They moved her to different rooms before dawn, deeper into the palace, closer to the wing where Alaric himself kept his quarters, and Wren was too exhausted from the wolfsbane and the blood loss to argue about what that proximity might mean by the time Seraphine finished overseeing the transfer. She slept in fits for what remained of the night, waking twice to check the door was still barred, and finally gave up on rest altogether when grey light started to creep in around the curtains.
By midmorning, the palace was operating as though nothing had happened at all, courtiers moving through the corridors with the same practiced composure as any other day, and Wren understood, with a kind of tired disgust, that this was simply how Nocthaven functioned. Whatever violence occurred behind close
