asked myself that question at least fifty times since sunrise.
Tell Alaric? He would burn the entire castle down. And I didn’t know yet who might get burned by it.
Tell Erindor? He would act, and gods knew I couldn’t bear to see him thrown in chains or struck down for me.
Tell Jasira? She already bore so much. I didn’t want to add my crumbling world to hers.
So what? Carry it alone?
My reflection in the mirror didn’t answer. She stared at me with pale skin, hollow eyes, and dressed in court-perfect gray silk. My hair was braided back today, tightly wound into a severe style. I hadn’t even resisted when the maid styled it that way. I was too busy holding myself together.
I couldn’t stay here any longer; wrapped in silence, wrapped in questions, wrapped in fear that hardened into something brittle behind my ribs.
I found Jasira in the reading nook down the hall, fussing with embroidery she wasn’t really working on. When she looked up, I smiled too quickly.
“I’m going to get some air,” I said. “A small walk.”
She frowned. “Now? Wyn, it’s almost time—”
“I won’t be long,” I murmured, already turning. “I just need to breathe.”
Jasira stood as if she might follow. But then she paused, studying my face.