Read Chapter 18: Seeds of Doubt

The morning bell had barely rung when Cedric found the discrepancy.

He'd been going through the quartermaster's ledgers—a tedious duty Voss had assigned him as punishment for questioning the previous week's drills—when a set of entries caught his eye. Three separate requisition orders, dated over the past month, each for saddle leather treated with the same rare oil. Each signed with Elara's name.

Except Elara couldn't read or write when she'd arrived at the academy. Cedric knew this because he'd been the one to teach her, using old riding manuals and a chalkboard in the training yard. Her first attempts at her own signature had been tortured, ink-blotted things that looked nothing like the confident flourish before him.

He pulled the most recent requisition form, the one dated just before her arrest. The handwriting was perfect. Fluid. *Trained.*

Elara's letters had always carried a slight tremor, a legacy of hands accustomed to mucking stalls rather than holding quills. This was someone else's work.

Cedric set the ledger down, his breakfast turning sour in his stomach. For three days, he'd told himself Voss had been right. That the evidence against Elara was overwhelming. That he'd been fooled—she was just a stable hand with delusions of grandeur who'd stolen from the academy to pay off whatever debts she'd brought with her.

But stable hands didn't have forged documents made in their name. They didn't warrant elaborate conspiracies.

He looked up to find Anya, Voss's personal attendant, watching him from the doorway. Her face was smooth, pleasant, and cold as river stone.

"My lord, the Lady Voss requests your presence in her study," she said. "She wishes to discuss the upcoming memorial for the fallen riders."

Cedric's blood went cold. The memorial. The one Voss had scheduled for the next full moon, where she planned to honor those who'd died in the "dragon plague." Except Aldric hadn't died. He'd been imprisoned. And Ignis hadn't suffered the fatal seizure Voss had described to the academy. He'd flown away with Elara on his back, sick but alive.

"I'll be there momentarily," Cedric said, forcing a smile.

Anya didn't move. "She said immediately, my lord."

"Then she'll have me immediately." He gestured at the ledgers. "I need to return these to the archive first. The quartermaster is insufferable about his filing system."

Something flickered in Anya's eyes—calculation, perhaps, or doubt. But she nodded and withdrew.

Cedric waited until her footsteps faded, then slipped the forged requisition into his coat. He'd need to move carefully now. Voss watched everything, and Anya was her eyes.

He chose the servant's corridor to reach his quarters, avoiding the main halls where riders gathered to speculate about Elara's escape and Aldric's reappearance. The rumor mill churned with wild stories: that Elara had transformed into a dragon herself, that Aldric had been dead for years and was a ghost leading her astray, that Voss was secretly holding other prisoners below the academy in a vast crypt of chained beasts.

That last one made him pause.

Three years ago, when Aldric had vanished, the official record stated he'd died in a training accident. His dragon, Nyx, had gone mad with grief and been put down. But no one Cedric knew had witnessed the burial, and the dragon's carcass had never been displayed for the traditional mourning rites.

What if there was a crypt? What if Voss had been lying to them all along?

He ducked into his chamber, locking the door behind him. The room was sparse—a soldier's quarters, not a noble's indulgence—but it contained everything he owned. Which, he realized with a hollow ache, wasn't much. The academy had given him purpose after his family's estate fell to creditors. Voss had given him rank. And in return, he'd given them his unquestioning loyalty.

The letter was tucked beneath his mattress, hidden inside a hollowed floorboard he'd discovered when he first arrived. He'd nearly forgotten it, checking out of habit. But today, something crinkled against his fingers.

A small, oiled leather envelope pressed against the wood.

Cedric pulled it free, heart hammering.

Inside was a single sheet of thin paper, folded tight. The handwriting was hurried, smudged, but unmistakably Elara's—the tremor he'd taught himself to recognize, the letters that leaned slightly left as if she'd been writing while moving.

*Cedric,*

*I know you've been told I'm a thief. A traitor. Perhaps you believe it. I cannot blame you—she's convincing.*

*But I need you to remember the day we first met, when you found me in the stable with Ignis. I told you he wasn't sick, that something was wrong with his saddle. You laughed at me then. Called me an imaginative stable girl who didn't know her place.*

*You believed me anyway.*

*This is my plea for you to believe me now. Lady Voss is draining the dragons to feed her own power. Aldric is alive. He told me everything before she could kill us. Ignis flies with us now, weak and dying, and I have no way to save him unless I can stop her.*

*You have access to things I never will. You know the under-depths. You know where she keeps her private stores. If there's anything—anything—you can find that might help us, I beg you to bring it to the village of Hare's Hollow. I don't know if you'll receive this. I don't know if you'll come.*

*But I know who you are, Cedric. You're not a man who stands by while innocent creatures suffer. You're the boy who smuggled a wounded hawk through the dormitories and nursed it back to flight, even though the rules said kill it and move on. You're a rider. We protect what cannot protect themselves.*

*The dragons need you. I need you.*

*Come find me.*

*—Elara*

Cedric read the letter three times.

How had she gotten this into his room? The academy was sealed after her escape, every entrance watched, every servant questioned. Yet somehow, in the chaos of the past three days, someone had slipped past Voss's defenses to deliver this.

Or Voss had let it through. Let him see it. Testing his loyalty, watching for the moment he cracked.

He should burn it. Should march to Voss's study and present the letter as proof of Elara's ongoing treachery. That was what a loyal officer would do. That was what Cedric had done his entire life.

But he'd also noticed the forgery in the ledgers. And he couldn't unsee it.

Slowly, he folded the letter and slid it into his boot.

A knock came at his door.

"My lord Cedric," Anya's voice called, sharp with impatience. "The Lady Voss has sent me again. She grows concerned."

"Apologies," Cedric said, schooling his voice into calm professionalism as he crossed to open the door. "I was praying. For the memorial."

Anya's gaze swept his face, searching for deception. Cedric held it, giving nothing.

"Of course," she said at last. "She'll be pleased to hear you're taking the ceremony so seriously."

"Tell her I'll attend her immediately." He stepped past Anya into the corridor, the letter pressing against his calf with every stride. "There's something important I'd like to discuss with her. About the memorial."

And about the under-depths. About the saddles. About the spell she was powering with dragon blood.

He just had to decide which version of himself was walking through the Lady Voss's door: the loyal officer or the traitor she was already hunting.

The letter burned against his skin.

He had an answer.

He needed proof.

And with the forged requisition in his coat and every hour of his life at the academy mapped in his mind, he knew exactly where to find it.