Chapter 9: The Letter
1028 Words
His hand rose to my face, his thumb brushing my jawline with a tenderness that didn't match the violence coiled beneath his skin. "Remember what I told you. Whatever they offer, whatever they threaten, you have already chosen. Don't let them unmake it."
The captain cleared his throat. "Your Highness. The king was specific about timing."
Kael's lip curled, showing teeth that were slightly too sharp. For a moment, I thought he would fight... transform, destroy, burn his way through six guards and half the palace to stay beside me. I saw it in his eyes, the dragon rising, the hunger for violence that was as much a part of him as the hands that touched me so gently.
Then he exhaled, a long sound that was almost a growl, and dropped his hand.
"Three days," he said to me, so quiet only I could hear. "The formal dinner. I'll see you then. Until then, trust no one. Eat nothing that isn't tasted by three others first. And don't..." he paused, something flickering in his expression, "...don't explore the rooms alone at night. Not until I can be there."
"Why?"
He didn't answer. The guards closed around him, a wall of armor and obedience, and he let them lead him away. His back was straight, his stride unhurried, but I saw the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers curled and uncurled at his sides like claws fighting to emerge.
I watched until the corridor swallowed him.
A hand touched my elbow. A maid, young, human, her eyes fixed on the floor. "This way, my lady. Your rooms have been prepared."
The west wing corridors were narrower than the main halls, older, smelling of dust and disuse. The maid stopped at a heavy oak door, pushed it open, and stepped aside without entering.
"Will there be anything else, my lady?"
I shook my head. She curtsied and fled, relief visible in the speed of her departure.
I stepped inside alone.
The room was large, too large for one person, with ceilings that disappeared into shadow and windows that faced north, toward the tower where Kael had been taken. Candles burned on the mantel, recently lit, as if someone had expected me. As if someone wanted me to see what waited here.
A bed, draped in silk the color of dried blood. Furniture too large for normal proportions, built for someone taller, broader. Tapestries on the walls depicting dragons and mountains, faded with age but still vivid enough to catch the light. And everywhere, the sense of a life interrupted... a hairbrush on the dressing table, a shawl draped over a chair, a book left open on a side table as if its reader had simply stepped away and never returned.
Kael's mother's room.
I walked to the window. The northern tower was visible from here, a black finger against the moonless sky. One window near the top burned with candlelight. Kael, waiting. Watching. Or perhaps he couldn't see me at all, and the light was just a guard's torch, meaningless and cold.
I pressed my palm against the glass. It was cold, ancient, older than the kingdom it framed.
Behind me, the door clicked shut. Not the maid returning. Something else. Someone else.
I turned.
The room was empty. But on the bed, where there had been nothing before, lay a single white rose in a crystal vase.
Evelyne's signature. Her message. I was here. I touched everything. You own nothing I cannot take.
I walked to the bed and picked up the vase. The rose was perfect, dew still clinging to petals that had no business being fresh at this hour. Beneath it, a folded note in Evelyne's elegant script.
Sister,
Welcome to your new home. I hope you find it comfortable. Mother lived here for three years before they took her away. Did you know that? Three years of waiting for a king who never came, of loving a son she was never allowed to name. She died in this bed, Seraphina. Fever, they said. But I know what fever looks like, and it doesn't leave purple marks on the throat.
Sleep well. Dream of poison. Dream of golden eyes. Dream of all the ways this story ends.
~ E.
I crumpled the note in my fist. The room felt smaller now, the walls closer, the dragon tapestries watching me with painted eyes. I looked at the bed where Kael's mother had died, by fever or by murder, by natural causes or by the same hands that had killed my own mother... and felt the weight of everything I didn't know pressing down like water.
Three days until the formal dinner.
Three days until I would see Kael again.
Three days for Evelyne to plan, for Margot to scheme, for Lucien to decide whether he wanted me back or wanted me destroyed.
I set the vase on the windowsill, where the rose would catch the first light of morning, and sat on the edge of the bed that had killed a woman I never met.
The mattress was too soft. The pillows smelled of lavender and something else, something older, something that might have been...
grief.
I didn't sleep.
I waited for dawn, for the sound of servants in the corridors, for the beginning of a war that would not end with a single dagger or a single cup of poison.
Evelyne was wrong about one thing.
I didn't dream of poison. I didn't dream of golden eyes.
I dreamed of a child's heartbeat, fluttering like a trapped bird, and a voice that whispered: *This time, Mama. This time, protect me.*
When I woke, the sun was rising. The rose on the windowsill had opened fully, blood-red at its center, and somewhere in the northern tower, a dragon prince waited for a woman who was learning that survival meant sleeping in dead women's beds and calling it victory.
I smoothed my burgundy skirts, adjusted my mother's pearls, and walked toward the door.
The game had changed. The board had shifted. And for the first time in two lifetimes, I was playing without knowing the rules.
- Writer
