The Gilded Cage
The note was not paper, but a single, thin sheet of polished bronze, slipped between the pages of a trade ledger on Althea’s desk. Its edges were sharp enough to cut, its surface reflecting her own widened, pale eyes in the lamplight. The message, etched with a fine, clinical hand, was brief: “The Riverside warehouse. The western door. Midnight. Come alone if you value his future. Tell him, and the evidence goes to the Emperor with the dawn.” It was not signed. It didn’t need to be. The threat hung in the air of her solar, colder than the stone walls. The “him” could only be Kaelan. The “evidence”… her mind raced, a panicked animal in a trap. A scrap of fabric from his tunic caught on her balcony? A witness from one of his late-night arrivals? A love letter, foolishly penned in a moment
- Writer
