THE REJECTED OMEGA QUEEN

Chapter 17: The Watchtower

"I'm not letting you walk into this alone." Kael's voice was low, urgent, following her down the temple corridor as she gathered her cloak. "Aria, be reasonable."

"She said alone," Aria reminded him, though her pulse hadn't slowed since reading the note. "If Reyes truly has eyes inside these walls, and Lyra risked everything sending that message, showing up with the Alpha King at my side could get her killed before she says a single word."

"And if it's a trap, showing up alone gets you killed." He caught her arm gently at the base of the stairs, gray eyes dark with an argument he was visibly losing anyway. "Let me come. I'll stay hidden. She'll never know I'm there unless something goes wrong."

Aria hesitated, old instincts warring with the fragile trust rebuilding itself between them one conversation at a time. "You have to actually stay hidden," she said finally. "Not hover close enough to interrupt the moment she says something you don't like."

"I promise," Kael said, and something in the solemn weight of it told her he meant it completely.

The old watchtower stood at the edge of the temple grounds, half-swallowed by ivy and centuries of neglect, its crumbling silhouette black against a sky just beginning to bruise toward dusk. Aria climbed the narrow stairs alone, heart hammering, every shadow along the walls suddenly suspicious in ways they hadn't been an hour before.

Lyra was already waiting at the top, hood drawn low, a fresh scar visible along her jaw where the "blood-soaked cloak" story had clearly been more truth than lie. She looked thinner than Aria remembered, hunted in a way that stripped away every ounce of the polished cruelty she'd worn at the Moon Ceremony.

"You came." Lyra's voice was hoarse, disbelieving. "I wasn't certain you would."

"You said you had proof," Aria said carefully, keeping her distance. "About who's really working with Reyes inside the palace."

Lyra reached into her cloak and withdrew a small, leather-bound ledger, worn soft with handling, and held it out with trembling hands. "I stole this from Corvin's private study the night I faked my death," she said. "Steward Corvin has been passing information to Reyes for over a year. Troop movements. Ward schedules. Even the exact night the Oracle would be alone in her chambers."

Aria's breath caught. "Corvin gave me the pendant story. He told me about my expulsion himself. He's been inside that castle my entire life."

"Which is exactly why no one ever thought to question him," Lyra said bitterly. "Reyes doesn't recruit strangers, Aria. He recruits the people everyone already trusts completely." She pressed the ledger into Aria's hands. "There's more. Dates. Names of others he's approached, some who refused, some who didn't. And there's something else, something I only understood after reading through Corvin's private notes twice."

"What?"

Lyra's expression turned grim, haunted by whatever she was about to say. "Corvin isn't simply working for Reyes out of fear or greed," she said quietly. "He's doing it out of grief. His notes mention a daughter, lost decades ago in the same conflict that killed half your ancestor's line. Reyes promised him a way to bring her back — some ritual tied to the Sleeper's binding, using your blood once the binding finally breaks."

Aria's stomach turned. "That's not possible. The dead don't come back."

"I don't think Reyes believes that either," Lyra said. "I think he's lied to Corvin exactly the way he lied to me — telling each of us precisely what we needed to hear to be useful to him." Her voice cracked, raw with something that looked disturbingly like genuine remorse. "I believed him when he promised me a throne. Corvin believes him because grief makes anyone desperate enough to believe in impossible things."

A twig snapped somewhere below the tower, sharp in the settling quiet, and both women went instantly still.

"Someone followed you," Lyra whispered, panic flooding back into her face.

"It's Kael," Aria started, "he promised to stay hidden—"

But even as she said it, some cold certainty told her the footsteps below didn't belong to him. They were too slow, too deliberate, entirely unhurried in a way that made every hair on Aria's arms rise at once.

Corvin's voice drifted up the tower stairs, calm and almost gentle, stripped of every ounce of the formal coldness Aria had known her entire life.

"I always wondered how long it would take you to find each other," he said. "I truly am sorry it has to end this way, Nightshade. You remind me so very much of her — my Elara. Kind to the very last." A soft, mournful sigh. "But Reyes promised me she'd finally come home once your blood finishes the binding, and I am far too close now to let sentiment stop me."

His footsteps continued climbing, unhurried and certain, and Aria realized with dawning horror that there was only one way down from the watchtower — and Corvin was already standing in it.