Chapter 33
1035 Words
Dominic’s POV
The lower levels were silent.
I spent the night in the war room, reviewing maps and reports and anything that would keep my mind occupied. It didn’t work. The bond kept pulling at me. Every fiber of my being wanted to go upstairs.
She loved me.
That thought wouldn’t leave me alone.
Around dawn, Silas came in carrying documents.
His expression was stone cold
“Talia’s memories are fully restored,” he said, spreading the documents across the table. “She’s given us everything. Names, Places, Times and Evidence.”
I moved closer to look at what he’d compiled.
It was thorough. Too thorough.
Request forms for healing supplies. Access logs to the upper tower. Conversations with servants who’d seen Talia moving through the halls. A clear pattern of someone with authority directing her movements.
“This is all circumstantial,” I said.
“It is,” Silas agreed. “But combined with the sigil, combined with Talia’s identification of the voice, combined with the fact that only certain people have access to the supplies used to create the memory potion…”
He pointed to a name on one of the documents.
Vespera.
“She requested healing supplies four weeks before the poisoning,” Silas continued. “She requested them under the guise of wanting to study different medicinal compounds. Freya didn’t think anything of it at the time. Vespera has always been interested in learning.”
“What about the supplies themselves?” I asked. “Can we prove she actually created the potion?”
“No,” Silas said. “But we can prove she had the knowledge. We can prove she had access. And we can prove that Talia, when shown Vespera’s image while under gentle memory recovery, identified her as the person who gave her the orders.”
I sat down .
Vespera had poisoned the water to frame Vivian. Had orchestrated the entire thing to make Vivian look like a threat. Had done it deliberately, knowingly, with malice aforethought.
And I had ordered Vivian whipped for it.
The guilt of that nearly suffocated me.
“What do you recommend?” I asked Silas.
“Confrontation,” he said immediately. “Bring her in. Show her the evidence. Give her a chance to explain herself. And if she can’t…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t need to.
Exile or execution. Those were the only options for someone who would betray the pack in such a deliberate way.
“Not yet,” I said.
“Dominic…”
“Not yet,” I repeated. “I need to think about this. I need to understand why. Vespera is ambitious, but she’s not stupid. She wouldn’t do something like this without a reason. Without a plan for what comes next.”
Silas closed his eyes briefly. “You think there’s more.”
“I know there is,” I said. “She’s been orchestrating something. The poisoning was part of it, but not all of it. If we move against her now, we’ll expose the poisoning but we won’t understand the larger plot.”
“So what do you want to do?” Silas asked.
I thought about Vivian upstairs. About the way she loved me despite everything I’d done to her. About the bond that was pulling us together no matter how hard I fought it.
“We wait,” I said. “We watch her. We see what her next move is. And when she makes it, we’ll know exactly how deep this goes.”
“And in the meantime?” Silas asked. “In the meantime, she’s still spreading lies about Vivian. She’s still poisoning the pack against her. She’s still making moves to destabilize your position.”
“I know,” I said.
“Then why wait?” Silas’s frustration was visible now. “Why not just end this?”
“Because,” I said, “I need to know if she’s working alone or if someone else is pulling her strings.”
The words came out before I fully understood them. But the moment they did, something went bright in my mind.
Vespera was ambitious. But was she ambitious enough to orchestrate something like this completely independently? Or was she working with someone else? Someone more experienced in the art of manipulation.
Someone like…
No. I pushed the thought away. Kael had been my mentor since I was a boy. He’d guided me through the early years of my rule. He’d been the voice of reason when I wanted to burn the world.
He wouldn’t.
“We wait,” I told Silas. “Keep Talia safe and keep this quiet. If Vespera thinks she’s still ahead of us, she might make a mistake. And when she does, we’ll see exactly how far this goes.”
Silas didn’t look happy about it. But he nodded.
“There’s one more thing,” he said as he was gathering the documents. “Vivian’s power. It’s manifesting. The servants are talking about a broken window in the tower. About seeing violet light. About the way her presence is affecting the stones around her.”
“Is she in control of it?” I asked.
“No,” Silas said. “Freya is teaching her, but it’s wild. Unpredictable. The stronger her emotions, the stronger the manifestation.”
He paused at the door.
“She’s frightened,” he said quietly. “Not of the power. Of what it might do. Of whether she’ll hurt someone.”
After he left, I sat alone in the war room and felt the bond pulling at me again.
Vivian was frightened. Alone. Dealing with power she didn’t understand while I was downstairs hiding from her.
I told myself it was necessary . Told myself that understanding the full scope of Vespera’s plot was more important than going to her.
But that was another lie .
The truth was that I was still afraid. Still fighting. Still convinced that going to her would be a betrayal of something I’d sworn to protect.
Even though I’d already made my choice. Even though every moment I spent away from her was torture.
Even though she loved me anyway.
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