Read Chapter 19: The Hidden Dagger

The candles in Elara’s chamber had burned down to nubs by the time the screaming began.

She was still in her formal gown, the stays digging into her ribs, her mind turning over the afternoon’s victory like a polished stone. The King had cleared Alaric. Ashford was stripped, exiled, a hollow man being dragged from his own estate. And yet—

The scream cut off mid-breath.

Elara was on her feet before she knew she’d moved, hand going to the small knife she kept strapped to her wrist. The door burst open before she could reach it. A maid stood there, face the color of tallow, her hands pressed over her mouth.

“My lady—the east corridor—they’ve found—they’ve found Marius.”

Elara did not ask who Marius was. She followed the maid at a run.

The east corridor was already crowded with guards, their torches casting long, wavering shadows against the tapestries. The body lay crumpled where he’d fallen, a young man in servant’s livery, his neck bent at an angle that made Elara’s stomach clench. She forced herself to look. To memorize. Poison could be faked. Falls could be staged. But the bruising around his throat, the dark crescents where fingernails had dug into his own collar—

Strangled. Neat. Professional.

A guard moved to cover the body, and Elara stopped him with a raised hand. “What is that?”

The silver coin glinted in the torchlight, resting between the servant’s slack lips like an offering to the ferryman. Elara knelt. She did not touch it. She did not need to. On its face was stamped the crossed thistles of Valdris—her father’s symbol, minted only in the royal treasury, a coin that had been out of circulation for years.

Her blood went cold.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked, keeping her voice even.

The guard captain shook his head. “A coin, my lady. Nothing more.”

“It is a whisper-coin,” she said. “It means someone hired a killer. And the killer has left their receipt.”

The captain stared at her. “Who would—how could you possibly know that?”

Elara stood, brushings dirt from her skirts. “Because I have seen it used before. In my father’s court.” She paused. “The coin is meant to blame Valdris. To make it look as though I—or someone loyal to me—ordered this man killed.”

“Why would anyone think that?”

“Because someone wants them to.” She turned from the body, the image of the dead servant burned into her mind. His hands had been clean. Soft, for a servant. She’d noted that too. “Where did Marius serve?”

“He was assigned to the western wing, my lady. Guest quarters.”

Ashford’s quarters. Before the exile, before the trial—the Duke had been housed there, just two doors from her own chambers.

Elara’s skin prickled. “Search his belongings. Everything. Bring me anything unusual.”

She did not wait for the guards to argue. She walked back to her own chamber, forcing herself to move slowly, to breathe, to think. The trial was over. Ashford was beaten. And yet someone had just killed a man in the palace and placed a Valdris coin in his mouth, twisting the evidence toward her simply by being present.

Ashford was not done. She had known that. But this was not his style—he preferred letters and lies, forged signatures and poisoned words. A strangler’s hands would belong to someone else. Someone who moved in silence.

Someone who knew the servants’ schedules.

Elara reached her chamber. The fire had burned low, and the room was full of shadows. She stood in the doorway for a long moment, listening to the silence. Then she crossed to her bed.

She had learned long ago to check the places that seemed most private. The mattress was undisturbed, but the wooden frame—there, along the headboard’s inner edge—was scratched. Fresh.

With her knife, she pried at the seam. It gave with a click, revealing a narrow channel hollowed into the oak. Inside lay two things.

The first was a seal. Amethyst. Gold fittings. The same one she’d found weeks ago, that had vanished from her desk and reappeared in Ashford’s private correspondence. She had assumed it was lost. Instead it had been buried here, in her bed, her chamber, the one place she thought was safe.

A frame. A trap. Whoever had put it there had woven the threads around her without ever entering her orbit.

The second object was a letter, yellowed with age, sealed in her father’s own mark. The wax was cracked. The paper smelled of cedar and dust.

Elara’s hands trembled as she broke the seal.

She remembered the script at once. Bold, impatient strokes, the letters crammed together as though her father could not write fast enough to keep up with his own thoughts. She had watched him write a hundred such letters from his desk in Valdris, the firelight catching the silver in his hair.

*To my daughter, when she is ready to read this.*

She had to read the first line three times before she understood it.

*If you are reading this, I am dead.*

The room seemed to tilt. She sank onto the edge of the bed, the letter clutched in her hands.

*A knave has wormed his way into my court, Elara. He speaks of peace while sharpening a knife for your throat. I cannot name him here—I am not certain who is loyal and who is paid, and I will not doom you through my own ignorance. But I have learned enough to warn you: he is not alone. The conspiracy reaches higher than any crown. It binds our house to theirs, two kingdoms joined by a single secret.*

*They will try to keep you and the boy apart. They will make you see each other as enemies. Do not believe it. The alliance was never forged by kings. It was forged by two mothers who knew that some curses can only be broken by love born from hatred. I have made many mistakes, daughter. You were never one of them.*

*Find the boy who gave you the white flower. He is the key. He and you alone can end what our elders began.*

*Forgive me. I loved you more than you ever knew.*

Elara read it again. And again. The words blurred, and she blinked fiercely, refusing to let the tears fall.

The boy who gave her the white flower.

She had been six years old, visiting Aurenne as part of a failed peace summit. She remembered the gardens, the hedges taller than her head, and a boy with dark hair who had chased her through the maze. He had caught her at the center, breathless, laughing, and offered her a white blossom from a bush he had no business picking from. She had laughed at him. Told him it was a weed.

He had scowled and thrown it at her anyway. It had landed in her hair.

She had kept it pressed in her first book of letters. She had thought about it for years, the strange, fierce boy who had called her a hedgehog princess and run off before she could hit him.

Alaric. The boy was Alaric.

The door slammed open, slamming her back to the present. A guard stood in the threshold, white-faced, sword already drawn.

“My lady—there’s been an attack. The western gate. Lord Corin was on patrol. They’ve taken him.”

The letter fell from Elara’s hands.

Corin. Alaric’s younger brother. The boy who had taught her to play chess. The boy who was to be married to Mira in the spring.

“Taken?” she demanded. “By whom?”

The guard’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. Then: “The sigil on their blades—black and gold.”

Caldoran. The king who had been waiting. Who had never shown his hand.

Elara looked down at her father’s letter, still open on the bed, and understood.

The conspiracy reached higher than any crown.

The knave had never been Ashford. Ashford had only been the first move.