Dawn hadn’t broken, but the palace was already alight.
Not with candles. Not with fires.
With movement. Quiet, urgent, deliberate movement. Couriers dispatched through servant tunnels. Advisors called from their beds. Maids fetching tea that would go untouched beside parchments of hastily scrawled minutes.
I stood in my father’s study, cloaked but unbowed, and waited for the storm I had summoned.
Duke Ashcombe entered without knocking.
He was already dressed in full ceremonial black, though his collar was uneven and his eyes bloodshot. It made him look older—no less dangerous, only more mortal.
“You were supposed to wait for my word,” he said.
I turned from the window. “And yet I spoke with my own.”
He closed the door behind him with a snap. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
“Yes,”
